The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint
Why do people use PowePoint?
When questioned about the circumstances motivating their use of PowerPoint presentations, 61.1% of our respondents answered that they use PowerPoint when they need to show visual media content. Other important reasons mentioned for using PowerPoint were the need to show an overview of a specific subject (16.7%) and when trying to keep the focus of the audience (16.7%).
Public Speaking experience
In general we considered a graduate student as a person with moderate experience in public speaking because of the exigencies of the regular classes in the program. In other words, most of the SILS classes require discussion, participation, and a presentation at some point. When mentioned by the user, we considered teaching as a proof of experience in public speaking. In the same way, when the user considered him/herself as with low experience we took that as his/her level.
Grading according to the experts
When contrasting the users' behavior using PowerPoint we chose just two options: the user either complied with a specific guideline or they did not. The following graphic shows the percentage of compliance to Tufte's, Searls' and Mayer's guidelines.
Gordon Shaw, et al guideline basically referred to the style of narration used in the presentation. 33.3% of the user organized their content following the structure suggested by Shaw: “set the stage, introduce the dramatic conflict, and reach resolution”.
What do people include in their presentations?
When analyzing the content we found that users where consistent about their use of images. 77.8% said they include images in their presentations and 73.3% actually did it on the PowerPoint samples.
When reviewing the slides we collected, we noticed that users tended to use low resolution images that were hard to read on the screen. This is most likely due to conversion problems when importing images in to PowerPoint from other applications.
However, there were interesting inconsistencies in other aspects. 94.4% said that they include an overview of the presentation, but only 26.7% did. Only 44.4% said that they include graph and charts, but 60% actually included those on their presentations. Just 5.6% mentioned quotes as part of their presentations but 20% included them. And finally, 33.3% of the presentations provided hyperlinks but none of the users mentioned them as part of their content.
What PowerPoint tools do people use?
In general, the use of PowerPoint features in the samples was less than what the users declared in the questionnaire. 77.8% said that they used slide transitions, but only 40% actually did it. 88.9% declared that they used built in slide designs, or templates, but only 46.7% used them. In the same way, 38.9% declared that they used sound effects in their presentations but none of the samples had it.
Although 16.7% (sometimes: 11.1%, often: 5.6%) of the users admitted that they used the AutoContent Wizard, we weren't able to identify the use of this tool in the samples.
What do people hate about PowerPoint?
The main complaints about the use of PowerPoint by others were: 55.6% complained about the excess of text or information in the slides. 38.9% disliked when people read from the slide or where too much dependable on the slides during their presentations. And, 16.7% complained about the use of slides with no additional value to the presentation.
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