Editing Microsoft PowerPoint (section)

====Use it better====
{{See also |Stephen Kosslyn}}
A third reaction to PowerPoint use was to conclude that the standard style is capable of being used well, but that many small points need to be executed carefully, to avoid impeding understanding. This kind of analysis is particularly associated with [[Stephen Kosslyn]], a cognitive neuroscientist who specializes in the psychology of learning and visual communication, and who has been head of the department of psychology at Harvard, has been Director of Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and has published some 300 papers and 14 books.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.minerva.kgi.edu/people/stephen-kosslyn/ |title=Stephen M. Kosslyn, Ph.D., Dean of Arts and Sciences |date=2017 |website=Minerva Schools at Keck Graduate Institute (Claremont Colleges) |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160301232956/https://www.minerva.kgi.edu/people/stephen-kosslyn/ |url-status=live |archive-date=March 1, 2016 |access-date=September 24, 2017}}</ref>

Kosslyn presented a set of psychological principles of "human perception, memory, and comprehension" that "appears to capture the major points of agreement among researchers."<ref name="Kosslyn-et-al=2012">{{Cite journal |last1=Kosslyn |first1=Stephen M. |author-link1=Stephen Kosslyn |last2=Kievit |first2=Rogier A. |last3=Russell |first3=Alexandra G. |last4=Shephard |first4=Jennifer M. |date=July 17, 2012 |title=PowerPoint Presentation Flaws and Failures: A Psychological Analysis |journal=Frontiers in Psychology |issn=1664-1078 |volume=3 |issue=230 |pages=230 |doi=10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00230 |pmid=22822402 |pmc=3398435 |df=mdy-all |doi-access=free }}</ref> He reports that his experiments support the idea that it is not intuitive or obvious how to create effective PowerPoint presentations that conform to those agreed principles, and that even small differences that might not seem significant to a presenter can produce very different results in audiences' understanding. For this reason, Kosslyn says, users need specific education to be able to identify best ways to avoid "flaws and failures":<ref name="Kosslyn-et-al=2012" />

{{Blockquote|Specifically, we hypothesized and found that the psychological principles are often violated in PowerPoint slideshows across different fields ..., that some types of presentation flaws are noticeable and annoying to audience members ..., and that observers have difficulty identifying many violations in graphical displays in individual slides ... . These studies converge in painting the following picture: PowerPoint presentations are commonly flawed; some types of flaws are more common than others; flaws are not isolated to one domain or context; and, although some types of flaws annoy the audience, flaws at the level of slide design are not always obvious to an untrained observer ... .}}

The many "flaws and failures" identified were those "likely to disrupt the comprehension or memory of the material." Among the most common examples were "Bulleted items are not presented individually, growing the list from the top to the bottom," "More than four bulleted items appear in a single list," "More than two lines are used per bulleted sentence," and "Words are not large enough (i.e., greater than 20 point) to be easily seen." Among audience reactions common problems reported were "Speakers read word-for-word from notes or from the slides themselves," "The slides contained too much material to absorb before the next slide was presented," and "The main point was obscured by lots of irrelevant detail."<ref name="Kosslyn-et-al=2012" />

Kosslyn observes that these findings could help to explain why the many studies of the instructional effectiveness of PowerPoint have been inconclusive and conflicting, if there were differences in the quality of the presentations tested in different studies that went unobserved because "many may feel that 'good design' is intuitively clear."<ref name="Kosslyn-et-al=2012" />

In 2007 Kosslyn wrote a book about PowerPoint, in which he suggested a very large number of fairly modest changes to PowerPoint styles and gave advice on recommended ways of using PowerPoint.<ref name="Kosslyn-2007" /> In a later second book about PowerPoint he suggested nearly 150 clarifying style changes (in fewer than 150 pages).<ref>{{Cite book |last=Kosslyn |first=Stephen M. |author-link=Stephen Kosslyn |year=2010 |title=Better PowerPoint: Quick Fixes Based on How Your Audience Thinks |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-537675-3}}</ref> Kosslyn summarizes:<ref name="Kosslyn-2007" />{{Rp|pages=2–3,200}}

{{Blockquote| ... there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the PowerPoint program as a medium; rather, I claim that the problem lies in how it is used. ... In fact, this medium is a remarkably versatile tool that can be extraordinarily effective. ... For many purposes, PowerPoint presentations are a superior medium of communication, which is why they have become standard in so many fields.}}

In 2017, an online poll of social media users in the UK was reported to show that PowerPoint "remains as popular with young tech-savvy users as it is with the Baby Boomers," with about four out of five saying that "PowerPoint was a great tool for making presentations," in part because "PowerPoint, with its capacity to be highly visual, bridges the wordy world of yesterday with the visual future of tomorrow."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Burn-Callander |first=Rebecca |date=April 24, 2017 |title=Your attention, please, for the software we love to hate: PowerPoint celebrates its 30th birthday |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/04/23/powerpoint-celebrates-30th-birthday/ |newspaper=The Daily Telegraph |issn=0307-1235 |department=Business |archive-url=https://www.webcitation.org/6rrW6PL5n?url=https://filetea.me/n3wt2GSIIdrSaG4OKObsDPCbw |url-access=subscription <!-- but archive is ungated --> |url-status=live |archive-date=July 10, 2017 |access-date=July 10, 2017 |quote=... with new research showing that it remains as popular with young tech-savvy users as it is with the Baby Boomers. An online poll by YouGov showed that 81 per cent of UK Snapchat users agreed that PowerPoint was a great tool for making presentations. ... long -form prose has become increasingly unpopular with modern users. PowerPoint, with its capacity to be highly visual, bridges the wordy world of yesterday with the visual future of tomorrow. |df=mdy-all }}</ref>

Also in 2017, the Managerial Communication Group of [[MIT Sloan School of Management]] polled their incoming MBA students, finding that "results underscore just how differently this generation communicates as compared with older workers."<ref name="mit-sloan-2017">{{Cite web |url=http://mitsloan.mit.edu/newsroom/articles/3-surprising-ways-that-millennials-communicate/ |title=How millennials approach writing, giving presentations, and data visualization diverges from previous generations |last=Baskin |first=Kara |date=October 4, 2017 |website=MIT Sloan School of Management |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171004150949/http://mitsloan.mit.edu/newsroom/articles/3-surprising-ways-that-millennials-communicate/ |archive-date=October 4, 2017 |url-status=live |access-date=October 7, 2017 |quote=""Communication is part of everyone's job, but millennials do it differently," said MIT Sloan lecturer Miro Kazakoff, who co-authored the study with MIT Sloan senior lecturer Kara Blackburn."}}</ref> Fewer than half of respondents reported doing any meaningful, longer-form writing at work, and even that minority mostly did so very infrequently, but "85 percent of students named producing presentations as a meaningful part of their job responsibilities. Two-thirds report that they present on a daily or weekly basis—so it's no surprise that in-person presentations is the top skill they hope to improve."<ref name="mit-sloan-2017" /> One of the researchers concluded: "We're not likely to see future workplaces with long-form writing. The trend is toward presentations and slides, and we don't see any sign of that slowing down."<ref name="mit-sloan-2017" />