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Should I hate PowerPoint?
Edward Tufte is a famous author of visualization books series. He also teaches a well-known one-day class on visualization, which I took back in 2007 when he was in DC. I enjoy his books and still have them on my shelf. He knows a lot and is right about many concepts in information visualization: Sparklines, for example.
However, one controversy in his teachings is the case against PowerPoint. He once wrote a pamphlet called “The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint” and includes an entire session about why PowerPoint is evil in his one-day class. You can google “Tufte” and “PowerPoint” to see tons of search results.
The topic are widely discussed, with believers of both ideas. I once encountered an executive that announced he prefer all presentations to be presented by a one-page essay and discouraged slides, referring to Tufte’s pamphlet as recommended reading. On the other hand, many people [1, 2, 4] openly disagreed with Tufte’s argument.
PowerPoint or no PowerPoint?
Tufte argued that PowerPoint made it easier to make bad presentations than good ones. The default templates and charts are so bad that users often ended up creating terrible slides. The bullet points template does not capture human thoughts or narrative well.
The other side said the examples are outdated and PowerPoint’s defaults have been improved far beyond that point. There are also many other ways to use PowerPoint more than just a series of bullet points.
PowerPoint, in Tufte’s opinion, is low resolution. He recommends paper handout instead. With the low resolution, information are often omitted from the slides and lead to ambiguous or wrong interpretation. One example was that NASA used PowerPoint presentation in place of technical document and caused communication problems.
The counterargument is that paper handouts are not always feasible options. Modern projectors also have very high resolution. With carefully designed slides, one can condense a lot of information in an easy to understand way. Also, using PowerPoint in place of technical documents sounds like the tool was…
