|
|
|
|
|
|
Summary of the Annoying PowerPoint Survey
© 2003 Dave Paradi
This survey was run during the month of September 2003 on the www.communicateusingtechnology.com web site (This survey was redone in September 2005 and the latest results are available by clicking here). Subscribers to the Communicating Using Technology newsletter were invited to participate and to ask others to participate. The subscriber list is made up primarily of people from many countries who have an interest in using technology better to communicate ideas and is comprised of corporate, non-profit and government employees.
Total Responses: 159
Question 1: What are the three most annoying things about the bad PowerPoint presentations you have seen?
| The speaker read the slides to us | 60.4% |
| Text so small I couldn't read it | 50.9% |
| Full sentences instead of bullet points | 47.8% |
| Slides hard to see because of color choice | 37.1% |
| Moving/flying text or graphics | 24.5% |
| Annoying use of sounds | 22.0% |
| Overly complex diagrams or charts | 22.0% |
| No flow of ideas - jumped around too much | 18.9% |
| No clear purpose of the presentation | 18.2% |
| Too many fonts used | 12.6% |
| Graphic images that did not fit the topic of the slide | 6.3% |
| Poor quality video or audio segment | 5.0% |
(Total equals 325.8% because people were asked to select three options and some selected more than three.)
It is clear from the responses that the most annoying aspect of bad PowerPoint slides is the text, not the graphics or multimedia. It is important that a presenter focus on getting short, relevant and readable text on the slides and add to each point with what they say. Simply reading the slides that are jammed with text to the audience is an insult to the audience and the results indicate that by doing this, presenters are severely damaging the message they are trying to deliver.
Question 2: What other things annoy you about PowerPoint presentations?
This was a free form question and 94 of the 159 respondents (59.1%) added comments. Three common themes emerged from the comments:
- Poor Preparation of the Presentation – People are very annoyed when the presenter does not even think about the structure of the presentation and simply copies the text of a report onto slides. PowerPoint slides should support the message, not substitute for the presenter or for a more detailed handout. Presenters need to connect with the audience instead of hiding behind the slides.
- Balance of Slide Elements – People find too much text or too much fancy graphics and multimedia a big turn off. These two extremes do not work well. A balanced approach is called for – text to give context for the audience’s understanding of what the presenter will next be speaking about, and graphics and multimedia to touch the emotions of the audience.
- Not Knowing How to Use the Technology – If presenters are going to use technology during a presentation, they should learn how to set it up, start it up so it looks professional and smoothly move between the slides. Awkward usage of PowerPoint and presentation technology was mentioned a number of times as detracting from the message being delivered.
In making comments, many respondents were quite passionate about the sins being committed by presenters. Most see the PowerPoint tool as being a useful tool, but far too often misused.
Question 3: In an average week, how many PowerPoint presentations do you see?
| 0-1 | 55.9% |
| 2-4 | 35.2% |
| 5-8 | 5.7% |
| 9-15 | 1.9% |
| 16 or more | 1.3% |
Most respondents do not see that many presentations per week, but probably see 30-50 per year. A significant segment of the respondents (44.1%) see two or more presentations per week, which is at least 100 presentations per year.
Question 4: Of those PowerPoint presentations that you see, what percentage are done poorly (suffer from one or more of the above problems)?
| more than 50% | 28.9% |
| 0-5% | 13.8% |
| 41-50% | 12.6% |
| 31-40% | 11.3% |
| 16-20% | 8.8% |
| 21-25% | 8.8% |
| 26-30% | 7.5% |
| 6-10% | 5.0% |
| 11-15% | 3.1% |
A surprisingly high percentage of presentations suffer from the problems that annoy audience members. A total of 41.5% of the respondents said that more than 40% of the presentations they see contain annoying elements. This indicates how wide-spread the problem is and how much of an issue this is becoming for organizations. Microsoft’s statistics indicate that there are 400 million copies of Microsoft Office installed and there are 30 million PowerPoint presentations done each day. The increased reliance on the PowerPoint tool for communicating a message has not worked as well as hoped given the results of the survey. It is clear that many presenters need help structuring their presentation, especially the crucial text aspect.
The Cost of Bad PowerPoint Presentations
When looking at the impact of poor presentations on an organization, the responses from those who indicated they see 100 or more presentations per year were investigated further. This segment of the group see a greater percentage of presentations that suffer from the annoying elements than do the other respondents (54.5% suffer compared to the overall 41.5%). It seems reasonable to assume that this segment are more senior in organizations since a more senior level individual in an organization would see more presentations than a junior level individual. This gives even greater cause for concern as their time is more valuable to the organization and the cost of wasting that time is even greater.
To calculate the dollar cost impact of these poor presentations, a few assumptions were made. It was assumed that an organization had 10 presentations done per day somewhere in the organization (quite a reasonable number for any organization of 250 or more professionals). Using the survey results, it was assumed that 40% of these suffered from annoying elements that significantly impacted the ability of the audience to understand the message. If ten professionals were in each meeting (average salary $60,000 per year), an hour of their time is being wasted with each of these poor presentations. In addition, the lack of understanding would lead, in half of the poor presentations, to an additional 8 hours of work by these professionals to communicate the message again in additional reports, meetings and presentations. When all of this in taken into account, the cost of the wasted time of these professionals is over $450,000. This is quite a staggering amount for any organization, and one that should cause alarm with senior executives.
Conclusions
Organizations must take steps to properly train their staff in the use of PowerPoint to present information in meetings. It is clear that the tool is a good one, it is just the use of the tool that is at issue. Too many presenters have used PowerPoint slides as a substitute for themselves and think that the slides are the presentation instead of the slides supporting the presentation that they must deliver.
A clear structure to the presentation should be created, research done to support the key points and an analysis of the audience to take their needs into account. When creating the slides, presenters must only put the key points on the slide and add to the point with the depth of information that they share verbally. This will lead to more effective presentations and less wasted time. Organizations who find that their staff are primarily reading reports and calling them presentations may want to eliminate many of the presentations and simply distribute the report electronically for others to review on their own time. This would free up large amounts of time for professionals to attend to higher value work.
For the press release summarizing this survey, click here.
Click here for tools that can help you improve your PowerPoint slide presentations.
(C)2003 Dave Paradi