Who Understands Your Message?

If you’ve been watching TV lately (the offline kind), you’ve probably seen Verizon’s new ads hyping the impending release of the Droid smartphone later this month. If you haven’t seen the ad, you can visit it here.

one of the commercials catchphrases

My immediate reaction to the ad was positive, and I still generally like it (up until the end). It does a nice job positioning itself as an iPhone competitor, and Verizon takes the battle to Apple rather than to AT&T, which is where many ads already go. Even the “iDon’t” sentences are catchy in the same way the old “Genesis does what Nintendon’t” campaign of the 90s was.

Daring Fireball writer John Gruber, however, makes an astute observation about the ads:

I think the main problem with the ad is that it doesn’t make any sense to non-nerds.

He’s completely right too. Of the eight “iDon’t” claims in Verizon’s ad, perhaps four speak to general consumers. The rest are pretty meaningless without a technology background of some sort. The message is a mixed one – the Droid is positioned against a phone highly popular with consumers while being differentiated in ways only a geek could love.

A good presentation, but…

The application to our presentations is a simple one. Who did you prepare your talk for? Now who is your audience? If you are a specialist delivering a talk before laypeople, you’re going to have to present your ideas differently than before peers. Jargon, buzzwords, acronyms, abbreviations – these should either be substituted or explained as the presentation progresses.

Too much of this stuff, and your audience will have another three-letter acronym floating in their heads.

While not talking down to an audience, we should be striving to make things as easy to understand for them as possible. Help guide them to your conclusions and/or results in a way that avoids confusion and frustration. Don’t let anyone walk away from your presentation saying, “The main problem is that it doesn’t make sense to non-[specialists].”

Links 11/01/09

Sheesh, where does the time go? I feel like I just started this school year, and here’s November already. I’ll be tearfully saying goodbye to this batch of fifth graders before I knew what hit me. Anyway, here are a couple things to check out while I keep staring at the draft of a post I’m not quite happy with yet!

Three from Presentation Zen

If I don’t watch myself, I could easily turn this site into Garr Reynold’s RSS feed, so I’ll use some restraint. Here are three recent posts I him I think you should take a look at.

Using Kuler to Create Color Themes

Kuler is easily one of my favorite sites for creating and discovering color schemes. Mr. Reynolds takes a good look at how to get the most out of this site.

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Tokonoma and the Art of the Focal Point

In this post, Mr. Reynolds looks at Japanese architectural aesthetic and examines how we can apply this same type of focus to creating presentation slides.

…The rooms had a feeling of spaciousness. This is because there was virtually nothing else in the room to distract your attention. It is the emptiness or exclusion of nonessential decoration or other items that allows even the smallest rooms to feel more spacious and guide the eye to the focal point of the room.

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Sumi-e, color, and the Art of Less

Sumi-e is another example of an art that embodies the very essence of simplicity and yet is in practice complex and takes a lifetime to master. This aspect of the art of Sumi-e too is a metaphor for life: One never truly masters the art of life or achieves perfection. The pursuit of perfection is the journey, and the journey is what it’s all about.

And a New Resource

Speaking About Presenting

I’m adding this blog by Olivia Mitchell to the resources in the sidebar. She really seems to put some serious thought into her posts, and she’s not afraid to challenge conventional wisdom. The site is about a year-and-a-half old, and has a great deal of content. Be sure to check it out.

Delightful Stairs

From Garr Reynold’s Posterous:

I think this illustrates my previous post perfectly.

Unexpected Delight

I picked up this strange product at the grocery store last week called Marble Pop. It’s a product of Japan and seems to be a variation on a drink called Ramune but packaged for an American audience.

What makes Marble Pop unique is in how you open it. Instead of twisting off a lid or prying off a cap, you press a small plastic plunger into the top which dislodges a glass marble sealing the bottle. The marble then rests in the neck and rolls around while you enjoy the drink. There’s an amusing instructional video on the official site.

Marble Pop takes a rather mundane task – opening a beverage bottle – and turns it into a delightful experience. The next time we were at that grocery store, I wanted to get another bottle just so I could open it again.

In a similar vein, I love a blog called Swiss Miss. It bills itself as a design blog – and rightfully so – but I’m always coming back to it for the sheer delight I find in most of the discoveries and observations Ms. Eisenberg makes. One such post is about conversation starters at a design event she attended. Instead of the standard “Hello, my name is…” badges, attendees wore tags that said, “If I would make a documentary, it would be about…”

Image from Swiss Miss. Check out the site for more.

There are times when we simply have to insert mundane information into our presentations. Maybe the conference requires an About Me segment. Perhaps you need to show some Venn diagrams or other graphs. The point is not so much in the information itself so much as what we do with it. Mundane tasks and information do not have to be presented in a mundane way.

The two slides below are very common. One is a title slide, and the other marks the conclusion of a talk, but both bring smiles to audience faces. I made the first, but I can’t take credit for the second. That one’s by Delicious Monster founder Wil Shipley (who also happens to make some pretty delightful software).

As for charts and graphs, you have to look no further than the sites Indexed and Graph Jam for inspiration on bringing joy to your informational graphics.

Image from Indexed

I’m curious to hear from my readers as well. What do you do to delight your audiences? How do you bring joy into material that might otherwise be considered boring? If we take joy in what we do, we should want to share that joy with our audience. Even if we don’t take joy, per se, but we feel passionate about it, we should be connecting those emotions with those listening to us. If Marble Pop can make something as ordinary opening a soda bottle delightful, think about what we can do with all the unique stories and insights we have to share.

As Little As Possible

In a recent Q & A session with Garr Reynolds, Nancy Duarte addresses the age old question: “How many slides should I use?” Garr’s response was simple: “It depends.” He later clarifies that this comes down to deciding exactly how many slides you need for your specific presentation without allowing the slides to become a crutch.

This fits in nicely with the tenth and final of the design laws we’ve been looking at by Dieter Rams – that good design is as little as possible.

One of the most significant principles is to omit the unimportant in order to emphasize the important. Reduction in every respect…One of the most important duties of designers today is to help clear up the chaos in which we live.

How many slides should you use in a presentation? You should use as few as possible while still keeping your meaning clear and your delivery engaging. This may mean you use no slides; it may mean ten slides; it may mean 285 slides.The real point is flow. Does your talk move? Is it engaging? Are you spending time narrating slides for your audience?

It’s not how many slides. It’s how you use them.

This principle applies to the content on the individual slides as well. How much do you really need there? Is the content on the slide there for your benefit or for the audience’s? In her book slide:ology, Nancy Duarte states a slide should be processed in three seconds or less. She calls it the Glance Test. Can the concept of the slide be processed in a glance?

I intentionally selected two slides with text. Does the more cluttered slide actually offer more?

We are used to being bombarded with visual and auditory clutter, and many of us have developed filters to manage that bombardment. Overly complex slides and slide decks that take audience members much time to process will encourage them to filter you out. If done right, 285 slides can be simple, but, most of the time, we don’t need that much. In fact, we put more on our slides than our audience needs to understand the concept.

The secret is in finding balance between flow and content, between storytelling and lecturing. Unfortunately, I can’t do all the work for you. Only you can find your own balance.