Harvard Just Discovered That PowerPoint Is Worse Than Useless | Hacker News Reader

Harvard Just Discovered That PowerPoint Is Worse Than Useless

inc.com

20 pointsraiyu13 comments

Powerpoint is great for assisting presentations, and like other posters in the thread have said, it's for assistance, and not the main source of information. Think pictures and very concise bullet points.

I know the consulting industry likes to abuse powerpoint by making 200+ slide decks that are clearly not meant to be presented but more used as printouts/deliverables. I question that PPT is the best format for that but nobody has come up with anything better that is as widely adopted.

This should be presentation 101, you don't just put the text on the screen that is the same thing you are reading aloud. It should be for charts, diagrams, or some other visual to support your presentation or to break up the monotony. I was also taught to never use white backgrounds, I'm not sure if that is proven but I've always followed that rule. That said, I avoid presenting at all costs :)

Unfortunately, the PowerPoint has other functions that require some written text, namely, it may be the only record of your project that anybody receives or has access to. It will be e-mailed to the people who didn't show up for your meeting. Your boss might incorporate some of your slides into his own PowerPoint. You might have written a lengthy report, but nobody reads any more, and your report will end up in some forgotten place.

Many have been the times when I've asked: "Can anybody tell me what happened?" and all I get back is a PowerPoint. That's it. Better make it count.

Talks and presos should be adjuncts to papers.

Not always the case, obv, but this shuld be the general goal.

I just discovered that breathless clickbait headlines are worse than useless.

Would you say they're considered harmful?

PowerPoint is best and easiest graphic editing tool that I have come across.

I routinely used to recommend that (before online tools like Canva) to design challenged when they wanted to learn "Photoshop" for creating simple graphics.

Thanks to taking a class in HCI, I also learned that it's a capable UI prototyping tool.

I can't say I agree with this study. Yes PowerPoint is overused, and sometimes miss used, but a properly held presentation with PowerPoint is definitely better than useless.

How does an audience follow a medium complex subject if not with some visual aid to help to keep the big picture? No quote to back this up, but the articles main point really does not reflect my experience.

Visual aid can be a lot, useful or useless but I don't think it is PowerPoint's/Keyword's/your_tools fault if a presenter just reads the slides.

PowerPoint is worse than useless or all presentation software is worse than useless?

The argument seems to apply to the entire category of software; it appears unnecessary to single out or even mention PowerPoint at all.

It's just a name drop to provoke sensationalism in people who ignorantly refer to all sodas as Coke or all meat as chicken?

Is it "Powerpoint", per se, or presentation-slideshows in general? I suspect the latter. I worry that if we use the name of the specific product we only encourage a flood of "Powerpoint alternatives" without addressing the root cause of the issue.

Well that was nearly coherent.

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