Dear NSA, let me take care of your slides.
fr.slideshare.net
Dear NSA, you can do whatever with my data. But not with my eyes. Those slides are hideous.
So here's a quick revamp of your #PRISM slides.
fr.slideshare.net
So here's a quick revamp of your #PRISM slides.
For instance Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence committee, who said "the authorities need this information in case someone might become a terrorist in the future."
I suppose you could also say they spend their time keeping the data safe and not producing quality slides, but i would consider it to be more of an insight into the quality of their overall architecture.
When I was in university, my professors made and taught from slides of roughly the same quality. Does that mean they cannot do their jobs? Obviously not: they have proved important theorems, published significant papers, worked on interesting patents, and successfully trained their students (all the while updating and reusing shoddy slides for years and years).
I am a little surprised at the surprise/snobbery over the quality of NSA's slides, as if it mattered. In my mind, blustering about colors and fonts in a case of this import only serves to highlight the triviality of designers: they are a luxury.
Agreed, this is alarming beyond belief.
We don't need no education...
We don't need no thought control... (Actually, per the United States Senate Intelligence Committee, you do.)
Stand still laddie!
Unless you're ready to remove the power structures, you're as much a part of the problem as any other taxpayer.
- the "what's the plan" slide is bad: it doesn't convey the original sense that other providers will join soon or have already joined. the tagline makes it look like it's a future plan, when it's actually describing the past.
- that "$20m" slide makes it look like it's a lot of money. The original clearly wanted to contextualise it and make it look cheap. ("just 20m for all these providers!")
- seriously? I got more data-per-square-inch from the original presentation.
- thin fonts are overdone and hard to read.
- VCs don't care about presentations anymore, I got in YC20xx by <clever social engineering episode>.
- On slide 13 I got a bit lost as the green circle for US & Canada stands out a lot so I read it before the text. Maybe the green circle could include the text?
Great marking!
I expect the NSA's slide to be crappy, because you know, they're spies and stuff not graphic UX experts.
Being an analyst and being able to understand the processing of data into visual display is not an orthogonal skill set. Often, PowerPoint slides are ugly and worthless because whoever designed them thought "Oh shit, I don't understand how to best convey this...time for some clip art" and/or "Faster slide animations!"
Obligatory link to Tufte's criticism of NASA and Powerpoint: http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0...
Contractors are typically not busy making powerpoints, but busy actually working on what they're hired to do since they have to do their hours. The busy work is left to the military folk and interns as stated in the other comment.
An enlisted E-7 just coming out of the military with an active clearance and some technology experience is going to bank with the contractors out there and probably do very little real actual hard work.
That security clearance really is the willy wonka golden ticket...
I use to try to make my slides and diagrams pretty and every time I did I was blasted which led to my disgruntled feelings towards my job. Hence why I'm no longer in this industry.
"Most of the world's communications
are flowing through the U.S.
So is your target's data"Thanks for sending this over, it looks great. Could you just add a few tweaks?
- Add the seal
- We need the "top secret" stamp on each slide
- We think the grey is too bland. Could you make it pop more?
- Did you get the PRISM logo from us? I am attaching the Word doc in case you missed it
- I am not sure you left enough room for the bullets -- will they go on separate slides? We need to see those.
[edited for line breaks]
• The main font is too thin.
• The first few slides are white text on a neutral gray background, which is inexcusably low contrast. Ditto for the green text on the blue background on the following slides, and the gray axis labels on the blue background, which I can barely read even on my computer screen. The white text on blue background is good.
• The text in the graph on the "How can we monitor everything?" slides is too small to be readable from the back row (but this was also a problem in the originals).
In fact, I don't understand why Powerpoint-Design-As-A-Service isn't a thing yet.
Can't believe NSA doesn't already do this stuff.
slides were designed excellently, i definitely did not giggle at all..
According to media reports, the total number of slides is much larger …
It's been around much longer than yesterday. iOS 7 is late to the party.