Michael Alley has investigated an alternative to the default PowerPoint slide layout, which he terms the “assertion-evidence design.”

This approach employs succinct sentence headlines (sentences that make an assertion) at the top of the slide.  Under it, in the main section of the slide, there would appear a visual representation of evidence, such as a picture or a graph.

In multiple experiments, Alley has found that students viewing presentations following this design were better able to recall the main assertion of slides than were those students viewing presentations employing phrase headlines and bulleted text.

An example of a phrase headline would be, “Product safety,” a phrase that contains no information of value and no point of view. 

If the author of such a slide were to use Alley’s “assertion-evidence design,” the headline might read, “Product safety is competitive.”  That is, the sentence would make an assertion, or a point, and then the viewer would be able to glance down to review the evidence on display that supports the assertion.

McKinsey and Co.,  a leading consulting firm, has used this methodology for years, if not decades, as have other reputable institutions, including the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.  

Any presenter whose job is to create clarity out of complexity will benefit from using Alley’s “assertion-evidence design.” 

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On April 27, on the front page of the New York Times, Elisabeth Bumiller has an article entitled: We Have Met the Enemy, and He is PowerPoint.

Speech professionals like me, along with many other communication experts, have had a love-hate relationship with PowerPoint for years.

Now we see that the leaders of our military are having the same debate: At what point does PowerPoint become a hindrance rather than an aid?

I remember the story about Lou Gerstner when he took over IBM. He went to his first meeting as CEO and sat down to watch a PowerPoint presentation on what was wrong with the company.

Within minutes, he asked that the projector be turned off and simply said, “Let’s talk.”

There is something wrong when we ask people to listen to us and give them something to read at the same time.  I’m not a cognitive scientist, but I don’t think the human brain was designed to listen to a speech and read at the same time.

There are many people who have done research into these issues and we should heed their call.

Cliff Atkinson at www.sociablemedia.com has published a book entitled Beyond Bullet Points.  He makes an elegant case for the use of imagery, the structure of story, and the effective use of clear outlines and headlines.

Cliff based some of his methodology on the work of Professor Richard E. Mayer at the University of California.

Professor Mayer and others have done ground-breaking research into the Principles of Cognitive Guidance:  basically, how do you get people to follow what you’re saying.

These Principles apply to teaching, lecturing, and presenting, and are extremely useful to all of us who must make sense out of complexity.

Many of us are also familiar with Edward Tufte, Professor Emeritus at Yale, who has done extraordinary work on the visual display of quantitative information.

His paper, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, was published in May 2003, and while it has been found to be strongly biased against PowerPoint, it has helped to point the way to a more effective use of visual displays in business settings.

In my work within big Pharma, financial services, and strategic consulting shops, I am amazed at how much time managers spend designing slides.

When you add up the cost of pulling everyone into a meeting, and the cost of an executive salary paid to a manager to create slides for a week, the amount spent is considerable.

And if you add in the fact that the audience may frequently get bored, or confused, or simply exhausted from the onslaught of daily PowerPoint presentations they have to sit through, you have an additional cost in lower morale and disengagement.

As the article in the Times says, PowerPoint probably isn’t going away anytime soon.  But it is time to make it clear that PowerPoint is a tool that we can use more effectively by using it according to proven principles of science, and not according to our legacy corporate habits.

Sims Wyeth is a speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in presentation skills andpublic speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.