Design a Presentation | Extreme Presentation Method This part of the website provides a quick guide for creating your own presentation from scratch, or improving an existing one, using the 10-step Extreme Presentation(tm) method. It is designed primarily for people who have already taken the Extreme Presentation workshop or read the book Advanced Presentations by Design. If you have done neither of these, we recommend that you at least read the book, but even if you don't, you should still find useful guidance here. Before you begin, you may wish to download a pdf file of the Extreme Presentation Method overview and print it out. The Extreme Presentation method takes a marketing approach to presentation design: focusing on how to “sell” your ideas to your audience. The method consists of the five essential elements of an effective presentation and ten practical steps to put each of those elements into practice. There are two steps in each of the five elements, for a total of ten steps. There are two problems with this approach.
Metaphors for Presentations: Conway's Law Meets PowerPoint An important but complex issue in evaluating visual presentations, including PowerPoint, is: what are the causes of a presentation? What are the contributions of content quality, presenter skills, presentation methods, cognitive styles, and prevailing standards of integrity? To begin with, reasonably certain answers are that the causal structure is multivariate, that causes tend to interact and are not independent of one another, and improvements will result from working on all factors. George Orwell's classic essay "Politics and the English Language" gets right the interplay between quality of thought and cognitive style of presentation: "The English language becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts." Consider the NASA presentations. Sorting all this out is not possible. Some of these comparisons are for the same users with the same content. -- Edward Tufte
Lousy PowerPoint presentations: The fault of PP users? Technical reports, not PP After attending Mr. Tufte's Portland seminar, I gave a presentation on the content to my colleagues at work. I focused on how what I learned could be used to improve the design of our own software. Instead I wrote a one-page, double-sided report highlighting the seminar's scope and detailing various salient points. I was amazed at how smoothly the presentation went. I also had a number of compliments on my designs (thank you Mr. -- Venecia Rauls (email)
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