More than 30 million PowerPoint presentations are made on a
daily basis (Weinstein, 2011). When designing presentations and its slides, its
important to not only use vital design principles, but to also think of the
target audience to whom you will be presenting.
Szabo and Kanuka’s (1999) study on screen design and its effects
on recall learning, study time, and completion rates yielded interesting
results. Their study found that good screen design did not affect achievement.
They did find, however, that poor use of the design principles resulted in more
instructional time. Therefore, using the principle desgins when designing
slides is important when there is a concern about “minimizing learning time and
maximizing learner completion rates” (p. 39).
Levy and Yupangco (2008) discusses the importance of color
and the five design principles designers need to think about when designing
effective slides. Those five principles include balance, proportion, dominance,
rhythm, and unity. Other principles include C.R.A.P., simplicity, perspective,
and layout. What other principles can you think of that are vital to slide/screen design?
I thought the most interesting article we were assigned in
our learning unit was Simon’s (2004) Does
PowerPoint make you stupid? Simon does a good job of pointing out Tafte’s
ineffectiveness of making a valid argument about PowerPoint. This goes along
with our discussion in class and how Dr. Wilcox brought up that it is not the
software itself that makes a project ineffective, but how well the designer
uses his or her resources and design principles to create that project. It is also interesting to note the year in which this article was published, in 2004. People were already questioning the effectiveness of PowerPoint, and yet nine years later we are still using it!
Here are some useful sites on color to help you with creating
your slide set
Bringing this one back again- we have already worked with
it.
This website has its own list of several online color
resources for designers.
http://www.smashingapps.com/2011/05/24/45-color-tools-and-resources-for-choosing-the-best-color-palette-for-your-designs.html.
This website may be especially useful to you while designing your slides. This
site has color tools on the website to help you design and pick out your color
palette for your slides.
Finally, here is a YouTube video that includes useful tips and guidelines to creating an effective presentation
Questions
- Although we have discussed that it is the designer who makes the slides/project effective or ineffective, what are your thoughts on PowerPoint? Is there a “better” program to use? Do you prefer to use any other program besides PowerPoint to design slides? Why or why not?
- Are there any other design principles you think are especially important to use when designing slides, outside of the five principles mentioned above?
- What are elements of a slideshow that you find effective and that gain your attention?
References
Levy, S., & Yupangco, J.
(2008). A picture is worth 1000 words: Visual design in e-learning. The ELearning Guild, 1-8.
Simons, T. (2004). Does PowerPoint make you look stupid? Presentations.com, 1-6.
Szabo, M., & Kanuka, H. (1999). Effects of violating screen design principles of balance, unity, and focus on recall learning, study time, and completion rates. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 8(1), 23-42.
Weinstein, H. (2011). Epidemic
PwoerPoint misuse. The Associated General
Contractors of America.
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