Managing Three Mediation Effects that Influence PowerPoint Deck Authoring

INTRODUCTION No communication technology is simply a conduit for information. Rather, every communication technology has its own mediation effects— its own ways of influencing communication (Kaptelinin and Nardi 2006). A presentation supported by PowerPoint (or another slideware application) and the process of preparing it will be very different from a presentation not supported by visuals and significantly different from a presentation visually supported by another means such as a flipchart or whiteboard. PowerPoint has met with much harsh criticism during the last 8 or so years (Farkas 2006, 2008). The main theme is that PowerPoint readily reduces the effectiveness of oral presentations. Statements like this are prevalent: “PowerPoint inherently ruins a presentation in 95 percent of cases” (Kewney 2007). These phrases appear widely on the Internet: “Death by PowerPoint” and “PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.” Given the enormous prevalence of PowerPoint in business, government, education, and other areas of life, the possibility that PowerPoint is interfering with our efforts to communicate with one another is a serious matter. If we can identify and address PowerPoint’s harmful mediation effects, we should do so. In this study, I investigate three of PowerPoint’s many mediation effects. Each pertains to the layout of slides and the process of authoring decks (sets of slides). I have chosen these three because they are important and because they are closely related and can be addressed in a unified, economical way. I argue that these mediation effects pose problems to authors of PowerPoint decks but are ultimately manageable. Here are the mediation effects and the problems they can cause: Content cutting: deck authors may eliminate informative text and graphical content planned for a slide to fit the available space. Overflow distortion: when deck authors let text flow from one slide to another, they may violate the deck’s logical hierarchy by promoting a bullet point to the level of a slide title. Slide title flattening: because all the slide titles in a deck generally have the same visual appearance, deck authors may unwittingly mask hierarchical distinctions. This requires the audience to discern these distinctions (or fail to do so) without the visual support of the deck. These effects are not hard to notice, but they have received no more than passing attention. My procedure is as follows: (1) Elaborate briefly on the concept of mediation as it pertains to PowerPoint. (2) Review the most important and pertinent claims that have been made regarding PowerPoint’s mediation effects. (3) Introduce two relevant considerations: PowerPoint’s slide metaphor and the standard and alternative slide layouts. (4) Explain content cutting, overflow distortion, and slide title flattening. (5) Suggest that we continue to study PowerPoint by carefully investigating its many mediation effects.