"Power corrupts
PowerPoint corrupts absolutely"
—Edward Tufte, Wired Magazine, September 1, 2003
From Forbes, Jul 5, 2017:
PowerPoint, the much maligned and misused presentation platform, is harming people's perception of you and your brand, according to new research from Harvard University. The research team at Harvard conducted a double-blind study to answer the immortal question: "How effective is PowerPoint as a presentation tool and how it compared to 'zoomable user interfaces' (ZUIs) and oral presentations?" The results seem to show PowerPoint is failing you in two key areas: increasing information transfer to your target and improving what people think of your brand (and you).HT: Inc Magazine, August 9, 2019
Using a real-world business scenario, PowerPoint was rated (by online audiences) as no better than verbal presentations with no visual aids. Ouch. Doubly damning if you think of the time, money and other resources being wasted the world over. Secondly, researchers say the data showed that “presentations influenced participants' core judgments about a business decision, and suggest that [ZUI presentations such as] Prezi may benefit both behavioural and experiential outcomes.” Participants concluded that Prezi’s ZUI presentations were more organised (13%), engaging (16%), persuasive (22%), and effective (25%) than both PowerPoint and oral presentations....MUCH MORE
Harvard Just Discovered that PowerPoint is Worse Than Useless
Intuitively, anecdotally, and scientifically, PowerPoint may be the worst business tool ever created
...As the woefully underappreciated How PowerPoint Makes You Stupid points out:
"PowerPoint's celebrated ease and efficiency actually mask a profoundly disturbing but little-understood transformation in human communication. The slides, bulleted lists, and flashy graphics we all now take for granted [have] promoted a new, slippery 'grammar,' where faulty causality, sloppy logic, decontextualized data, and seductive showmanship have replaced the traditional tools of persuasion and argument [resulting in] the corruption of language [and] the dumbing-down of society."
