Presentation Zen Design: Simple Design Principles and Techniques to Enhance Your Presentations, Second Edition

6. Simplifying the Data

Displaying evidentiary data can be a powerful way to support your case or your discovery. It can also result in tragedy. When people recall their “death-by-PowerPoint” horror stories, their experiences often include the tedium of sitting through pages and pages of detailed charts and graphs without knowing what the displays were supposed to show. The presenter, however, assumed the audience members could see every fine detail from their seats. Audiences quickly tire of data displayed without clarity or meaning, especially when the data is difficult to see. The problem is usually not the use of quantitative data, but rather ...