Customer Reviews

Clear and to the Point: 8 Psychological Principles for Compelling PowerPoint Presentations

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is an excellent guide to the visual design of presentation slides (PowerPoint or otherwise). Kosslyn explain his 8 principles, and then provides guidelines for various aspects of presentations, such as text, sound, graphs, and other visuals. At the end of each chapter, he ties the guidelines in that chapter to basic principles that underlie them.

However, Kosslyn is an expert on visual perception, not an expert on learning. Therefore, take his suggestions on non-visual aspects of presentations with a grain of salt. For example, he endorses reading your slides aloud, which he says "gives the viewers two chances to understand and remember them". In fact, reading and hearing the same information *reduces* retention of information. For more details, see Multimedia Learning.

If you buy only one book to improve your presentations, I suggest that you get Beyond Bullet Points: Using Microsoft PowerPoint to Create Presentations That Inform, Motivate, and Inspire (Bpg-Other). However, "Clear and to the Point" is an excellent additional resource.

This book is filled with very basic advice - much of which is very intiutive. For example, there are a lot of Do's and Dont's. Some of the do's and dont's:

dont vary bullets arbitrarily (one bullet is round, second is a ~, third is #, fourth is >).

dont present one giant list of items on a slide, do categorize them

dont make the subheading of your title slide more salient (visible, eye catching) than the heading. do make the heading more salient than subheading.

dont vary color in your presentation purely for decoration, do vary for emphasis

don't use underline, do use bold italics, etc.

This book is filled with probably 50 pages of such examples since each do and dont takes up a full page (sometimes two).

the 8 principles are also very simple things you would learn from watching a few well done presentations online such as talking at the right level, not trying to cram too much in people's heads at once, keeping focused on what you want people to get out of the presentation, etc.

If you are new to presentations, this is a good book for you. If you are familiar with giving presentations, you're better off trying a different book.

Finally!, a book that engages visual communication practice with cognitive
neuroscience and psychology research. Too often these areas live separately
and as a graphic designer professor, I find the Kosslyn's content invaluable.
As producers of visual communication, students should know what is going
on in the mind of their users. I plan on adding Clear and to the Point to my
course reading list.

The idea seems good -- eight principles for compelling PowerPoint presentations. But the execution is neither clear nor to the point. For example, chapter 2, the first chapter of substance, lists eight recommendations for overall structure, five recomendations for building the introduction, ten recommendations for the body of the presentation, three recommendations for the wrap-up, and five recommendations for delivery (that's 31 recommendations in all), before returning to the eight psychological principles. And that, as I said, is only chapter 2. Other chapters are similarly ungainly.

In addition, as other reviewers point out, many of the suggestions are barely worth the paper they're printed on. For example, "start with a bang" or "face the audience."

In short, this is a book that will overwhelm novice presenters and bore experienced ones. Find another.

I have recently been preparing to give presentations during academic job interviews and although I've given countless ppt presentations, I still felt ineffective in my use of the medium. I have tried reading other books (Why Most PowerPoint Presentations Suck, for example), but have found little use in them. This book, though based on visual processing research, is presented clearly and concisely. Kosslyn describes and gives clear examples of the 8 principles, but goes a step further by exemplifying them in the way the book is organized.

Certainly I was aware of some of the general "don'ts" in ppt such as not varying the font greatly throughout the presentation. However, this book helped me understand why I shouldn't do this. By knowing the why behind the rule, I can know use this knowledge more flexibly.

Some have indicated in their reviews that the information in this book was "basic." It may seem so, but given the fact that I have seen these 8 principles violated even in the most sophisticated and experienced presenters, I would invoke the old saying that common sense is not all that common. Perhaps people needed to understand why they should follow these principles to be convinced.

Finally, I appreciated Kosslyn's treatment of Tufte's argument that PowerPoint should never be used. Kosslyn makes that case that PowerPoint can be a powerful way to convey complex ideas, if used properly. Now that I know the 8 principles, I am confident that my presentations will be "clear and to the point."

Wrapped-up in 8 so-called "psychological principles" that turn to be more grandma recipes than latest discoveries from neurosciences, this book introduces very obvious advices that can be found free of charge in any serious blog about PowerPoint! If you're discovering the software for the first time (!) and really don't know basics such as: readable fonts must be over 36 points; colors are not for decorative purposes; and varying bullets distrub the message, then may be you can spend your money, otherwise I would highly recommend your turn to Seth Godin, Garr reynolds, and all other modern efficient communicators who provide real valuable stuff for designing 21st century presentations!

This is a terrific book with excellent direction on how to create a PowerPoint presentation which works with, rather than against, the way the mind processes visual information. The concepts are terrific and supported by neuroscience research, and I've been using them to radically improve my own slides.

The 'Do' and 'Don't' slides are also very good to bring the concepts to life. There are many lists of "10 things to remember" with mixed value, but you can typically find many useful nuggets in these lists. The author has presented these concepts in live workshops and has worked out the flow of the book so it feels very comfortable and flows well.

The biggest drawback is the difficult writing style. The author is obviously a very educated and intelligent man, but this works against him because the reader needs things to be simplified much more. The 8 principles need snappier names to really be memorable for the reader (eg. "The Principle of Perceptual Organization" could be re-named "The Law of Chunking"), and the writing style is a bit flat and not persuasive or energetic. This is a shame, because the concepts really are excellent but readers may not recognize them as excellent when they are presented without pizazz.

There are so many books on powerpoint presentations that cutting through the clutter is difficult and after a while they all sound about the same. This book however is different because it lives up to it's title. It gives clear examples of do's and don't's showing how the same information is cleaned up and presented. The eight principles it conveys are straight-forward and useful. Given the low price it's well worth the money - especially if you are a manager of people who use powerpoint.

It belongs on your office or cubicle bookshelf.

This is a great book. I really liked the psicological approach and the appendix where the author goes with more detailed scientific description of how psicology interacts with communications and powerpoint.

Clear and to the Point provided exactly the information I wanted and in a way that was easy to use. It is well written, informative, and practical; it can be read as a stand-alone book or used hands-on as a reference tool while creating a talk with PowerPoint slides. The principles in the book are ones that will be familiar to those who've pursued insights into public speaking in other ways; however, the book is outstanding at introducing the topics to the reader as either a refresher or new knowledge. Long-time presenters could use the book as a check on how well they are doing and areas for additional refinement. One key asset to the book is the overview of presenting visual information -- charts, in particular. The examples are clear and instructive. This aspect of the book is unique from other books on public speaking and PowerPoint use that I have browsed. This content plus the concise principles make it a worthwhile addition to my professional collection.