Follow the Action

By Jerry Weissman

oes this large, illuminated letter look familiar? It should. The style has been around ever since medieval times to mark the beginning of a new document. It has continued on into modern publishing where an enlarged first letter marks the beginning of chapters in books and the beginnings of articles in magazines and newspapers. Now it becomes a factor in how we view computer screens.

EyeTrackShop, an eponymous Swedish start-up company, does exactly what its name says: track eye movements to, as their slogan puts it, “identify where people look, for how long and in what order.”  Using webcams to follow and record how viewers perceive images, the company’s technology helps advertisers create effective ads and web designers create effective web pages. By understanding the dynamics of how viewers perceive ads and web pages you can create effective graphics for your presentations.

One of EyeTrackShop’s projects studied how users viewed the homepages of Facebook and Google+. The results, shown in the “Fixation Order” charts below and reported in the Wall Street Journal, found that in both cases, “Users’ eyes head straight for the big status column in the middle of the screen, then over to the list of categories on the left side, then hop across to alerts on the right.”

Those movements are driven by forces more powerful than the images on the Google and Facebook sites, two forces that drive the eyes of every human being:

Nurture: In Western culture, because we have learned to read from left to right, our eyes always start reading at the upper left corner of documents

Nature: The optic reflexes in all human eyes impel them to take in new images, and so, having started at the upper left, readers’ eyes naturally—and involuntarily—move to the right. 

As a result, human eyes do essentially what the eyes of the subjects in the EyeTrackShop study did: after centering on the full image, they move to the upper left to start reading, and then sweep across to the right to continue reading. Therefore, whenever you click to a new slide, your audience’s eyes start reading at the upper left of the screen and sweep across to the right.

If your slide is densely packed with images, numbers, and/or text, your audience’s eyes will not see the entire image on the first rightward move; they will have to come back to the left and go back to the right again. The denser the slide, the more times your audience’s eyes will have to traverse the screen, the more traverses they make, the less they will hear of what you are saying.

Do you see where this is going? Back to the familiar Less is More principle, and this new added corollary: Reduce the number of moves your audience’s eyes must make to understand your slide.  

Apply this basic approach to the two most common slides in presentations today: text and bars.

• Avoid wordwrap in text

• Eliminate left axes in bar charts.  

You saw these principles applied in a prior blog, but they’re worth another look:

Feel how your eyes naturally take in each slide: they start at the left and swing to the right.

Do the same for all your presentations. Design effective slides by reducing the number of eye moves your audiences must make.

Minimize the processing their eyes—and their brains—must do. Let them spend their energy and time focused on you.

This post also appears on Indezine.com 

* Fixation Order Courtesy of EyeTrackShop, All Rights Reserved.

We are pleased to announce that Presentations in Action: 80 Memorable Presentaion Lessons from the Masters will be released on May 23, 2011, and available on Amazon.

Presentations in Action is a collection of case studies of communication from the front of many diverse rooms that illustrate and amplify the four essential elements of every presentation: telling a clear story, illustrating that story, delivering it effectively, and answering tough questions related to the story. Over the course of more than two decades, Jerry Weissman has developed a set of proven techniques for each of those four essential elements, and has delivered those techniques to thousands of companies helping them raise hundreds of billions of dollars. 

Free In the Line of Fire companion DVD and 40% off another Jerry Weissman title if you order Presentations In Action between May 20th and June 10th, 2011.

Click here for more information and the rebate form

by Pearl

In a prior blog, you read about the analogy of an elephant to presentations. Now, let’s take a look at another similar example to illustrate the importance of integration in presentations.

In a recent Bayer’s commercial for women’s birth control pills, six blind-folded women described a rhino by touch. One woman said it was a pillar, another a wall, another a rope, another a brush, and the last woman called it a pipe.

The women each removed their blindfolds to discover a rhino standing in front of them. What they described by touch were only parts, or elements, of the rhino.

The narration to the commercial added, “Having only one point of view on anything—can be misleading. So before you come to a conclusion, make sure you get the full picture.”

(See the full commercial here)

The commercial demonstrates the importance of seeing objects (and objectives) from a bird’s eye view rather than just as component parts; to see the forest, not just the trees.

This same point can be applied in presentations. Most people in business view a presentation as the individual parts of the rhino. One person describes it as the story, another as the slides, another as the delivery, and yet another as the handling of tough questions.

As Jerry noted in his blog, “a clear story can be ruined by slides that are guilty of the designation, ‘Death by PowerPoint.’ A clear story supported by slides that follow the Less Is More principle can be ruined by the presenter who freezes like a deer in the headlights in front of the audience. A clear story supported by slides that follow the Less Is More principle delivered by a presenter who has the poise and confidence of Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama can be ruined by a tough question that throws the presenter for a loop.”

by Jerry Weissman

At long last, the severe impact of the recession on employment is beginning to ease. The New York Times reported that “After more than two years in which over 8 million jobs were lost, the country’s nonfarm payrolls surged in March. Employers added 162,000 jobs last month, and employment numbers in the previous two months were revised upward.”

But there is still a long way to go. CNN is providing an excellent public service to help unemployed people find work: The job seekers are given 30 seconds on air to make a pitch to prospective employers...

In 1873, John Godfrey Saxe, an American poet, published a poem based on an ancient Indian fable about six blind men who were asked to describe an elephant by touch. One man said it was a wall, another a spear, another a snake, another a tree, another a fan, and the sixth man called it a rope.

In the previous post, you read that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg poured $90 million of his own money into his re-election campaign but, leaving no stone unturned, he also made three significant changes in his presentation style to overcome a reputation that the New York Times described as “blunt, dismissive and even crass.”

1. Body Language. New York City Councilwoman Letitia James claimed that “when the mayor spoke to her, his body language spoke volumes, she said: He would look up, down, around, anywhere but at her face…‘Now he looks at you…But it’s the season we’re in, because I believe he’s been coached over and over again.’”

2. Verbal Language. During the early months of the campaign, Bloomberg drew the wrath of the New York press by lashing out at two different reporters, one of whom he called a “disgrace” and the other of whom was handicapped. But down the homestretch, as the Times reported, Bloomberg was upbeat, “joked about his poor spelling skills and his age [and] has not displayed his trademark snarkiness, even describing the journalist he earlier this year called a ‘disgrace’ as ‘brilliant.’”

3. Handling Questions. During the early months of the campaign, the report continued, Bloomberg’s press conferences were “near marathons.” But down the homestretch, he contained his trademark “snarkiness” by “minimizing the chances for a nasty mayoral moment” with shorter press conferences.

Readers of earlier blogs will recognize the advice that Mayor Bloomberg’s coaches apparently gave him, and would do well to apply the same advice in their own presentations.

1. Make Eye Connect. Nonverbal communication counts. What you say is impacted by how you say it. Whenever you present, look the people in your audiences straight in the eye. American Airlines is currently running a magazine ad that reads, “Eye contact. Your most underrated skill set. Sometimes, the more business you do face-to-face, the more business actually gets done.”

2. Speak Affirmatively. Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative in all your verbal formations. Take the high road. Avoid the bashing. Heed the old saying, “You get more bees with honey than with vinegar.”

3. Answer Succinctly. This will be the subject of a future blog, but for now, let us turn for advice to the investment sector, an area as competitive as politics.

David Bellet, the Founder of Crown Advisors International, one of Wall Street’s most successful investment firms, often made challenging questions a standard part of his due diligence of new companies. “When I ask questions,” said David, “I don’t really have to have the full answer because I can’t know the subject as well as the presenter. What I look for is whether the presenter has thought about the question, been candid, thorough, and direct and how the presenter handles himself or herself under stress.”

Three simple pieces of coaching advice; and you don’t have to spend $90 million.

Last week, billionaire Michael Bloomberg won his campaign for a third term as the Mayor of New York City, but only by a surprisingly close margin. According to the report of his victory in the New York Times, “Published polls in the days leading up to the election suggested that the mayor would win by as many as 18 percentage points; four years ago, he cruised to re-election with a 20 percent margin.” This time, however, his margin was only 5 percentage points. The Wall Street Journal’s report of the outcome quoted Maurice Carroll, the director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, who said, “I’m not sure it weakens him, but it certainly makes him think a little bit.”

The closer-than-expected finish was widely attributed to the unpopularity of Bloomberg’s reversal of New York’s term limits law to run for a third term. The New Yorker magazine’s political columnist, Hendrik Hertzberg, wrote that “the muscling aside of term limits, whatever the law’s merits, was a travesty.”

To counter the public antipathy, Bloomberg spent an unprecedented $90 million of his own money on the campaign, but his efforts only made matters worse. His extravagant barrage of email, snail mail and television ads produced an angry backlash in the electorate of a city burdened by the economic downturn.

As Election Day approached, His Honor sensed the public’s concerns and did quite a bit of thinking. According to another story in the New York Times, Bloomberg, who had had a reputation for being “blunt, dismissive and even crass,” decided to alter his brusque presentation style.

In the next post, you’ll read about the three significant changes Mayor Bloomberg made, and how you can apply those lessons to your own presentation style.

Pecha Kucha, is the Japanese term for the sound of conversation, or chit-chat, usually pronounced “pe-chak-cha”. In 2003, Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham of Klein Dytham Architecture established Pecha Kucha Night as a place for young designers to meet, network, and present their work in public.

Pecha Kucha follows a simple concept. Each presenter is allowed 20 slides or images, shown for 20 seconds each, totaling 6 minutes 40 seconds. This format showcases many presenters, keeps the presentations short, and interest strong. Pecha Kucha Night has spread virally to over 100 cities worldwide.

Time Magazine, Wired Magazine and a host of popular presentation sites, including Garr Reynold’s Presentation Zen have all written about Pecha Kucha.

After his first Pecha Kucha event in 2007, Garr Reynolds wrote in his blog, “Pecha Kucha is good training and good practice.” Another blogger, Oliver Adria, on rethinkpresentations.com noted that, “one person was—in a nice way, though—boo’ed for having a slide with a business process flow chart.”

This summer, I had an opportunity to experience this phenomenon first hand. My goal was to understand how this presentation model relates to the business-to-business presentation world. The answer is “it does,” but only distantly.

Business presentations, as a matter of course, require more thorough discussion, as well as interaction with the audience. The Pecha Kucha format, by definition, excludes those dynamics. However, it is a very successful social networking platform—especially when fully equipped with beer, chips and salsa.

Narrowing your presentation down to 20 concise slides drives home the importance of Less Is More in designing your slides for your business presentation. Less Is More will help you avoid Death by PowerPoint. However, always keep in mind the importance of the presenter adding value and interacting with the audience.

In my previous post you read about the roots of right and left preferences that trace all the way back to our cave-dwelling ancestors and forward to how we read text in Western languages.

The nexus of these two deep roots goes back to the year, 105 AD, when Cai Lun, a eunuch in the court of the Chinese emperor Ho Ti, made paper for the first time, using the bark of a mulberry tree. Prior to that, ancient writing was done on stone with a hammer and chisel. A right-handed person would hold the hammer in the right hand, the chisel in the left, and write right to left; therefore, ancient Hebrew and Arabic text, coming from the Stone Age, reads right to left. Once paper and ink came into use, a right-handed person trying to write right to left, would smudge the wet ink; so in newer languages the direction of text switched.

(Olivier Fontana of Microsoft, who recommended the subjects of both prior blogs this week, also suggested today’s. It’s become Olivier Fontana Week.)

We live in a right-dominant world. Estimates of the right-handed majority range from five to one all the way up to nine to one. This dominance is also reflected in our language; think about the many common phrases that attribute positive values to the right:

• “It’s all right with me”
• “All’s right with the world”
• “My right hand”
• “Right-of-way”