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January 03, 2006
PowerPoint and the 10/20/30 Rule
I used PowerPoint in a closing argument last month; it's a good way to visually summarize both the law and the evidence for the jury, while I . . . summarize the law and the evidence for the jury.
Wait, I know it sounds redundant, but you don't want to be just some guy yammering at these folks. The rule that is the lynchpin of argument is, "Tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em; tell 'em; then tell 'em what ya told 'em," and charts or slides help reinforce the argument, adding a fourth clause, "Show 'em what ya told 'em."
A common flaw amongst all presentations (not just courtroom summations) is the use of tiny fonts, too much text, and w-a-a-y too many slides.
Guy Kawasaki has started a new blog, and one of his first posts deals with the 10/20/30 rule of PowerPoint.
. . . As a venture capitalist, I have to listen to hundreds of entrepreneurs pitch their companies. Most of these pitches are crap: sixty slides about a “patent pending,” “first mover advantage,” “all we have to do is get 1% of the people in China to buy our product” startup. These pitches are so lousy that I’m losing my hearing, there’s a constant ringing in my ear, and every once in while the world starts spinning. . . .
I am trying to evangelize the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points. While I’m in the venture capital business, this rule is applicable for any presentation to reach agreement: for example, raising capital, making a sale, forming a partnership, etc.
Ten is the optimal number of slides in a PowerPoint presentation because a normal human being cannot comprehend more than ten concepts in a meeting—and venture capitalists are very normal. (The only difference between you and venture capitalist is that he is getting paid to gamble with someone else’s money).
While he may be right about most presentations, I can't limit closing arguments to ten slides, given the amount of information I'm giving the jurors, but I do try to remember that it's a summation -- a summary of what they've heard -- and not a regurgitation. So, Kawasaki's point is well taken: keep it as short as possible.
You should give your ten slides in twenty minutes. Sure, you have an hour time slot, but you’re using a Windows laptop, so it will take forty minutes to make it work with the projector. Even if setup goes perfectly, people will arrive late and have to leave early. In a perfect world, you give your pitch in twenty minutes, and you have forty minutes left for discussion.
The majority of the presentations that I see have text in a ten point font. As much text as possible is jammed into the slide, and then the presenter reads it. However, as soon as the audience figures out that you’re reading the text, it reads ahead of you because it can read faster than you can speak. The result is that you and the audience are out of synch.
The reason people use a small font is twofold: first, that they don’t know their material well enough; second, they think that more text is more convincing. Total bozosity. Force yourself to use no font smaller than thirty points. I guarantee it will make your presentations better because it requires you to find the most salient points and to know how to explain them well. If “thirty points,” is too dogmatic, the I offer you an algorithm: find out the age of the oldest person in your audience and divide it by two. That’s you’re optimal font size.
He's right. I can't tell you how many presentations I've seen where the speaker is just reading the slides, and how -- if I'm sitting close enough -- I read ahead and quickly become bored and antsy.
A good PowerPoint presentation (some would say that's a contradiction in terms) should serve as an outline, with bullet points and visuals to explain key concepts. Done well, they can help your audience reach the right conclusion.
If you've got an opportunity, check out the rest of the post, and the rest of Kawasaki's blog.
Posted by Mike Lief at January 3, 2006 10:03 AM
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Comments
I highly recommend Edward Tufte's polemic on Power Point. Tufte's a scholar on information design, the art of getting the point across effectively.
Posted by: Chap at January 30, 2006 05:50 PM