Clear and to the Point

Clear and to the Point by Stephen Kosslyn

‘Stephen Kosslyn is Chair of the Department of Psychology, and John Lindsley Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. A leading authority on the nature of visual imagery and visual communication, he has received numerous honours for his work in this field’. What Stephen Kosslyn is not, however, is any sort of expert on how to push PowerPoint to get the best out of the software. Kosslyn’s book virtually ignores the ‘visual slide revolution’, and instead deals in great part in how to use bullet points while taking account of the insights of psychology.
Kosslyn leaves the biggest questions that that psychology might answer unaddressed – Can we listen to a presenter and read bullet points at the same time? If not, what visual support should a presenter use instead?

Kosslyn argues that ‘different parts of the brain deal with language and with vision, and we humans store the two sorts of memories separately’, and that for this reason we should use pictures and video as we talk. What he doesn’t address is whether visual aids in the form of written language can be processed alongside the spoken word. Many psychologists argue that they cannot. Reading and listening at the same time is just too hard.

Kosslyn claims that his book will ‘open your eyes to a whole new way of making and delivering PowerPoint presentations’. But Clear and to the Point is essentially a book about an old and tired way of making and delivering presentations. The wrong approach, done better. Shorter bullet points. Fewer bullet points. But still bullet points.

Clear and to the Point is a difficult book to read. It is full of interesting insight, but much of the valuable material is hidden alongside material that seems almost self-evident. Chapters essentially consist of lists of dozens of guidelines (e.g. ‘Don’t randomly use different transitions for different slides’), with short explanatory paragraphs under each point. The reader is left wondering if this book was first written as a PowerPoint presentation, and later expanded. With little overarching narrative beyond the first chapter, but rather 100s of “do’s” and “don’ts” presented in list form, this can be heavy going.

What conceptual framework Kosslyn does provide is coherent and insightful. It is a pity, therefore, that this framework is extended to the rest of the book simply by re-ordering the bullet-points of each chapter to show how they relate to Kosslyn’s 8 Psychological Principles (e.g. ‘don’t randomly use different transitions for different slides relates to the ‘Principle of Informative Changes’, which points out that people expect changes in properties to carry information). By structuring the book in this way, one is forced to read long lists not once, but twice. Many of the items on these lists are pretty obvious – even without psychological principles as guidance – and the overall effect is that this book is far from a “page-turner”.

Kosslyn claims that to deliver an effective presentation a presenter must achieve three goals:

• Goal 1 – Connect with the Audience
• Goal 2 – Direct and hold Attention
• Goal 3 – Promote Understanding and Memory

One can achieve each of these goals if one ‘respect[s] the eight psychological principles’ that Kosslyn sets out.

To connect with the audience, a presenter must follow the Principle of Relevance (that ‘communication is most effective when neither too much nor too little information is presented’) and the Principle of Appropriate Knowledge (that ‘communication requires prior knowledge of pertinent concepts, jargon, and symbols’).

To direct and hold attention, the presenter should obey the Principle of Salience (that ‘attention is drawn to large perceptible differences’); the Principle of Discriminability (that ‘two properties must differ by a large enough proportion or they will not be distinguished’) and the Principle of Perceptual Organisation (that ‘People automatically group elements into units, which they then attend to and remember’).

To promote understanding and memory, a presenter ought to follow the Principle of Compatibility (that a ‘message is easiest to understand if its form is compatible with its meaning’), the aforementioned Principle of Informative Changes (that ‘people expect changes in properties to carry information’) and the Principle of Capacity Limitations (that ‘people have a limited capacity to retain and to process information, and so will not understand a message if too much information must be retained or processed’).

The practical implications of these principles vary, from the insightful, through the obvious, to the irrelevant (because we shouldn’t be presenting in the way Kosslyn assumes is the only way of using PowerPoint), to the plain wrong. So, for the Principle of Relevance, Kosslyn suggests, for example, that one should ‘graph different types of data in a single display only if they are highly related and must be compared’ (good advice); that one should ‘present only the information needed to make your point’ (fairly obvious – if hard to put into practice) and that ‘the amount of text you present should just be enough to remind you to present the key points’ (bad advice – slides should be for the audience, and not serve as cue-cards for the presenter).

So, what are the bits of good advice that Kosslyn gives? Writing generally, Kosslyn suggests that presenters should always prepare a tailored presentation for each particular audience, that the presentation should be structured to allow for natural breaks, and that questions should be prepared for. He argues that the audience should be given an overview of the presentation structure during the introduction, and shown where they are within this structure as the presentation progresses; and that topics should be introduced in relation to the audience’s prior knowledge and concerns. Presentations should end with a clear visual summary. All good, sensible advice, but presented as a shopping list, with little narrative flow.

The chapter on text in Clear and to the Point is rendered slightly irrelevant because it assumes one should be using far more text than makes sense. The chapter on colour is informative, but provides a level of detail that seems out-of-keeping with the rest of the book. For example, in a graph containing a red line and blue line that intersect, the red line should be placed in the foreground. Good advice, but somewhat more detailed than that found elsewhere in the book, which can make the information in the book difficult to assimilate.

Kosslyn produces lists of “do’s” and “don’ts” for a number of types of graph. His overarching arguments are that (a) labels should be preferred to graphs (b) only relevant data should be presented (c) axes should be identifiable and labelled (d) an inner grid should be used when precise values are important on line graphs and bar graphs. Further guidelines are useful, but this entire section tends to ignore the use of animation with graphs. Without considering how PowerPoint allows complex graphs to be simplified by presenting first data A, then animating in data B for comparison, Kosslyn misses a trick. Psychological principles will only generate a limited amount of insight if the author is not expert in the software he is writing about.

When writing about charts, diagrams, photographs, and clip-art, Kosslyn’s advice feels dated. He recommends using photos and clip-art to introduce an abstract idea, and then suggests that Einstein’s ‘visage has become a symbol for “genius”’. But most presenters understand by now that inserting a clip-art image of Einstein to represent genius will seem tired and clchéd. So, while the advice that illustrations face the centre of the slide (as images direct attention) is useful, other points in the same section seem at best irrelevant. Insight in this book is mixed with poor advice.

This is a book with some valuable material. Kosslyn obviously has a tremendous knowledge of psychology and visual communication. Yet, this book is difficult to read, and feels as if it was drafted in PowerPoint. Kosslyn assumes that bullet points work, and then provides detail on how best to use them. For those who want to use visual slides, there are snippets of value here, but perhaps other books provide a better guide on how to use PowerPoint effectively. With luck, the authors of these works will have read and digested the psychological principles Kosslyn presents, allowing their readers to benefit from his insights without struggling through the less compelling parts of his work.