I know I’ve been batting on for a while about why powerpoint presentations (and especially research debriefs) need to have less words and more pictures.
I’d actually like to amend that assertion. They should have more pictures – and more words.
I got handed an ethnographic research report last week, which had travelled from client A to client B to their agency to me. It had lots of lovely photos in it – but not a lot of text and crucially absolutely no methodology or general hint as to when, where or how the research had been carried out.
This has happened to me before and in the past I’ve even ended up on the phone to the research agency trying to get a quick debrief from whoever led the project, but they’ve inevitably left the agency, are on holiday, can’t remember anything or won’t help.
So even if you’ve just created the most visually arresting powerpoint debrief in history, would you mind popping a wordy slide on the front telling me how you got there?
Brief pres – wordy appendix!