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Advantages and Disadvantages of Presentation

Exploring the 'Advantages and Disadvantages of Presentation,' this blog explores how presentations can effectively communicate ideas yet sometimes hinder creativity. It discusses the ease of conveying complex information visually and the potential for engaging audiences but also considers the challenges of over-reliance on visuals and potential misinterpretation.

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Table of Contents  

1) What is a Presentation: A brief introduction 

2) Advantages of Presentations 

3) Disadvantages of Presentations 

4) How to make a successful Presentation? 

5) Conclusion 

What is a Presentation: A brief introduction  

A Presentation refers to a method of conveying information, ideas, or data to an audience using visual aids and spoken words. It is a formal or informal communication tool used in various settings, such as business meetings, educational environments, conferences, or public speaking engagements. 

During a Presentation, the presenter uses visual elements like slides, charts, graphs, images, and multimedia to support and enhance their spoken content. The goal of a Presentation is to engage the audience, effectively communicate the message, and leave a lasting impact on the listeners. You can ace your presentation skill by understanding various presentation skills interview questions and answers . It will expand your horizon to elevate your skills. 

Presentation Skills can be used to cover a wide variety of Presentations, from business proposals and academic research to sales pitches and motivational speeches.The success of a Presentation depends on the presenter's ability to organize the content coherently, engage the audience, and deliver the information in a clear and compelling manner, showcasing strong principles of presentation skills. Therefore, it is essential to understand the elements of presentation .

Unlock your full potential as a presenter with our Presentation Skills Training Course. Join now!  

Advantages of Presentations  

Effective communication  

One of the primary advantages of Presentations is their ability to facilitate effective communication. Whether you're addressing a small group of colleagues or a large audience at a conference, Presentations help you to convey your message clearly and succinctly. By structuring your content and using visuals, you can ensure that your key points are highlighted and easily understood by the audience. 

Visual appeal  

"Seeing is believing," and Presentations capitalise on this aspect of human psychology. The use of visuals, such as charts, graphs, images, and videos, enhances the overall appeal of the content. These visual aids not only make the information more engaging but also help reinforce the main ideas, making the Presentation more memorable for the audience. 

Engaging the audience  

Captivating your audience's attention is crucial for effective communication. Presentations provide ample opportunities to engage your listeners through various means. By incorporating storytelling, anecdotes, and real-life examples, you can nurture an emotional connection with your audience. Additionally, interactive elements like polls, quizzes, and group activities keep the audience actively involved throughout the Presentation. 

Simplifying complex information  

Complex ideas and data can often be overwhelming, making it challenging to convey them effectively. However, Presentations excel in simplifying intricate information. By breaking down complex concepts into digestible and interconnected slides, you can present the information in a logical sequence, ensuring that the audience grasps the content more easily. 

Persuasive impact  

Presentations are powerful tools for persuasion and influence. Whether you're convincing potential clients to invest in your product, advocating for a particular cause, or delivering a motivational speech, a well-crafted Presentation can sway the audience's opinions and inspire action. The combination of visual and verbal elements enables you to make a compelling case for your ideas, leaving a lasting impact on the listeners. 

Versatility in delivery methods  

Another advantage of Presentations lies in their flexibility and versatility in terms of delivery methods. Gone are the days when Presentations were limited to in-person meetings. Today, technology allows presenters to reach a wider audience through various platforms, including webinars, online videos, and virtual conferences. This adaptability makes Presentations an ideal choice for modern communication needs. 

Enhanced understanding and retention  

When information is presented in a visually appealing and structured manner, it aids in better understanding and retention. Human brains process visuals faster and more effectively than plain text, making Presentations an ideal medium for conveying complex concepts. The combination of visual elements and spoken words create a multi-sensory experience, leading to increased information retention among the audience. 

Professionalism and credibility  

In professional settings, well-designed Presentations lend an air of credibility and professionalism to the presenter and the topic being discussed. A thoughtfully crafted Presentation shows that the presenter has put effort into preparing and organising the content, which in turn enhances the audience's trust and receptiveness to the information presented. 

Take your Presentations to the next level with our Effective Presentation Skills & Techniques Course. Sign up today!  

Disadvantages of Presentations  

Time-consuming  

Creating a compelling Presentation can be a time-consuming process. From researching and gathering relevant information to designing visually appealing slides, a significant amount of effort goes into ensuring that the content is well-structured and impactful. This time investment can be challenging, especially when presenters have tight schedules or are faced with last-minute Presentation requests. 

Technical glitches  

Presentations heavily rely on technology, and technical glitches can quickly turn a well-prepared Presentation into a frustrating experience. Projectors may malfunction, slides might not load correctly, or audiovisual components may fail to work as expected. Dealing with such technical issues during a Presentation can disrupt the flow and distract both the presenter and the audience. 

Overdependence on technology  

In some cases, presenters may become overly reliant on the visuals and technology, neglecting the importance of direct engagement with the audience. Overloaded slides with excessive text can make presenters read directly from the slides, undermining the personal connection and interaction with the listeners. This overdependence on technology can lead to a lack of spontaneity and authenticity during the Presentation. 

Lack of interactivity  

Traditional Presentations, particularly those delivered in large auditoriums, may lack interactivity and real-time feedback. In comparison, modern Presentation formats can incorporate interactive elements; not all Presentations provide opportunities for audience participation or discussions. This one-sided communication can lead to reduced engagement and limited opportunities for clarifying doubts or addressing queries. 

Public speaking anxiety  

For many individuals, public speaking can be a nerve-wracking experience. Presenting in front of an audience, especially in formal settings, can trigger anxiety and stage fright. This anxiety may affect the presenter's delivery and confidence, impacting the overall effectiveness of the Presentation. Overcoming public speaking anxiety requires practice, self-assurance, and effective stress management techniques. 

Not suitable for all topics  

While Presentations are an excellent medium for conveying certain types of information, they may not be suitable for all topics. Some subjects require in-depth discussions, hands-on demonstrations, or interactive workshops, which may not align well with the traditional slide-based Presentation format. Choosing the appropriate communication method for specific topics is crucial to ensure effective knowledge transfer and engagement. 

Accessibility concerns  

In a diverse audience, some individuals may face challenges in accessing and comprehending Presentation materials. For instance, people with visual impairments may find it difficult to interpret visual elements, while those with hearing impairments may struggle to follow the spoken content without proper captions or transcripts. Addressing accessibility concerns is vital to ensure inclusivity and equal participation for all attendees. 

Information overload  

Presentations that bombard the audience with excessive information on each slide can lead to information overload. When the audience is overwhelmed with data, they may struggle to absorb and retain the key points. Presenters should strike a balance between providing adequate information and keeping the content concise and focused. 

How to make a successful Presentation?  

Now that we know the Advantages and Disadvantages of Presentations, we will provide you with some tips on how to make a successful Presentation. 

1) Know your audience: Understand your audience's needs and interests to tailor your content accordingly. 

2) Start with a strong opening: Begin with an attention-grabbing introduction to captivate the audience from the start of presentation .

3) Organise your content logically: Structure your Presentation in a clear and coherent manner with a beginning, middle, and end. 

4) Limit text on slides: Keep slides simple and avoid overcrowding with excessive text; use bullet points and keywords. 

5) Use visuals effectively: Incorporate high-quality images, graphs, and charts to enhance understanding and engagement. 

6) Practice, practice, practice: Rehearse your Presentation multiple times to improve your delivery and confidence. 

7) Be enthusiastic and confident: Show passion for your topic and maintain good eye contact to build trust with the audience. 

8) Tell stories and use examples: Include relevant anecdotes and case studies to make your points more relatable and memorable. 

9) Keep it interactive: Encourage audience participation through questions, polls, or discussions to keep them engaged. 

10) Manage time wisely: Respect the allotted time for your Presentation and pace your delivery accordingly. 

11) End with a strong conclusion: Summarise your key points and leave the audience with a clear takeaway or call to action. 

Conclusion  

All in all, Presentations have altered the way we communicate and share information. While they offer numerous advantages, such as effective communication, visual appeal, and persuasive impact, they also come with their share of disadvantages, including technical challenges and public speaking anxiety. By understanding the advantages and disadvantages of presentations and employing best practices, we can Improve Presesntation Skills , create engaging and impactful presentations that leave a lasting impression on the audience.

Want to master the art of impactful Presentations? Explore our Presentation Skills Courses and elevate your communication prowess!  

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What It Takes to Give a Great Presentation

• Carmine Gallo

Five tips to set yourself apart.

Never underestimate the power of great communication. It can help you land the job of your dreams, attract investors to back your idea, or elevate your stature within your organization. But while there are plenty of good speakers in the world, you can set yourself apart out by being the person who can deliver something great over and over. Here are a few tips for business professionals who want to move from being good speakers to great ones: be concise (the fewer words, the better); never use bullet points (photos and images paired together are more memorable); don’t underestimate the power of your voice (raise and lower it for emphasis); give your audience something extra (unexpected moments will grab their attention); rehearse (the best speakers are the best because they practice — a lot).

I was sitting across the table from a Silicon Valley CEO who had pioneered a technology that touches many of our lives — the flash memory that stores data on smartphones, digital cameras, and computers. He was a frequent guest on CNBC and had been delivering business presentations for at least 20 years before we met. And yet, the CEO wanted to sharpen his public speaking skills.

• Carmine Gallo is a Harvard University instructor, keynote speaker, and author of 10 books translated into 40 languages. Gallo is the author of The Bezos Blueprint: Communication Secrets of the World’s Greatest Salesman  (St. Martin’s Press).

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The 6 types of presentation (and why you need them)

Hrideep barot.

• Presentation , Public Speaking

We all have been exposed to different types of presentations right from school years.

Group presentations, lectures by teachers and professors, seminars, webinars or online presentations, e-learning, e-conferences, etc., are all different types of presentations that we come across in our daily lives.

But each of them work for different settings.

In this article, we will take a look at 6 such types of presentations and when and why you need them.

1. Informative Presentations

This is the most common type of presentation, be it in an educational setting or business or corporate setting.

The aim of an informative presentation is to give detailed information about a product, concept, or idea to a specific kind of audience.

They are often analytical or require a rational analysis of the data presented.

Training sessions or one-day workshops are good examples where this kind of presentation is used.

Here is an example of an informative presentation on public speaking and presentations.

Now, there are different situations where you can use informative presentations.

a) Reporting

Although a report is a written explanation of an event, it can also be verbal.

A perfect place to use informative presentations is news reporting , as it requires the presenter to present information systematically.

b) Briefing

This involves explaining both positive and negative aspects of a particular topic in a few words.

It is providing information quickly and effectively about an issue to influence decisions or to come to solutions.

Hence, the decision-making bodies of an organization can make use of this kind of presentation to save time and effectively come to conclusions.

c) Research

Informative presentations are often used to present research findings to a specific audience , as it involves reporting the findings and briefing it to the audience.

Hence, almost everywhere where research takes place, be it in an educational context or occupational , can make use of this kind of presentation.

Tips for giving informative presentations

• As there would be a lot of technical information and statistics, focus on the main points or agenda first and if you have more time, you can add them at the end
• Keep your presentation simple and clear . Avoid complex sentence structures and graphics
• Tell the outline of your presentation briefly in the introduction for a better flow
• Make sure that your presentation does not stretch for too long. 10-15 minutes is what your audience can concentrate on
• Restate your keyphrase at the end and briefly summarize all the important points of your presentation

Speech topics for an informative presentation

• Cropping techniques
• Organic Farming
• Corporate Farming
• Hydroponics
• Sustainable Agriculture, etc
• Climate change
• Environmental issues
• Eco-friendly ways of management
• Eco-politics
• Eco-feminism, etc
• Gender studies
• Gender and education
• Religious studies
• History of education
• Philosophy of education, etc
• Ethnic cultures
• Indigenous cultures
• Multiculturalism
• Popular culture
• Cultural trends, etc
• Business administration
• Business ethics
• Business models
• Promotion and marketing communications
• Finance, etc

2. Persuasive presentations

Persuasion is the art of motivating or convincing someone to act or make a change in their actions or thoughts.

If you are planning to give a persuasive presentation, and are looking for how to give a persuasive speech, check out our article on A Comprehensive Guide to Writing a Persuasive Speech to gain in-depth knowledge about the art of giving persuasive presentations.

Persuasive presentations are also widely used form after informative presentations.

There are various circumstances where persuasive presentations can be used.

a) Policy-making

Government bodies make use of persuasion almost every time, be it the legislative or decision-making bodies, executive bodies, or even courts.

Even election campaigns involve using persuasive presentations as an instrument of their pre-determined goals of swaying the citizens.

For that matter, any executive or management body of an organization can make use of these kinds of presentations.

b) Value judgment

This kind involves answering the question “why” and supplementing it with possible benefits.

Most Ted talks and YouTube videos try to persuade the audience and fall into the persuasive presentation category.

Even religious heads use this as a means of persuading their believers to follow their belief system.

Deciding on a procedure or telling an audience the correct procedure of doing something is another situation.

An example of a persuasive presentation

Bailey parnell: is social media hurting your mental health.

This TED talk by Bailey Parnell is a good example of a persuasive presentation.

She starts strong by asking rhetorical questions that set the mood for her further points.

We can also see how the speaker is genuinely concerned regarding the issue, engaging the audience till the end.

Tips for giving a persuasive presentation

• Start your presentation with a relevant quote or statistics about your topic to establish credibility
• Tell personal anecdotes and examples wherever necessary to develop an emotional connection with your audience
• Deliver your presentation with passion and genuine interest to motivate your audience to think
• Answer the question “why” for better understanding and clarity in your presentation
• State your viewpoint clearly and clarify doubts if your audience seems to have any

Speech topics for persuasive presentations

• Is animal testing ethical?
• Should cosmetic surgery be banned?
• Can the death penalty be the only solution to the rising crime rates?
• Should the legal age be 18?
• Should immigration laws be revised?
• Why you should never add your parents on Facebook
• Guys are more interested in gossip than girls
• It is your major duty to annoy your parents
• You are not enjoying student life if you are not procrastinating
• Endless memes can be made on my life, etc
• Is taming wild and exotic animals ethical?
• The importance of emotional support animals
• Why are bunnies the perfect pet?
• Why do animals make the best companions?
• Why there is a need for patients to have emotional support animals, etc
• How and why there is a need to do business analysis before opening your business?
• Why small businesses are successful and more profitable?
• Why do sales and customer service departments need to be paid more?
• Why does the HR department need to be polite and understanding?
• Why should you not do business with a family member?
• How charity is a means of converting black money to white?
• Why is detaining people on the suspicion of terrorism justified?
• Should euthanasia be made legal?
• Should violent crime offenders be sentenced to death?
• Should foreigners be allowed to buy a property?

3. Demonstrative presentations

This involves demonstrating a process or the functioning of a product in a step-by-step fashion.

So, a master class on communication skills or making a product model is an example of a demonstrative presentation.

Usually, the audience is an active part of such presentations and these can work in any context where you want the audience to learn a new skill.

a) Instructions

This involves giving guidelines or steps of a process or work .

Teaching how to make a car model step-by-step is a good example where you can use this kind of informative presentation to guide your audience.

Another instance can be at the workplace , to train the employees or introduce them to a new product at work.

This type also works with demonstrating recipes and cooking workshops.

An example of demonstrative presentation

The easy guide on making just about any smoothie.

In this recipe demonstration, he tells his audience how many ingredients are involved and briefs them about the outline of his presentation at the start of his speech.

He also shows all steps in real-time so that the audience have a better understanding of the process and keeps them engaged.

Tips to give a demonstrative presentation

• Introduce your product and its function to your audience before telling them how to go about with the steps
• Explain the steps with diagrams or show them in real-time along with the audience
• Give equal time to every person in the audience for clearing doubts, if any
• Keep your introduction short. Not more than 5 minutes
• Discuss options or variations that the audience can try at the end of the presentation

Speech topics for demonstrative presentations

• How to administer CPR
• How to wrap a gift professionally
• How to budget your monthly income
• How to choose a car insurance
• How to restore a piece of antique furniture

4. Inspirational presentations

As the name suggests, this type of presentation involves inspiring others!

The main aim of an inspirational presentation is to motivate or move your audience and is also known as a motivational presentation.

Using techniques like storytelling, narrating personal anecdotes , or even humor work wonders as your audience develops an emotional connection to the message.

This TED talk by Luvvie Ajayi Jones is humorous but a lot more inspirational. Check it out!

Tips for giving an inspirational presentation

• Start with a question that will leave the audience thinking. Pause for some time and then begin with your presentation
• Develop a sense of connection by narrating personal incidents and experiences to grow empathy
• Have some main points that you want to emphasize on
• Make use of humor ! It instantly builds a connection with the listener
• Non-verbal elements like paralanguage, body language, speech modulations, tone, etc., makes a huge difference

Speech topics for an inspirational presentation

• Importance of diversity and inclusion
• Building mental resilience
• Need for change management
• Valuing small victories in life
• How procrastinating is your enemy

5. Business presentations

In the corporate world, presentations are the go-to solution to do anything: planning or strategizing, articulating company goals, screening candidates, status reports , and many more.

Let us take a dive into the different types of business presentations.

a) Sales presentation

Also known as sales pitches , sales presentations involve providing information about a product or a service to sell it.

It has a pre-defined strategy of initiating and closing the sales deal.

This can be done in person or nowadays, on the phone, or via e-communication .

b) Training sessions

Often employees have on-the-job training sessions that are aimed to increase the knowledge and skills of the employees.

This kind can also involve the audience to participate , like in demonstrative presentations.

c) Meetings

Meetings can be called for for different reasons and can be of different forms as well.

Conferences ( both video and in-person), board meetings, informal team meetings, daily reporting, etc., are all various contexts of meeting in a business setting.

d) E- presentations

E- presentations existed before the COVID pandemic as well but were used seldom.

But, with the ongoing pandemic, e-presentations or remote presentations have replaced all other types of presentations and will be with us for a while longer.

However, on the brighter side, it is an eco-friendly alternative to normal face-to-face kind of a set-up, and it also saves transportation and other costs !

e) Seminars

Seminars are widely used in the health sector , usually involving a panel of speakers on a topic. The audience is anywhere between 10 to 100.

It ends with a question and answers session , and the audience gets to take handouts with them.

f) One-on-one or 1:1

Interviews are usually one-on-one and involve presenting your achievements and capabilities to your prospective employer.

Apart from interviews, 1:1 meetings are also used in sales and marketing to crack a business deal.

Tips for giving business presentations

• Include key phrases and other important details on your slides and make them bold
• Avoid casual slangs and informal tone of speech
• If you are giving a sales presentation, explain your product or service in simple and clear words , and list the reasons why it is beneficial for your potential clients
• Make sure to be on time ! Delaying your audience will work against you and leave a bad impression on you and your company
• Know your material or content thoroughly to answer the questions asked by your audience

Speech topics for business presentations

• Implementing an Agile Project
• Introduction to data modeling
• Introduction to UML(Unified Modeling Language)
• Social Media strategies for a successful business
• Business writing for managers

6. Powerpoint presentations

PowerPoint presentations or PPTs are the most effective ones among all types of presentations simply because they are convenient and easy to understand .

They are available in different formats and are suitable to use in practically any type of presentation and context, be it business, educational, or for informal purposes.

There are various types of PowerPoint presentations that you can use depending on the context.

a) PPTs for general audience

• For general audiences, avoid using jargon terms

If you feel that you need to use them, provide the audience some background information about the field or topic being covered

• Avoid using more than 8 words per line, as anything more than that becomes difficult to remember
• Use bullets or a numbered list for better retention
• Try not to read from your PPT
• Give handouts or record your presentation in case anyone wants it

b) PPTs for teaching

• In this case, the PowerPoint is content-based
• Make sure that the words on the slides are visible
• Use bigger font and avoid fancy fonts
• Add relevant pictures and graphics to keep your audience engaged
• You can also add documentaries or relevant videos to aid in understanding

c) Repurpose PPTs

• This involves reinventing an earlier ppt or combining 1 or more than 1 PowerPoints
• Giving new touches to an earlier PPT or changing the format
• You can take any slide of your PPT and upload it on social media for growing your brand or business
• You can even convert your PPT into mp4 , i.e, video format
• You can even add voice and save the mp4 format, and you have a good marketing plan!

d) PechaKucha

• This type of PowerPoint presentation comes from the Japanese word PechaKucha meaning sound of a conversation or chit-chat
• This involves changing slides every 20 seconds
• There can be a maximum of 20 slides , which means your presentation lasts for only 6 minutes and 40 seconds
• The PPT mostly has graphics and fewer words
• This type of presentation is best suited for telling a story or a personal anecdote

e) Multimedia presentations

• This is the best kind of PPT to engage your audience
• It contains texts along with pictures, videos, infographics, music, illustrations, GIFs , and many more
• Add higher resolution images and videos , or even a 360-degree snapshot if you are in the sales and marketing industry
• Adding infographics such as charts and graphs makes the process of understanding easier and saves time
• Music in a PPT helps your audience to be relaxed, at the same time making them alert and engaged

Types of slides in a presentation

PowerPoint presentation slides are broadly classified into 3 categories: Text, Visual, and Mixed slides.

1. Text slides

As the name suggests, this category of slides involve words or texts.

You can format the text as plain sentences or pointers.

You may even arrange them all in a single slide or one line per slide.

The slide seen below is an example where every point is mentioned in a single slide.

2. Visual slides

This type of slide has visual elements such as images or videos , and are better known as conceptual slides since they are a better option than text slide to explain a particular concept.

You can use them at the start of the presentation to better visualize and grasp the meaning of the presentation.

The slide right below is a good example of a visual slide.

3. Mixed slides

Mixed slides combine the texts and visuals to give a comprehensive understanding of any concept or a speech.

Graphs and charts are the best examples of mixed slides.

Mixed slides have an advantage over the other slides; they keep your audience engaged, listening and participating more actively!

Types of Oral presentations

So far we came across 6 types of presentations, and they all share one common feature. They are all one of the types of oral presentations.

Oral presentations involve the use of verbal and non-verbal elements to deliver a speech to a particular or general audience.

All the types we discussed fall into these 4 broad categories:

1. Extemporaneous presentations

This type of presentation involves making short pointers or key phrases to aid while speaking.

You do not memorize, but organize the points and structure the speech way in advance.

Hence, on the day of your presentation, by just looking at the key points , you expand on them and move to the next point.

2. Impromptu presentations

Impromptu presentations are spoken without any preparation . It can be nerve-wracking for many, and hence not many are in favor of it.

There is a valid reason for their fear, as you have to make your speech as you say it!

However, those who are experts in their fields and are called upon to share a few words can easily give this type of presentation.

3. Manuscript presentations

The other extreme of the spectrum is manuscript presentations.

Here you have a script and you speak from it, word by word.

News anchors and show announcers usually engage in this type, since there are a lot of specific details that cannot be said wrong, and also, time constraints.

Usually, a prompter is used, from which the speaker speaks to their audience.

Nowadays, there are teleprompters , that are heavily used in the entertainment and media industry.

It is a digital screen that displays the contents, and the speaker speaks from it.

4. Memorized presentations

This type does not have any notes or cues , but you memorize or rote learn the whole speech.

School and some presentations at the workplace involve using this kind of presentation.

In most cases, we recommend not to memorise your speech in most cases. We’ve made a video on the same and how it could lead to you potentially blanking out on stage. Highly recommend you view this quick vid before choosing memorisation as a presentation path:

But, if you do choose it for whatever reason, since you are free from notes, you are free to focus on other aspects, such as body language and gestures.

Types of presentation styles

There are various presenting styles, but they do not work for all types of presentations.

Let us get familiar with them, and know which style works with which type.

a) The storyteller

This style of presentation involves the speaker narrating stories and engaging the audience emotionally .

This technique works best with persuasive and inspirational types of presentation.

So, how to tell a story in a presentation?

• Understand and know your audience : Knowing your audience will help you with how you will frame your story, at the same time gauging the relevance of your narrative
• Know your message : Be clear with what you want to convey through your story or how you are connecting the story with your actual presentation
• Try narrative a real-life story : Inspiring presenters often take their own stories or the stories of people whom they know as a supplement to their presentation. When the audience listens to your real-life examples, they become genuinely interested in your story
• Add visual aids : Using visual aids such as pictures, videos, multimedia, etc., increases the memory retention and engagement of your audience
• Use the “you” attitude : Tell the story keeping your audience in mind because ultimately they are going to be the receivers and hence, the story should be relevant and should include their point of view as well

Want more storytelling tactics? Mystery, characterisation and the final takeaway are some more key elements of a good story for your next presentation. We’ve gone deeper into this topic in this video if you would like to know more:

b) The Visual style

Most of us are visual learners, making visual information easy to understand and retain.

Visual aids like graphics, images, diagrams, key pointers or phrases , etc., are very useful when giving any type of presentation.

Some tips of presenting with visual style:

• Include only important pointers in your PowerPoint presentation and highlight or bold them
• Try including visuals that complement what you are saying and use them as a supplementary tool to aid in understanding your audience
• If you are giving a business presentation and want to include visuals, instead of plain texts, include graphics and charts to make information simpler to present and understand
• Avoid overly complex visuals as it will confuse the audience more
• Avoid using more than 6 lines per slide

c) Analytic style

If you have data records or statistical information to be presented, an analytic style will be more helpful.

It works best for Informative and Business types of presentations.

Tips to deliver in analytic style:

• Give handouts so that the audience is on track with your presentation and the information will be easier to comprehend
• Focus and speak on selected data as too much data statistics can be overwhelming for the audience
• You can make use of humor and personal anecdotes to keep the presentation interesting and engaging
• If you have too much data and are worried that you will not be able to explain it in the time frame given, avoid writing content of more than 2000 words

Quick tip: In case you have a PDF to present and want to edit the data points, there are multiple software programs that you can use to allow you to easily do this. Check out this list of the Best Free Recording Software Programs to know more.

d) The Connector

The connector style of presentation involves the speaker establishing a connection with the audience by pointing out similarities between them and the listeners.

This style works well with Sales and marketing presentations.

How to give a presentation using connector style?

• Have a Q & A round with the audience at the end of your presentation for clarifying any doubts and avoiding miscommunication
• Use audience polls at the start of your presentation to know your audience and tailor your speech accordingly
• Make use of body language and gestures for delivering your presentation effectively. If you are confused or want to know more about the aspects of how to use body and gestures, check out our article on To walk or stand still: How should you present when on stage?
• Ask questions to your audience at regular intervals for a better audience engagement
• Make use of multimedia sources to keep your audience engaged and entertained

Which type of presentation is best?

Although all the presentation types have their own bonuses and are suitable for certain circumstances, some are universal and can be used with a little bit of modification almost everywhere!

These are persuasive presentations!

You can use them in various settings; from political, business to educational.

Just remember to choose the right topic for the right audience, and a style that you think is the most suitable and you are good to go!

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To conclude

We saw 6 types of presentation and understood it in detail.

We also gained some tips on how to make our presentation more engaging and also came across things to avoid as well.

We then explored the types of slides that you can use, and also the types of presenting orally.

We also gave you some tips and a few topic ideas that you can incorporate in your next speech!

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Communication Skills - Advantages and Disadvantages of Presentations

Some managers hold the mistaken belief that routine progress reports to their team must be formally presented. In reality, it is best to ask yourself if sitting in a presentation is the most productive use of your team's time. If your answer is 'No' then send an email or intranet file to convey to your team the same information without interrupting or reducing your team's productivity.

If your answer is 'Yes' then you need to spend the time properly planning what actually needs to be presented and keeping a tight control on the scope of the presentation. It is usually a better idea to give a presentation only when you have something exceptional or urgent to report, or something that would benefit from being delivered face to face .

The principal advantage of any presentation is that you can interact with your audience. If you are presenting information in a document, on the other hand, you have to make certain assumptions about your audience. This means that you present your topics and arguments in such a way that meets the preconceived image you have of the audience. If your assumptions are incorrect, then the information that you send out may not have the effect you want it to.

The second advantage is that when presenting you are able to observe the reactions of the audience based on their body language and can thus revise certain elements of your delivery on the spot. For example:

If you notice a lot of blank looks when you are presenting a certain point then you can address this by going into more detail or providing context so that everyone understands what you are saying.

In addition to helping you immediately gauge your audience's degree of understanding, a presentation allows you to assess the level of acceptance of or resistance to what you are saying. For example:

Making a short presentation to your team about a proposed change in working practices can give you a good indication of whether the change is going to be readily accepted or not.

This facet of presentations should not be overlooked because it offers you an immediate insight into the prevailing mood. By picking up on nonverbal signals within your audience you can try to address any concerns that people might have.

The number of ways you can emphasize your key points is much greater in a presentation than a written report. In a document you can only repeat or place emphasis on a point once. In a presentation you can do both of these things, plus you can alter the style of your delivery to suit the needs of your audience and message, which is extremely useful.

Examples of ways to emphasize key points in a presentation include:

• Using pauses, speaking more loudly, becoming more animated, or moving closer to the audience.

Another advantage of presentations is that you can use visual aids to explain and describe your points, and thus help your audience to fully comprehend your message. For example,

• Visual Aids enable the presenter to: • Use interactive illustrations • Build up an image to aid understanding of concepts • Show a sample or prototype • Draw attention to or emphasize key elements • Use pictures or diagrams instead of words.

As a presenter you can also include demonstrations. This can be particularly useful for things like software or physical products. This enables you to tell a story in a more engaging way than you can in a formal document.

Finally, when you make a presentation you know exactly who has attended and you are able to assess their degree of comprehension through questioning and observation. This is impossible with a written report because you have no way of gauging the level of understanding your recipients have gained. Some people may have only scanned it and others may have not read it at all.

Whilst there are many advantages to presenting your message, these must be weighed against the limitations of this form of communication. Most notable is the fact that your audience only has this one opportunity to hear and understand your message. In many working environments it is impractical to have everyone attend a single meeting so you will have to rely on those who attended passing on the information, or you will have to present your message more than once.

If your presentation does not have a handout then attendees will have no formal point of reference to use in the future. So a presentation does not always mean that you can avoid preparing a document; in some instances you will have to do both. Some of the audience may have taken notes but how do you know if these notes are an accurate reflection of your message? They also have no way of rereading or passing on your message as they would if it was written in a document.

Audiences often like to have access to background information to help them understand issues and problems. You simply do not have the time to provide all this during your presentation, but you can provide references and a glossary within a handout to support this need. Such tools will help you to overcome the problem of presenting to an audience where the individuals have differing levels of understanding and expertise.

An obvious limitation of presentations is that their effectiveness relies on the ability of the speaker to deliver the message. The speaker also may not be able to set a pace appropriate to the audience's level of understanding.

Many good speakers lose their audience's attention because their preferred style is to have questions only at the end. Whilst allowing questions at the end is often recommended, it runs the risk that your audience will switch off from what you are saying or forget a valuable question or query by the time you have finished your presentation. As an effective presenter there are several simple techniques you can use to avoid this. For example:

You can prompt for questions at the end of each point or section of your presentation. You can note questions as they arise on a flip chart so nothing is lost.

After making a judgment on whether or not a presentation is the most effective and productive way for you to convey your message you need to carefully plan it. You need to clearly define its aim and key message. You also need to make sure that you understand your audience and ensure your presentation overcomes as many of the limitations as possible.

By working through the stages of planning a presentation outlined in the next section you can ensure that your presentation achieves its aim.

You may also be interested in: Planning a Management Presentation | Everyday Management Presentations | Four-Stage Presentation Planning Process | Audience Profiling | Presentation Environment | Define Your Key Message Statement | Outline the Scope of Your Presentation | Management Presentation Planning Guidelines .

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Deciding the Presentation Method

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There is much to consider in deciding on an appropriate presentation method.

This page assumes that you have already prepared your presentation , or at least decided on the key messages that you wish to get across to your audience, and given at least some thought to how to organise your material .

On this page, then, we focus on the mechanics of your presentation method: how you will present.

This includes using sound systems, how to manage visual aids, how you stand, and how much interaction you want with your audience.

What Helps you to Decide your Presentation Method?

In making a decision about your presentation method, you have to take into account several key aspects. These include:

The facilities available to you by way of visual aids, sound systems, and lights. Obviously you cannot use facilities that are not available. If you are told that you will need to present without a projector, you’re going to need to decide on a method that works without slides.

The occasion. A formal conference of 200 people will require a very different approach from a presentation to your six-person team. And a speech at a wedding is totally different again. Consider the norms of the occasion. For example, at a wedding, you are not expected to use slides or other visual aids.

The audience, in terms of both size and familiarity with you, and the topic. If it’s a small, informal event, you will be able to use a less formal method. You might, for example, choose to give your audience a one-page handout, perhaps an infographic that summarises your key points, and talk them through it. A more formal event is likely to need slides.

Your experience in giving presentations. More experienced presenters will be more familiar with their own weak points, and able to tailor their preparation and style to suit. However, few people are able to give a presentation without notes. Even the most experienced speakers will usually have at least some form of notes to jog their memory and aid their presentation.

Your familiarity with the topic. As a general rule, the more you know about it, the less you will need to prepare in detail, and the more you can simply have an outline of what you want to say, with some brief reminders.

Your personal preferences. Some people prefer to ‘busk it’ (or ‘wing it’) and make up their presentation on the day, while others prefer detailed notes and outlines. You will need to know your own abilities and decide how best to make the presentation.  When you first start giving presentations you may feel more confident with more detailed notes. As you become more experienced you may find that you can deliver effectively with less.

Some Different Methods of Presentation

Presentation methods vary from the very formal to the very informal.

What method you choose is largely dictated by the occasion and its formality: very formal tends to go with a larger audience, whose members you do not know well. Your role is likely to be much more providing information, and much less about having a discussion about the information.

Form Follows Function

It’s not going to be possible, for instance, to present to 200 people from a chair as part of the group, because most of your audience will not see or hear you. You need to apply common sense to your choice of presentation method.

Audience Participation

While much of your presentation method will be dictated by the event, there is one area where you have pretty much free rein: audience interaction with you and with each other.

It is perfectly feasible, even in a large conference, to get your audience talking to each other, and then feeding back to you.

In fact, this can work very well, especially in a low-energy session such as the one immediately after lunch, because it gets everyone chatting and wakes them up. It works particularly well in a room set out ‘café-style’, with round tables, but it can also work in a conference hall.

The key is to decide on one or two key questions on which you’d welcome audience views, or on which audience views could improve your session. These questions will depend on your session, but it’s always more helpful to invite views on:

• Something that you haven’t yet decided; or
• Something that the audience is going to do themselves.

For example, you might ask people to talk to their neighbour and identify one thing that they could do to put your speech into action when they return to work and/or home. You can then ask four or five people to tell you about their action points.

Handling your Notes

You also have a choice over how you manage your text, in terms of notes. For more about this, see our page on Managing Your Notes in a Presentation .

The Importance of Iteration

You will probably find that deciding on the presentation method means that you need to change or amend your presentation.

For example, if you want to include some audience participation, you will need to include that in your slides, otherwise, you might well forget in the heat of the moment.

Fortunately, revisiting your presentation in light of decisions about how you will present is probably a good idea anyway. It will enable you to be confident that it will work in practice.

Continue to: Managing your Presentation Notes Working with Visual Aids

See also: Preparing for a Presentation Organising the Presentation Material Dealing with Questions

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• How to prepare and...

How to prepare and deliver an effective oral presentation

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• Peer review
• Lucia Hartigan , registrar 1 ,
• Fionnuala Mone , fellow in maternal fetal medicine 1 ,
• Mary Higgins , consultant obstetrician 2
• 1 National Maternity Hospital, Dublin, Ireland
• 2 National Maternity Hospital, Dublin; Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Medicine and Medical Sciences, University College Dublin
• luciahartigan{at}hotmail.com

The success of an oral presentation lies in the speaker’s ability to transmit information to the audience. Lucia Hartigan and colleagues describe what they have learnt about delivering an effective scientific oral presentation from their own experiences, and their mistakes

The objective of an oral presentation is to portray large amounts of often complex information in a clear, bite sized fashion. Although some of the success lies in the content, the rest lies in the speaker’s skills in transmitting the information to the audience. 1

Preparation

It is important to be as well prepared as possible. Look at the venue in person, and find out the time allowed for your presentation and for questions, and the size of the audience and their backgrounds, which will allow the presentation to be pitched at the appropriate level.

See what the ambience and temperature are like and check that the format of your presentation is compatible with the available computer. This is particularly important when embedding videos. Before you begin, look at the video on stand-by and make sure the lights are dimmed and the speakers are functioning.

For visual aids, Microsoft PowerPoint or Apple Mac Keynote programmes are usual, although Prezi is increasing in popularity. Save the presentation on a USB stick, with email or cloud storage backup to avoid last minute disasters.

When preparing the presentation, start with an opening slide containing the title of the study, your name, and the date. Begin by addressing and thanking the audience and the organisation that has invited you to speak. Typically, the format includes background, study aims, methodology, results, strengths and weaknesses of the study, and conclusions.

If the study takes a lecturing format, consider including “any questions?” on a slide before you conclude, which will allow the audience to remember the take home messages. Ideally, the audience should remember three of the main points from the presentation. 2

Have a maximum of four short points per slide. If you can display something as a diagram, video, or a graph, use this instead of text and talk around it.

Animation is available in both Microsoft PowerPoint and the Apple Mac Keynote programme, and its use in presentations has been demonstrated to assist in the retention and recall of facts. 3 Do not overuse it, though, as it could make you appear unprofessional. If you show a video or diagram don’t just sit back—use a laser pointer to explain what is happening.

Rehearse your presentation in front of at least one person. Request feedback and amend accordingly. If possible, practise in the venue itself so things will not be unfamiliar on the day. If you appear comfortable, the audience will feel comfortable. Ask colleagues and seniors what questions they would ask and prepare responses to these questions.

It is important to dress appropriately, stand up straight, and project your voice towards the back of the room. Practise using a microphone, or any other presentation aids, in advance. If you don’t have your own presenting style, think of the style of inspirational scientific speakers you have seen and imitate it.

Try to present slides at the rate of around one slide a minute. If you talk too much, you will lose your audience’s attention. The slides or videos should be an adjunct to your presentation, so do not hide behind them, and be proud of the work you are presenting. You should avoid reading the wording on the slides, but instead talk around the content on them.

Maintain eye contact with the audience and remember to smile and pause after each comment, giving your nerves time to settle. Speak slowly and concisely, highlighting key points.

Do not assume that the audience is completely familiar with the topic you are passionate about, but don’t patronise them either. Use every presentation as an opportunity to teach, even your seniors. The information you are presenting may be new to them, but it is always important to know your audience’s background. You can then ensure you do not patronise world experts.

To maintain the audience’s attention, vary the tone and inflection of your voice. If appropriate, use humour, though you should run any comments or jokes past others beforehand and make sure they are culturally appropriate. Check every now and again that the audience is following and offer them the opportunity to ask questions.

Finishing up is the most important part, as this is when you send your take home message with the audience. Slow down, even though time is important at this stage. Conclude with the three key points from the study and leave the slide up for a further few seconds. Do not ramble on. Give the audience a chance to digest the presentation. Conclude by acknowledging those who assisted you in the study, and thank the audience and organisation. If you are presenting in North America, it is usual practice to conclude with an image of the team. If you wish to show references, insert a text box on the appropriate slide with the primary author, year, and paper, although this is not always required.

Answering questions can often feel like the most daunting part, but don’t look upon this as negative. Assume that the audience has listened and is interested in your research. Listen carefully, and if you are unsure about what someone is saying, ask for the question to be rephrased. Thank the audience member for asking the question and keep responses brief and concise. If you are unsure of the answer you can say that the questioner has raised an interesting point that you will have to investigate further. Have someone in the audience who will write down the questions for you, and remember that this is effectively free peer review.

Be proud of your achievements and try to do justice to the work that you and the rest of your group have done. You deserve to be up on that stage, so show off what you have achieved.

Competing interests: We have read and understood the BMJ Group policy on declaration of interests and declare the following interests: None.

• ↵ Rovira A, Auger C, Naidich TP. How to prepare an oral presentation and a conference. Radiologica 2013 ; 55 (suppl 1): 2 -7S. OpenUrl
• ↵ Bourne PE. Ten simple rules for making good oral presentations. PLos Comput Biol 2007 ; 3 : e77 . OpenUrl PubMed
• ↵ Naqvi SH, Mobasher F, Afzal MA, Umair M, Kohli AN, Bukhari MH. Effectiveness of teaching methods in a medical institute: perceptions of medical students to teaching aids. J Pak Med Assoc 2013 ; 63 : 859 -64. OpenUrl

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Article • 9 min read

10 Common Presentation Mistakes

Avoiding common pitfalls in your presentations.

By the Mind Tools Content Team

Most of us have experienced dull, irrelevant or confusing presentations. But think back to the last really great presentation you saw – one that was informative, motivating and inspiring. Wouldn't you love to be able to present like that?

This article looks at 10 of the most common mistakes that speakers make when giving presentations. By avoiding these, you'll make your presentations stand out – for all of the right reasons, and none of the wrong ones.

Mistake 1: Not Preparing Enough

Steve Jobs was a famously inspiring speaker. His speeches may have looked effortless, but, in reality, each one took days or weeks of preparation.

Careful preparation is essential. The amount of time you spend on planning depends on your situation, but it's a good idea to start early – you can never be too well-prepared.

Proper preparation also helps you to manage presentation nerves . When you know your material inside and out, you're far less likely to feel nervous. Our presentation planning checklist and Skillbook " Even Better Presentations " can help you to plan your next event properly.

Mistake 2: Not Familiarizing Yourself With the Venue and Equipment

Imagine that your presentation starts in an hour. You arrive at the venue and, to your horror, the projector won't work with your laptop. The slides you spent hours preparing are useless. This is a disaster!

You can avoid a situation like this by taking time to familiarize yourself with the venue and available equipment at least once before your presentation.

Often, the sorts of problems that can jeopardize your presentation will be situations beyond your control, but this doesn't mean that you're helpless. Conduct a risk analysis to identify potential issues, and come up with a good "Plan B" for each one.

Mistake 3: Ignoring Your Audience

Sometimes, speakers can get so wrapped up in delivering their presentations that they forget about the needs of their audience.

Start your presentation by telling your audience what to expect. Let them know what you'll cover first, whether and when you'll stop for a break, if you'll be taking questions during the presentation, and so on.

Providing these "signposts" up front will give your audience a clear idea of what to expect, so that they can relax and concentrate on your presentation.

Mistake 4: Using Inappropriate Content

The primary purpose of any presentation is to share information with others, so it's important to consider the level you'll pitch it at.

Do some research on your audience. Why are they here? How much do they already know about your topic, and what do they most want to learn from you? It's no use giving a presentation that's so full of jargon that no one understands you. But you wouldn't want to patronize people, either.

Try to put yourself in people's shoes, to get a clearer idea about their needs and motivations. You can also greet individuals as they arrive on the day, and ask questions to get a feel for their level of knowledge. This will also help you to personalize your presentation and make a connection with each person in your audience, so that they'll be more attentive to what you say.

Mistake 5: Being Too Verbose

Short, concise presentations are often more powerful than verbose ones. Try to limit yourself to a few main points. If you take too long getting to your point, you risk losing your audience's attention.

The average adult has a 15- to 20-minute attention span. So, if you want to keep your audience engaged, stick to the point! During the planning phase, make a note of the themes you want to cover and how you want to get them across. Then, when you start filling out the details, ask yourself: "Does my audience really need to know this?"

Our articles on the 7 Cs of Communication and Communications Planning have more tips for communicating in a clear, concise way.

Mistake 6: Using Ineffective Visuals

Poor slides can spoil a good presentation, so it's worth spending time getting yours right.

We've all seen slides with garish colors, unnecessary animation, or fonts that are too small to read. The most effective presentation visuals aren't flashy – they're concise and consistent.

When choosing colors, think about where the presentation will take place. A dark background with light or white text works best in dark rooms, while a white background with dark text is easier to see in a brightly lit room.

Choose your pictures carefully, too. High-quality graphics can clarify complex information and lift an otherwise plain screen, but low-quality images can make your presentation appear unprofessional. Unless an image is contributing something, embrace the negative space – less clutter means greater understanding. Use animation sparingly, too – a dancing logo or emoji will only distract your audience.

Mistake 7: Overcrowding Text

The best rule of thumb for text is to keep it simple . Don't try to cram too much information into your slides. Aim for a maximum of three to four words within each bullet point, and no more than three bullets per slide.

This doesn't mean that you should spread your content over dozens of slides. Limit yourself to 10 slides or fewer for a 30-minute presentation. Look at each slide, story or graph carefully. Ask yourself what it adds to the presentation, and remove it if it isn't important.

Mistake 8: Speaking Incoherently

Even though we spend a significant part of the day talking to one another, speaking to an audience is a surprisingly difficult skill, and it's one that we need to practice.

If nerves make you rush through a presentation, your audience could miss your most important points. Use centering or deep breathing techniques to suppress the urge to rush. If you do begin to babble, take a moment to collect yourself. Breathe deeply, and enunciate each word clearly, while you focus on speaking more slowly.

Our article on better public speaking has strategies and tips that you can use to become a more engaging speaker. One useful technique is storytelling – stories can be powerful tools for inspiring and engaging others. Our Expert Interviews with Annette Simmons and Paul Smith have tips that you can use to tell great stories.

Mistake 9: Showing a Lack of Dynamism

Another common mistake is to freeze in one spot for the duration of your presentation.

Some presenters feel most comfortable behind the podium. Try to emulate great speakers like Steve Jobs , who moved purposefully around the stage during his presentations.

As well as working the stage, he used gestures and body language to communicate his excitement and passion for his subject. Pay attention to what your hands are doing – they're important for communicating emotion. But only use gestures if they feel natural, and avoid being too flamboyant with your arms, unless you want to make your audience laugh!

See our Expert Interview, " Winning Body Language ," to learn more about body language and what it says to your audience.

Mistake 10: Avoiding Eye Contact

Have you ever been to a presentation where the speaker spent all of their time looking at their notes, the screen, the floor, or even at the ceiling? How did this make you feel?

Meeting a person's gaze establishes a personal connection, and even a quick glance can keep people engaged. If your audience is small enough, try to make eye contact with each individual at least once.

If the audience is too large for this, try looking at people's foreheads. The individual may not interpret it as eye contact, but those sitting around them will.

It takes practice and effort to deliver a good presentation. But, if you know how to avoid the pitfalls, your presentations will be great.

Common presentation mistakes include not preparing properly, delivering inappropriate content, and speaking poorly.

Time spent on careful planning always pays dividends. Check out the venue, and familiarize yourself with equipment in advance to avoid possible problems.

Keep your content clear and concise, with visual aids to match. And make sure that you pitch it at the right level for your audience's understanding, so that your presentation doesn't patronize or bewilder.

Remember, public speaking is a performance. Practice speaking clearly with a slower pace than your normal speech to avoid "rapid-fire" delivery. Use eye contact, body language and gestures that complement your message to keep your audience engaged.

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Unit 34: Delivering A Presentation

Learning objectives.

• identify the different methods of speech delivery
• identify key elements in preparing to deliver a speech
• understand the benefits of delivery-related behaviours
• utilize specific techniques to enhance speech delivery

Introduction

Many surveys have shown that public speaking is at the top of the list of fears for most people — sometimes, more high on the list than death. No one is afraid of writing their speech or conducting the research: people generally only fear the delivery aspect of the speech, which, compared to the amount of time you will put into writing the speech (days, hopefully), will be the shortest part of the speech giving process (5-8 minutes, generally, for classroom speeches). The irony, of course, is that delivery, being the thing people fear the most, is simultaneously the aspect of public speaking that will require the least amount of time.

Delivery is what you are probably most concerned about when it comes to giving presentations. This unit is designed to help you give the best delivery possible and eliminate some of the nervousness you might be feeling. To do that, you should first dismiss the myth that public speaking is just reading and talking at the same time. Speaking in public has more formality than talking. During a speech, you should present yourself professionally. This doesn’t necessarily mean you must wear a suit or “dress up”, but it does mean making yourself presentable by being well-groomed and wearing clean, appropriate clothes. It also means being prepared to use language correctly and appropriately for the audience and the topic, to make eye contact with your audience, and to look like you know your topic very well.

While speaking has more formality than talking, it has less formality than reading. Speaking allows for flexibility, meaningful pauses, eye contact, small changes in word order, and vocal emphasis. Reading is a more or less exact replication of words on paper without the use of any nonverbal interpretation. Speaking, as you will realize if you think about excellent speakers you have seen and heard, provides a more animated message.

Methods of Presentation Delivery

There are four methods of delivery that can help you balance between too much and too little formality when giving a presentation.  The video below reviews all four methods.

Impromptu Speaking

Impromptu speaking is the presentation of a short message without advance preparation. You have probably done impromptu speaking many times in informal, conversational settings. Self-introductions in group settings are examples of impromptu speaking: “Hi, my name is Steve, and I’m an account manager.” Another example of impromptu presenting occurs when you answer a question such as, “What did you think of the report?” Your response has not been pre-planned, and you are constructing your arguments and points as you speak. Even worse, you might find yourself going into a meeting and your boss says, “I want you to talk about the last stage of the project. . . “ and you had no warning.

The advantage of this kind of speaking is that it’s spontaneous and responsive in an animated group context. The disadvantage is that the speaker is given little or no time to contemplate the central theme of his or her message. As a result, the message may be disorganized and difficult for listeners to follow.

Here is a step-by-step guide that may be useful if you are called upon to give an impromptu presentation in public:

• Take a moment to collect your thoughts and plan the main point you want to make.
• Thank the person for inviting you to speak. Avoid making comments about being unprepared, called upon at the last moment, on the spot, or feeling uneasy.
• Deliver your message, making your main point as briefly as you can while still covering it adequately and at a pace your listeners can follow.
• If you can use a structure, using numbers if possible: “Two main reasons . . .” or “Three parts of our plan. . .” or “Two side effects of this drug. . .” Timeline structures are also effective, such as “past, present, and future or East Coast, Midwest, and West Coast”.
• Thank the person again for the opportunity to speak.
• Stop talking (it is easy to “ramble on” when you don’t have something prepared). If in front of an audience, don’t keep talking as you move back to your seat.

Impromptu presentations:  the presentation of a short message without advance preparation . Impromptu presentations are generally most successful when they are brief and focus on a single point

Manuscript Presentations

Manuscript presentations  are the word-for-word iteration of a written message . In a manuscript presentation, the speaker maintains their attention on the printed page except when using visual aids. The advantage of reading from a manuscript is the exact repetition of original words. In some circumstances, this can be extremely important. For example, reading a statement about your organization’s legal responsibilities to customers may require that the original words be exact.

A manuscript presentation may be appropriate at a more formal affair (like a report to shareholders), when your presentation must be said exactly as written in order to convey the proper emotion or decorum the situation deserves.

However, there are costs involved in manuscript presentations. First, it’s typically an uninteresting way to present. Unless the presenter has rehearsed the reading as a complete performance animated with vocal expression and gestures, the presentation tends to be dull. Keeping one’s eyes glued to the script prevents eye contact with the audience. For this kind of “straight” manuscript presentation to hold audience attention, the audience must be already interested in the message and presenter before the delivery begins.

It is worth noting that professional speakers, actors, news reporters, and politicians often read from an autocue device, commonly called a teleprompter, especially when appearing on television, where eye contact with the camera is crucial. With practice, a presenter can achieve a conversational tone and give the impression of speaking extemporaneously and maintaining eye contact while using an autocue device. However, success in this medium depends on two factors: (1) the presenter is already an accomplished public speaker who has learned to use a conversational tone while delivering a prepared script, and (2) the presentation is written in a style that sounds conversational and in spoken rather than written, edited English.

Extemporaneous Presentations

Extemporaneous presentations  are carefully planned and rehearsed presentations, delivered in a conversational manner using brief notes . By using notes rather than a full manuscript, the extemporaneous presenter can establish and maintain eye contact with the audience and assess how well they are understanding the presentation as it progresses. Without all the words on the page to read, you have little choice but to look up and make eye contact with your audience.

Presenting extemporaneously has some advantages. It promotes the likelihood that you, the speaker, will be perceived as knowledgeable and credible since you know the speech well  enough that you don’t need to read it. In addition, your audience is likely to pay better attention to the message because it is engaging both verbally and nonverbally. It also allows flexibility; you are working from the strong foundation of an outline, but if you need to delete, add, or rephrase something at the last minute or to adapt to your audience, you can do so.

The disadvantage of extemporaneous presentations is that in some cases it does not allow for the verbal and the nonverbal preparation that are almost always required for a good speech.

Adequate preparation cannot be achieved the day before you’re scheduled to present, so be aware that if you want to present a credibly delivered speech, you will need to practice many times. Because extemporaneous presenting is the style used in the great majority of business presentation situations, most of the information in the subsequent sections of this chapter is targeted toward this kind of speaking.

Memorized Speaking

Memorized speakin g is the recitation of a written message that the speaker has committed to memory. Actors , of course, recite from memory whenever they perform from a script in a stage play, television program, or movie scene. When it comes to speeches, memorization can be useful when the message needs to be exact and the speaker doesn’t want to be confined by notes.

The advantage to memorization is that it enables the speaker to maintain eye contact with the audience throughout the speech. Being free of notes means that you can move freely around the stage and use your hands to make gestures. If your speech uses visual aids, this freedom is even more of an advantage. However, there are some real and potential costs.

First, unless you also plan and memorize every vocal cue (the subtle but meaningful variations in speech delivery, which can include the use of pitch, tone, volume, and pace), gesture, and facial expression, your presentation will be flat and uninteresting, and even the most fascinating topic will suffer. Second, if you lose your place and start trying to ad lib, the contrast in your style of delivery will alert your audience that something is wrong. More frighteningly, if you go completely blank during the presentation, it will be extremely difficult to find your place and keep going. Obviously, memorizing a typical seven-minute presentation takes a great deal of time and effort, and if you aren’t used to memorizing, it is very difficult to pull off. Realistically, you probably will not have the time necessary to give a completely memorized speech. However, if you practice adequately, your approach will still feel like you are being extemporaneous.

Preparing For Your Delivery

Your audiences, circumstances, and physical contexts for presenting will vary, but will arise regularly in any business environment. Being prepared to deal with different presenting situations will help reduce the anxiety you may have about giving a speech, so let’s look at some common factors you need to keep in mind as you prepare for a typical business presentation.

Using Lecterns :  Lecterns add formality to the presentation situation, but it can be tempting to hide behind it. Use it to hold your notes only. This will enhance your eye contact as well as free up your hands for gesturing, and give the appearance of confidence.

Large spaces :  auditoriums or other large spaces can be intimidating. Preparation and practice will prevent poor performance; a rehearsal, if available, can also ease nerves. Slowing your speech to allow for echo, and adjust visual aids so they can be seen by those in the back of the hall.

Small spaces:   these are usually easier to manage for presenters, but use note cards and visual aids carefully, as your audience will be able to see everything. Ideally, arrive early to set up your presentation material to prevent fumbling and delays.

Outdoors :  Noise (cars, wind), insects, weather, sunshine and other environmental factors may be hard to control. Do your best to project your voice without yelling, and choose locations that are quiet and sheltered, if possible.

Using a Microphone :   you can avoid difficulties with microphones by doing a rehearsal or test ahead of time. Ensure you enunciate clearly and give a few inches between your face and the microphone.

Small Audience Size:   A small audience will allow for greater contact, but may invite interruptions. Deal with any questions politely and say you’ll try to answer that question at the end of the presentation. Or, set the agenda at the beginning so that the audience knows there will be a question and answer period at the end.

Practicing Your Delivery

There is no foolproof recipe for good delivery. You are a unique person, and you embody different experiences and interests from others. This means you have an approach, or a style, that is effective for you. It also means that your concern about what others think of you can cause anxiety, even during the most carefully researched and interesting presentation. But there are some techniques you can use to minimize that anxious feeling and put yourself in the best possible position to succeed on presentation day. You need to prepare for your presentation in as realistic a simulation as possible. What follows are some general tips you should keep in mind, but they all essentially derive from one very straight-forward premise:  Practice your presentation beforehand, at home or elsewhere, the way you will give it in person.

Practice Your Presentation Out Loud

Practice allows you to learn what to say, when, and how to say it, but it also lets you know where potential problems lie. Since you will be speaking with a normal volume for your presentation, you need to practice that way, even at home. This helps you learn the presentation, but it will help identify any places where you tend to mispronounce words. Also, sentences on paper do not always translate well to the spoken medium. Practicing out loud allows you to actually hear where you have trouble and fix it before getting up in front of the audience.

Practice Your Presentation Standing Up

Since you will be standing for your presentation (in all likelihood), you need to practice that way. As we mention in more detail below, the default position for delivering a presentation is with your feet shoulder-width apart and your knees slightly bent. Practicing this way will help develop muscle memory and will make it feel more natural when you are doing it for real.

Practice Your Presentation with an Audience

The best way to prepare for the feeling of having someone watch you while giving a presentation is to have someone watch you while you practice. Ask your colleagues, friends, family, or significant other to listen to you while running through what you will say. Not only will you get practice in front of an audience, but they may be able to tell you about any parts that were unclear or problems you might encounter when delivering it on the day. During practice, it may help to pick out some strategically placed objects around the room to occasionally glance at just to get into the habit of looking around more often and making eye contact with multiple people in your audience.

Practice Your Presentation for Time

You’ll likely have a time limit for the presentation. As a rule of thumb, plan to have a 60-second “buffer” at the end of your presentation, in case something goes wrong. For example, if your presentation is set for 10 minutes, plan for nine minutes. Should you rush through or end early, make sure you can add more detail to the end of your presentation if needed. With all of this in mind, practicing at least three times at home will ensure your presentation is properly timed.

Practice Your Presentation by Filming Yourself

There is nothing that gets you to change what you’re doing or correct a problem quicker than seeing yourself doing something you don’t like on video. By watching yourself, you will notice all the small things you do that might prove to be distracting during the actual presentation.

It is important enough that it deserves reiterating:  Practice your speech beforehand, at home or elsewhere, the way you will give it on the scheduled day.

Non-Verbal Elements of Delivering a Presentation

The interplay between the verbal and nonverbal components of your speech can either bring the message vividly to life or confuse or bore the audience. Therefore, it is best that you neither over-dramatize your speech delivery behaviors nor downplay them. This is a balance achieved through rehearsal, trial and error, and experience. One way to think of this is in terms of the Goldilocks paradigm: you don’t want to overdo the delivery because you might distract your audience by looking hyper or overly animated. Conversely, someone whose delivery is too understated (meaning they don’t move their hands or feet at all) looks unnatural and uncomfortable, which can also distract. Just like Goldilocks, you want a delivery that is “just right”. This middle ground between too much and too little is a much more natural approach to public speaking delivery, which will be covered in more detail in the following sections where we discuss aspects of your delivery and what you need to think about while actually giving your speech.

Hands:  Use your hands as naturally as you would in normal conversation. Try to pay attention to what you do with your hands in regular conversations and incorporate that into your delivery. If you’re not comfortable with that, rest them on the lectern or fold them in front of your body.

Feet:  stand shoulder-width apart, keeping your knees slightly bent. If you are comfortable, try walking around a bit if space allows and it appears natural in practice. Avoid shifting from foot-to-foot, or bouncing nervously.

Objects:   bring only what you need to give your presentation. Anything else will be a distraction. Turn off any personal devices (cell phones, tablets) so there are no interruptions.

Clothing:   dress professionally, based on the culture of your organization. Avoid jewelry that could make noise, uncomfortable shoes or any item that hangs from you. Tie back long hair so you are not tempted to touch or move it.

Eye Contact:   Eye contact is an extremely important element of your delivery. The general rule of thumb is to aim for 80 percent of your total speech time to be spent making eye contact with your audience (Lucas, 2015, p. 250).

Volume:   The volume you use should fit the size of the audience and the room.

Rate:   How quickly or slowly you say the words of your speech is the rate. You especially will want to maintain a good, deliberate rate at the beginning of your speech because your audience will be getting used to your voice.

Vocalized Pauses:  Everyone uses vocalized pauses to some degree, but not everyone’s are problematic. This obviously becomes an issue when the vocalized pauses become distracting due to their overuse. Identify your own common vocalized pauses and try to catch yourself to begin the process of reducing your dependence on them.

The items listed above represent the major delivery issues you will want to be aware of when giving a speech, but it is by no means an exhaustive list.

There is, however, one final piece of delivery advice. No matter how hard you practice and how diligent you are in preparing for your presentation, you are most likely going to mess up some aspect at some point. That’s normal. Everyone does it. The key is to not make a big deal about it or let the audience know you messed up. Odds are that they will never even realize your mistake if you don’t tell them there was a mistake.

Key Takeaway

• Many employees may not like public speaking, but it is a normal part of the business environment.
• Good preparation helps to relieve the feelings of anxiety experienced by many presenters.
• There are different types of delivery techniques to best deliver different types of messages.
• Your delivery should look as natural as possible.

• Take a business idea you have, a familiar business topic you care about, or a promotion or raise you want to request in a time of tight budgets and a tough job market.  Create a spontaneous two to five-minute speech making a good case for your core message.  First deliver the speech in front of a mirror.  What did you notice about your presentation and delivery style?  Next, present your speech to a classmate and ask for constructive feedback on your delivery style.

Bovee, C.L., Thill, J. V., & Scribner J. A. (2016). Business communication essentials (4th ed.). Don Mills, ON: Pearson Canada Inc.

Cityline. (2017).  7 tips to overcome your fear of public speaking [Video file].  Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mL5WNcLz8t

eCampusOntario. (2020). Chapter 6: Presentation to inform . Communication for business professionals. Retrieved from https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/commbusprofcdn/chapter/introduction-4/

Guffey, M., Loewry, D., & Griffin, E. (2019). Business communication: Process and product (6th ed.). Toronto, ON: Nelson Education. Retrieved from http://www.cengage.com/cgi-wadsworth/course_products_wp.pl?fid=M20b&product_isbn_issn=9780176531393&template=NELSON

Infogrades. (2020).  Cheat sheet for becoming a public speaking expert .  Retrieved from https://www.infogrades.com/society-infographics/cheat-sheet-for-becoming-a-public-speaking-expert/

Lyon, A. (2017).  Types of delivery for speeches and public speaking [Video file].  Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KBD4W1w89c&t=25s

Stanford Graduate School of Business. (2017). Use body language to rock your next presentation [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pp4YlyXjcKI&feature=emb_logo

Communication Skills Copyright © 2019 by Jordan Smith is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Visual Communication 

Table of Contents

In today’s world, visual communication has become an increasingly popular way to convey messages. Whether it’s through images, videos, or infographics, visuals can be a powerful tool in conveying information. However, like any communication method, there are also advantages and disadvantages to using visual communication. In this blog, we will explore the merits and demerits of visual communication and how to use it effectively.

What is visual communication? 

Visual communication involves utilizing visual components to express ideas or information. This type of communication relies on visual aids such as images, graphics, videos, animations, and diagrams, to enhance the meaning and impact of a message

Visual communication can take many forms, including graphic design, professional picture editing , illustration, animation, and video. By combining visuals with text and other design elements, visual communication can create a dynamic and engaging user experience that can capture and hold the viewer’s attention. 

The purpose of visual communication can range from providing information to persuading an audience, making it an essential aspect of marketing, advertising, and branding. Visual communication can be used across a variety of mediums, including print, digital, and social media, and the ability to convert image to video can enhance the impact of visual communication on these platforms. 

Check out our detailed guide on: Visual Communication: Examples, Types, Elements & Importance 

13 Advantages of disadvantages of visual communication? 

Visual communication is a powerful communication channel that has been used to convey information, ideas, and emotions. In this context, it is important to weigh the pros and cons of visual communication to determine its effectiveness in a given situation. 

Advantages of visual communication

1. Improved Comprehension: Visual communication can improve comprehension and understanding of complex information. By presenting information through visuals like diagrams, charts, and infographics, viewers can quickly and easily understand the information.

2. Increased Retention: Visuals are easier to remember and retain than text alone. This is because when information is presented in a visual format, it has a greater chance of being retained by individuals, resulting in better educational results.

3. Better Engagement: Using visuals in communication can be more captivating than relying solely on text. Human beings have an inherent inclination towards visual stimuli, and incorporating visual elements into your content can help to retain viewers’ attention for an extended period of time.

4. Increased Accessibility: Visual communication can make information more accessible to people with disabilities . For example, using captions and descriptive text with visuals can make them accessible to people with hearing or visual impairments.

5. Improved Clarity: Visuals can improve the clarity of your message. By using visuals to reinforce your message, you can ensure that viewers understand the point you’re trying to make.

6. Enhanced Emotional Connection: Visuals can create an emotional connection with viewers. By using visuals like images and videos, you can create a more powerful and emotional impact on your audience.

7. Improved Creativity: Visual communication can improve your creativity and imagination. By using visuals to express your ideas, you can come up with new and innovative ways to present information.

8. Increased Persuasiveness: Incorporating visuals in communication can be more effective in persuading the audience than relying solely on written or spoken words. Utilizing visuals to support the arguments, can present a more compelling and convincing case for the audience.

9. Better User Experience: Visuals can improve the user experience of your website or application. By using visuals like images and videos, you can create a more visually appealing and engaging experience for your users.

10. Increased Effectiveness: Visual communication can be more effective than text alone. By using visuals to support your message, you can increase the effectiveness of your communication and ensure that your message is received and understood by your audience.

11. Improving Brand identity: Visuals can be used to reinforce an identity of a brand. By using consistent visuals like color schemes, fonts, and logos, you can create a cohesive and recognizable brand image.

12. Increased Efficiency: Visual communication can be more efficient than text alone. By using visuals to convey information, you can communicate ideas more quickly and with less effort.

13. Improved Collaboration: Visual communication can improve collaboration between team members. By using visuals like diagrams and flowcharts, you can help team members better understand complex processes and work together more effectively.

Disadvantages of visual communication 

1. Inability to Convey Emotion: Visual communication can be limited in its ability to convey emotions or tone of voice, which can be important in certain contexts. For example, written communication can be difficult to interpret without understanding the writer’s intent or tone of voice, and visual aids may not be able to convey this information accurately. Similarly, some people may be more comfortable expressing themselves orally, making visual communication less effective in these situations.

2. Limited Accessibility: One of the main disadvantages of visual communication is that it may not be accessible to people with certain disabilities.  For example, Individuals having visual impairments will not be able to view or understand the visual message. Hence oral communication would be more suitable in these kinds of situations.  

3. Misinterpretation: Visual communication can be subject to misinterpretation, as individuals may interpret visuals differently. In addition, It can be difficult to convey complex ideas or information using visual aids alone, which can lead to confusion or misunderstandings. This is particularly true when the visual aids are not well designed or organized, or when they are used in isolation from other forms of communication like oral or written communication . 

4. Cultural Differences: Visuals may not be universally understood across different cultures. Symbols and images may have different meanings in different cultures, leading to misunderstandings and miscommunications.

5. Cost: Creating high-quality visuals can be costly and time-consuming, especially for businesses and organizations with limited resources.

6. Issue of Technological constraints: There may be certain technical limitations that could constrain the use of certain visuals. For example, some websites may not be able to display high-quality images or videos due to bandwidth limitations. In addition, technical constraints may also arise due to hardware and software limitations. Some older devices may not be compatible with certain image or video formats, which could affect the quality of the visuals. 

7. Inaccurate Representations: Visuals may not always accurately represent the information they are intended to convey. This can happen because of problems such as data inaccuracies or biases which may lead to misleading conclusions. 

8. Information Overload: Visual communication can also contribute to information overload. If too many visuals are used or if they are too complex, viewers may become overwhelmed and have difficulty processing the information.

9. Reliance on Technology: The use of technology plays a significant role in visual communication and it can be vulnerable to technical glitches and issues. This can disrupt communication and lead to frustration for viewers.

10. Ineffective for Certain Types of Information: Visual communication may not be the most effective way to convey certain types of information. For example, abstract concepts may be difficult to represent visually. Offen time complex or technical information may require written or oral communication to fully explain.

Related Reading:   Oral communication advantages and disadvantages  Written communication advantages and disadvantages 

11. Restricted Interaction: Visual communication may offer limited opportunities for interactivity compared to other forms of communication, such as written or verbal communication. This can limit the ability of viewers to ask questions or engage with the information presented. 

12. Limited Persuasiveness: Visual communication may not be as persuasive as other forms of communication. While visual aids can be persuasive and influential in some situations, they may not have the same impact as oral or written communication, particularly when it comes to more complex or nuanced arguments. This can be a big disadvantage of visual communication in situations where persuasion is important, such as in sales or marketing.

Lack of Personal Connection: Visual communication can lack a personal connection between the communicator and the audience, particularly when compared to oral communication. This can be a disadvantage in situations where building trust and rapport is important, such as in interpersonal relationships or business negotiations.

Examples of visual communication

Visual communication can take many different forms and can be used in a variety of contexts. Here are some examples of visual communication:

1. Infographics: These are graphical representations of information or data that are designed to make complex information more easily understood.

2. Charts and graphs: Charts or graphs are graphical illustrations utilized to communicate patterns or connections within data or information.

3. Photographs: Photographs can be used to capture a moment or convey a mood or emotion.

4. Videos: Videos can be used to tell a story, demonstrate a process, or convey information.

5. Illustrations: Illustrations can be used to create a visual representation of an idea, concept, or story.

6. Logos and branding: Logos and branding can be used to visually represent a company or organization.

7. Signage: Signage can be used to convey information, such as directions or warnings, in a visual format. 

8. Posters: Posters can be used to convey a message or market a product or concept.

9. Web design: Web design incorporates visual elements, such as graphics and layout, to create an effective online presence.

10. Packaging design: Packaging design incorporates visual elements, such as color and graphics, to create a product’s visual identity.

What is the importance of visual communication? 

Effective transmission of information and messages heavily relies on visual communication. By using visuals, we can help audiences to comprehend information more easily, making it more likely that they will engage with and remember the message. Here are some key reasons why visual communication is important: 

Firstly, visual communication can simplify complex ideas and make them easier to understand. They provide a quick and easy way to convey information and help the audience remember the message.

In addition, visual communication possesses a broad-based appeal that surpasses linguistic and cultural obstacles , making them an efficient channel for connecting with a vast audience. 

Secondly, visual communication can evoke emotions and create a strong emotional impact. Images and videos have the power to elicit feelings and emotions in a way that text alone cannot. Creating an emotional bond of this nature can aid in developing confidence and cultivating a stronger relationship with the audience.

Lastly, visual communication can help businesses to improve the user experience by creating brand identity and recognition, making it easier for audiences to identify and remember a brand.

In summary, the importance of visual communication lies in its ability to simplify complex ideas, evoke emotions, and improve the overall user experience. It has become an essential tool for effective communication in a world where attention spans are short and information overload is prevalent.

Advantages and disadvantages of visual information

Visual information, such as images, videos, and infographics, has become increasingly prevalent in modern communication. However, like any other form of information, visual information has its own set of benefits and limitations.

Advantages of visual information

Improved comprehension and retention of information : Studies have shown that people remember visual information better than text alone, making it a valuable tool for communicating important information. By using visuals to break down complex ideas into digestible parts, we can help audiences to comprehend information more easily and retain it for longer periods of time.

Increased brand awareness and recognition: Visuals are an important tool for establishing brand identity and recognition. By using consistent visual elements such as logos, color schemes, and typography, businesses can create a distinct brand identity that is easily recognizable. 

Improved accessibility: Visual information can be a more accessible way of conveying information for people with learning disabilities, as it can simplify complex ideas and make them more understandable. For example, infographics can help to convey information that may be difficult to understand in a traditional text-based format. 

Disadvantages of visual information 

High chance of misinterpretation: One disadvantage of visual information is that it can sometimes be misinterpreted or misunderstood. For example, a chart or graph may be interpreted in different ways depending on the audience’s background knowledge or perspective. This can lead to confusion or miscommunication. 

Can be costly: Another disadvantage of visual information is that it can be time-consuming and expensive to create. High-quality visual information requires significant planning, design, and production time, which can be a challenge for organizations with limited resources. 

Advantages and disadvantages of visual symbols

Visual symbols are a form of visual communication that use images or icons to represent ideas, concepts, or objects. Like any form of communication, visual symbols have both advantages and disadvantages.

The Advantage of visual symbols: 

One of the main advantages of visual symbols is that they can be easily understood across different cultures and languages. Visual symbols can be universally recognized and do not require translation, making them a powerful tool for global communication. Additionally, visual symbols can convey complex ideas or concepts in a simple and memorable way, making them an effective tool for advertising and branding.

The disadvantage of visual symbols: 

Visual symbols can be open to misinterpretation or ambiguity. Different people may interpret the same symbol in different ways, based on their background, cultural context, or personal experiences. This can lead to confusion or miscommunication, particularly if the symbol is used in a critical or sensitive context.

Advantages and disadvantages of audio-visual communication

Audio-visual communication refers to the use of audio and visual aids such as videos, animations, and presentations to convey information. However audio-visual communication has its importance and limitations.

Advantages of audio-visual communication:

• Increases audience engagement and interest.
• Helps convey complex information more effectively.
• Appeals to different learning styles.
• It is possible to utilize audio-visual communication to elicit emotions and generate a more memorable encounter.
• Can be more effective in delivering messages compared to text-only communication.
• Improves understanding and retention of information.
• Can be used to build brand recognition and enhance user experience.
• Enables real-time communication and feedback.
• Can be more efficient and cost-effective than in-person communication.
• They can be effortlessly circulated and disseminated through multiple platforms.

Disadvantages of audio-visual communication:

• Requires technical skills and equipment.
• Technical problems such as equipment failure or poor internet connectivity can have a negative impact.
• May not be accessible to individuals with hearing or visual impairments.
• May not be as effective in conveying complex or nuanced information as text-only communication.
• Can be time-consuming to produce and edit.
• Can be costly to produce high-quality audio-visual content.
• In many situations, it can be difficult to measure the effectiveness of audio-visual communication.
• May require additional resources for translation or localization.
• May not be appropriate for all audiences or contexts.
• Can be affected by cultural differences or misunderstandings.

What are the effects of visual communication? 

Visual communication is a strong channel of communication that produces significant impacts on individuals and the entire society. One of the primary effects of visual communication is that it captures the audience’s attention and engages them.

By using a combination of design elements, such as color, typography, and imagery, visual communication can create a captivating experience that draws people in.

Another effect of visual communication is that it can also shape people’s perceptions and attitudes toward different ideas or products. By using various design elements and messaging, visual communication can create a specific brand image or evoke a certain emotion.  

Finally, visual communication can have a significant impact on society as a whole. It can be used to create awareness around important issues, shape public opinion, and promote social change. By using visual communication effectively, individuals and organizations can bring attention to important social issues and promote positive change.

How can visual communication be improved? 

Visual communication can be improved in several ways. Here are some tips to enhance the effectiveness of visual communication:

1. Understand the target audience: Before creating any visual communication, it is essential to understand the target audience’s needs, preferences, and expectations. This will help create visuals that resonate with them and improve engagement.

2. Simplify the message: Visual communication should be simple and easy to understand. Complex visuals can be confusing and turn off the audience. Simplifying the message ensures that the audience gets the point quickly.

3. Use clear and concise visuals: The visual elements should be clear, concise, and easy to read. Avoid using too many design elements or cluttered visuals that can confuse or overwhelm the audience.

4 Focus on the purpose: Visual communication should be created with a specific purpose in mind. The visual should be designed to achieve a specific goal, such as promoting a product or raising awareness for a cause.

5. Incorporate visual hierarchy: Visual hierarchy refers to the arrangement of visual elements in a way that guides the audience’s attention. Using a visual hierarchy ensures that the most critical information is highlighted and stands out.

Frequently Asked Question

Q1) what are the advantages and disadvantages of visual communication , share your read share this content.

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Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

Does a presentation’s medium affect its message? PowerPoint, Prezi, and oral presentations

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliations Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America, Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America

Affiliation Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America

Affiliation Minerva Schools at the Keck Graduate Institute, San Francisco, California, United States of America

• Samuel T. Moulton, 
• Selen Türkay, 
• Stephen M. Kosslyn

• Published: July 5, 2017
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774
• Reader Comments

12 Oct 2017: The PLOS ONE Staff (2017) Correction: Does a presentation's medium affect its message? PowerPoint, Prezi, and oral presentations. PLOS ONE 12(10): e0186673. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186673 View correction

Despite the prevalence of PowerPoint in professional and educational presentations, surprisingly little is known about how effective such presentations are. All else being equal, are PowerPoint presentations better than purely oral presentations or those that use alternative software tools? To address this question we recreated a real-world business scenario in which individuals presented to a corporate board. Participants (playing the role of the presenter) were randomly assigned to create PowerPoint, Prezi, or oral presentations, and then actually delivered the presentation live to other participants (playing the role of corporate executives). Across two experiments and on a variety of dimensions, participants evaluated PowerPoint presentations comparably to oral presentations, but evaluated Prezi presentations more favorably than both PowerPoint and oral presentations. There was some evidence that participants who viewed different types of presentations came to different conclusions about the business scenario, but no evidence that they remembered or comprehended the scenario differently. We conclude that the observed effects of presentation format are not merely the result of novelty, bias, experimenter-, or software-specific characteristics, but instead reveal a communication preference for using the panning-and-zooming animations that characterize Prezi presentations.

Citation: Moulton ST, Türkay S, Kosslyn SM (2017) Does a presentation’s medium affect its message? PowerPoint, Prezi, and oral presentations. PLoS ONE 12(7): e0178774. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774

Editor: Philip Allen, University of Akron, UNITED STATES

Received: November 2, 2016; Accepted: May 18, 2017; Published: July 5, 2017

Copyright: © 2017 Moulton et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All data files are available from the Open Science Framework https://osf.io/fgf7c/ .

Funding: This research was supported by a grant from Prezi ( http://www.prezi.com ) to SMK. In the sponsored research agreement (which we are happy to provide) and in our conversations with Prezi leadership, they agreed to let us conduct the study as we wished and publish it no matter what the results revealed. Aside from funding the research, the only role that any employees of Prezi played was (as documented in the manuscript) 1) to provide us with a distribution list of Boston-area Prezi customers (8 of whom participated in the first experiment) and 2) as experts in Prezi, review the background questionnaire to ensure that we were accurately describing Prezi’s purported benefits and features (just as PowerPoint and oral presentation experts did the same). No employees at Prezi had any role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. None of the authors have any professional or financial connection to Prezi or personal relationships with any Prezi employees. We do not plan to conduct any follow-up research on this topic or obtain future funding from Prezi. As evident in the manuscript, we took special care not to allow bias or demand characteristics to influence this research.

Competing interests: This research was supported by a grant to SMK from Prezi ( http://www.prezi.com ), a commercial funder. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Introduction

How do the characteristics of a communication medium affect its messages? This question has been the subject of much philosophical and empirical inquiry, with some (e.g., [ 1 ]) claiming that the medium determines the message (“the medium is the message”), others (e.g., [ 2 ]) claiming that characteristics of a medium affect the message, and others claiming that the medium and message are separable (e.g.,[ 3 , 4 ]). As psychologists, we ask: What mental mechanisms underlie effective communication and how can presenters leverage these mechanisms to communicate better? These questions—at the intersection of psychology and communication practice—motivate this research.

That said, the relative efficacy of different communication media or technologies informs the primary questions of interest. If we can demonstrate that oral presentations are less or more effective than those that rely on presentation software—or that presenters who use one type of presentation software tend to be more effective than those who use another—then we advance our psychological and practical understanding of effective communication. Thus, in the tradition of use-inspired basic research [ 5 ]—and as a means to an end, rather than an end unto itself—we compare the effectiveness of three commonly-used formats for communication: oral, PowerPoint, and Prezi presentations.

We focused on presentations because they populate our academic, professional, and even personal lives in the form of public speeches, academic lectures, webinars, class presentations, wedding toasts, courtroom arguments, sermons, product demonstrations, and business presentations [ 6 – 8 ], and because basic questions remain about how to present effectively. Should we present with or without presentation software? If we should present with software, which software? We examined PowerPoint and Prezi because they are popular and psychologically interesting alternatives: Whereas PowerPoint’s linear slide format might reduce cognitive load, focus attention, and promote logical analysis, Prezi’s map-like canvas format and heavy reliance on animation (see the Background section and https://prezi.com for examples) might facilitate visuospatial processing, conceptual understanding, and narrative storytelling.

To inform the present research, we explore the methodological challenges of media research and review past research on presentation formats.

Methodological challenges of media research

To research the efficacy of different communication formats fairly and accurately, one must overcome two stubborn methodological challenges. First, because correlation is not causation and the variables that underlie media usage are heavily confounded, such research requires true experimentation. To study whether a blended learning “flipped classroom” is a more effective instructional medium than traditional lecturing, for example, researchers gain little insight by comparing outcomes for students who enroll in one type of course versus the other. To control for audience (in this case, student) self-selection effects, researchers need to 1) randomly assign audience members to different communication conditions (in this case, pedagogies) or 2) manipulate format within participants. Moreover, the same methodological controls need to be applied to presenters (in this case, instructors). Instructors who choose to teach with emerging, innovative methods probably differ in numerous other respects (e.g., motivation) from those who teach with more traditional methods. If students assigned randomly to a flipped classroom format perform better than those assigned randomly to a traditional classroom format, we risk drawing inferences about confounds instead of causes unless instructors are also assigned randomly to instructional media. To make strong, accurate inferences, therefore, researchers interested in communication must control for audience and presenter self-selection effects. Such control introduces new complexities; when randomly assigning presenters to formats, for example, one must ensure that all presenters receive sufficient training in the relevant format. Moreover, such control is often cumbersome, sometimes impractical, and occasionally unethical (e.g., randomly assigning students in actual courses to hypothetically worse instructional conditions). But there are no adequate methodological substitutes for proper experimental control.

A second thorny methodological challenge inherent in conducting media research concerns how to draw general inferences about formats instead of specific inferences about exemplars of those formats. For example, if one advertising expert is assigned randomly to design a print ad and another expert a television ad—and a hundred consumers are assigned randomly to view the television or print ad—can we actually infer anything about print versus television ads in general when the two groups of consumers behave differently? Arguably not, because such a finding is just as easily explained by other (confounding) differences between the ads or their creators (e.g., ratio of print to graphics, which sorts of people—if any—are shown, and so forth). In other words, even with proper random assignment, researchers who intend to study different forms of communication risk merely studying different instances of communication. Statistically speaking, one should assume a random not fixed effect of the communication objects of interest (e.g., presentations, lectures, advertisements). To overcome this challenge and draw generalizable inferences, one must (at the very least) sample a sufficiently large set of examples within each medium.

Research on presentation software

Methodological shortcomings..

Considerable research has been conducted on how different presentation formats (particularly PowerPoint) convey information (for review, see [ 9 ]). However, much of this research is anecdotal or based on case studies. For example, Tufte [ 10 ] claims that PowerPoint’s default settings lead presenters to create bulleted lists and vacuous graphs that abbreviate arguments and fragment thought. And Kjeldsen [ 11 ] used Al Gore’s TED talk on climate change as a positive example of how visuals can be used to effectively convey evidence and enhance verbal communication.

Research that goes beyond mere anecdote or case study is plagued by the aforementioned methodological shortcomings: failure to control for audience self-selection effects (71% of studies), failure to control for presenter self-selection effects (100% of studies), and a problematic assumption of fixed effects across content and presenters (91% of studies). As is evident in Table 1 , no studies overcame two of these shortcomings, let alone all three. For example, in one of the most heavily-cited publications on this topic Szabo and Hasting [ 12 ] investigated the efficacy of PowerPoint in undergraduate education. In the first study, they examined whether students who received lectures with PowerPoint performed better on a test than students who received traditional lectures. Students were not assigned randomly to lecture conditions, however; rather, the comparison was across time, between two cohorts of students enrolled in different iterations of the same course. Any observed outcome difference could have been caused by student or instructor variables (e.g., preparedness), not lecture format. The fact that no such differences were found does not obviate this concern: Such differences may in fact have been present, but were overshadowed by confounding characteristics of students or instructors. In the second study, the authors varied presentation format within the same cohort of students, but confounded format with order, time, content, and performance measure: student performance was compared between lectures on different days, on different topics, and using different tests. As the authors themselves note, the observed differences may have had nothing to do with PowerPoint. In the third study, they counterbalanced lecture order and content; some students received a PowerPoint lecture first and others a traditional lecture first, and the same topics were presented in both formats. However, students were assigned to conditions based on their course enrollment, not randomly, but more importantly the study included only four presentations, all by one presenter. Any advantages of the two PowerPoint lectures (none were found) might have been particular to those instances or that presenter and not representative of the format more generally.

• PPT PowerPoint slide
• PNG larger image
• TIFF original image

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.t001

Most studies—even those that control experimentally for audience self-selection—relied on only a single self-selected presenter, and some relied on only one presentation per format. In one study ([ 13 ]: Experiment 1), for example, one of the authors varied the format of his lecture instruction randomly across the semester, using transparences or PowerPoint slides. In another study [ 14 ], students who were enrolled in one of the authors’ courses were assigned randomly to a PowerPoint or Prezi e-lecture that contained identical audio narration and written text. In a third study [ 15 ], one of the researchers gave the same lecture over the course of the year to rotating medical students, using PowerPoint on odd months and overhead slides on even months. What reason is there to think that we can make general claims about presentation format based on studies of single lectures or single presenters? That is, how can we reasonably assume fixed as opposed to random effects? If the use of presentation software does meaningfully influence student learning or experience, surely that effect is not constant across all presenters or presentations—some instructors use it more effectively than others, and within any format some presentations are more effective than others (see [ 16 ]). And how can we assume that presenters who select both the content and format of their presentations are not designing them in ways that favor one format over another?

Research on the efficacy of presentation software has numerous other flaws, most notably the failure to control for experimenter effects or demand characteristics. In 82% of studies we identified, for example, the researchers investigated their own instruction and studied their own students. It is difficult to imagine that one would make these instructional and research efforts (e.g., creating new course material, conducting a field experiment) without a strong belief in the efficacy of one format over the other, and it is plausible (if not likely) that such beliefs would influence students or confound instructional format with instructional effort and enthusiasm.

Another common issue is the confounding of lecture format with access to study materials—in studies that contrast PowerPoint with traditional lecturing (e.g., [ 17 – 19 ]), students in the PowerPoint condition (but not the control condition) sometimes have access to PowerPoint slides as study material. This access could bias student motivation, behavior (e.g., attendance), course satisfaction, and performance (see [ 20 ]).

PowerPoint: Performance, perception, and persuasion.

Despite their methodological shortcomings, what are the findings of this research literature? The majority of studies examined the use of PowerPoint in higher education and measured both objective and subjective outcomes (see Table 1 ). They typically involved students enrolled in one or more of the researchers’ courses, and contrasted the efficacy of lectures (or whole lecture courses) that used PowerPoint with those that used a more traditional technology (e.g., blackboards, overhead projectors). In terms of student performance, their findings were notably mixed: Of the 28 studies we identified, 17 found no effect of PowerPoint lectures relative to traditional lectures ([ 12 ]: Experiments 1,3; [ 13 , 15 , 21 – 33 ]), 9 found a performance benefit of PowerPoint over traditional instruction ([ 12 ]: Experiment 2; [ 17 – 19 , 34 – 38 ]), and 2 found a performance benefit of traditional over PowerPoint instruction [ 39 , 40 ].

There is near consensus in the literature, however, when it comes student perception: Of the 26 studies we identified, 21 found that students preferred PowerPoint over traditional instruction ([ 12 ]: Experiment 1; [ 13 , 17 – 19 , 21 , 23 , 25 , 26 , 28 , 29 , 31 – 33 , 35 , 39 , 41 – 45 ]), 2 found that students preferred traditional over PowerPoint instruction [ 40 , 46 ], and 3 other studies found no preference for one or the other formats [ 15 , 22 , 37 ]. As one example, Tang and Austin [ 45 ] surveyed 215 undergraduates in business courses about their general perceptions of different lecture formats; on measures of enjoyment, learning, motivation, and career relevance, they found that students rated lectures with PowerPoint slides more favorably than lectures with overheads or without visual aids. An additional 7 studies did not contrast student perceptions of PowerPoint with another technology—they simply surveyed students about PowerPoint; these studies all found that students had, on average, favorable impressions of PowerPoint-based instruction [ 36 , 47 – 52 ].

In addition to these studies of how presentation software impacts student performance and perception, two studies examined PowerPoint‘s impact on audience persuasion. Guadagno, Sundie, Hardison, and Cialdini [ 53 ] argue that we heuristically use a presentation’s format to evaluate its content, particularly when we lack the expertise to evaluate the content on its merits. To test this hypothesis, they presented undergraduates with key statistics about a university football recruit and asked them to evaluate the recruit’s career prospects. The same statistics were presented in one of three formats: a written summary, a graphical summary via printed-out PowerPoint slides, or a graphical summary via animated PowerPoint slides (self-advanced by the participant). Participants shown the computer-based PowerPoint presentation tended to rate the recruit more positively than other participants, and there was some evidence that this effect was more pronounced for football novices than for experts. The findings of this study suggest that some presentation formats may be more persuasive than others, perhaps because audience members conflate a sophisticated medium with a sophisticated message.

In the second study to examine the impact of PowerPoint on persuasion, Park and Feigenson [ 54 ] examined the impact of video-recorded presentations on mock juror decision-making. Participants were more persuaded by attorneys on either side of a liability case when the attorney used PowerPoint slides as opposed to merely oral argument. They also remembered more details from PowerPoint than oral presentations, and evaluated both attorneys as more persuasive, competent, credible, and prepared when they presented with PowerPoint. Based on mediation analyses, the researchers argue that the decision-making benefit of PowerPoint results from both deliberative and heuristic processing (“slow” and “fast” thinking, respectively, see [ 55 ]).

Both of these studies, however, share the methodological limitations of the educational research on PowerPoint. The first study [ 53 ] used only one PowerPoint presentation, and the second [ 54 ] used only two. The presentations used were not selected at random from a larger stimulus pool but instead were created by researchers who hypothesized that PowerPoint would enhance presentations. But even if the presentations had been sampled randomly, the sample is too small to allow one to generalize to a broader population. In studying performance, perception, or persuasion, one cannot reasonably assume that all presentation effects are equal.

Prezi: A zoomable user interface.

Released in 2009, Prezi has received generally favorable reviews by researchers, educators, and professional critics [ 56 – 60 ]. With a purported 75 million users worldwide, it is increasingly popular but still an order of magnitude less so than PowerPoint (with as many as one billion users; [ 61 ]). Like PowerPoint and other slideware, Prezi allows users to arrange images, graphics, text, audio, video and animations, and to present them alongside aural narration to an in-person or remote audience. In contrast to PowerPoint and other slideware in which users create presentations as a deck of slides, Prezi users create presentations on a single visuospatial canvas. In this regard, Prezi is much like a blackboard and chalk. But unlike a physical blackboard, the Prezi canvas is infinite (cf. [ 62 ]) and zoomable: in designing presentations, users can infinitely expand the size of their canvas and can zoom in or out. When presenting, users define paths to navigate their audience through the map-like presentation, zooming and panning from a fixed-angle overhead view.

Like Google Maps or modern touchscreens, Prezi is an example of what scholars of human-computer interaction label a zoomable user interface (ZUI). These interfaces are defined by two features: They present information in a theoretically infinite two-dimensional space (i.e., an infinite canvas) and they enable users to animate this virtual space through panning and zooming. Some of the original ZUIs were used to visualize history, navigate file systems, browse images, and—in the Prezi predecessor CounterPoint—create presentations [ 63 , 64 ].

As communication and visualization tools, ZUIs in general and Prezi in particular are interesting psychologically for several reasons. First, they may take advantage of our mental and neural architecture, specifically the fact that we process information through dissociable visual and spatial systems. Whereas the so-called “ventral” visual system in the brain processes information such as shape and color, the “dorsal” spatial system processes information such as location and distance [ 65 – 68 ]. When working in concert, these systems result in vastly better memory and comprehension than when they work in isolation. For example, in the classic “method of loci” individuals visualize objects in specific locations; when later trying to recall the objects, they visualize navigating through the space, “seeing” each object in turn. This method typically doubles retention, compared to other ways of trying to memorize objects [ 69 , 70 ]. Similarly, in research on note-taking, students learned more when they used spatial methods than when they used linear methods (e.g., [ 71 ]). Mayer’s multimedia learning principles and evidence in their favor also highlight the importance of spatial contiguity [ 72 ].

Thus, by encouraging users to visualize and process information spatially, ZUIs such as Prezi may confer an advantage over traditional tools such as PowerPoint that do not encourage such visuospatial integration. As Good and Bederson [ 64 ] write: “Because they employ a metaphor based on physical space and navigation, ZUIs offer an additional avenue for exploring the utilization of human spatial abilities during a presentation.”

Furthermore, ZUIs may encourage a particularly efficacious type of spatial processing, namely graphical processing. In graphical processing, digital objects (or groups of objects) are not just arranged in space, they are arranged or connected in a way makes their interrelationships explicit. Randomly placing animal stickers on a blank page, for example, engages mere spatial processing; drawing connecting lines between animals of the same genus or arranging the animals into a phylogenetic tree, however, engages graphical processing. Because ZUIs force users to “see the big picture,” they may prompt deeper processing than software that segments content into separate spatial canvases. By facilitating such processing, ZUIs may leverage the same learning benefits of concept maps and other graphical organizers, which have been studied extensively. For example, in their meta-analysis of the use of concept maps in education, Nesbit and Adesope [ 73 ] found that these graphical representations (especially when animated) were more effective than texts, lists, and outlines. By requiring one to organize the whole presentation on a single canvas instead of a slide deck, therefore, Prezi may prompt presenters (and their audiences) to connect component ideas with each other, contextualize them in a larger narrative, and remember, understand, and appreciate this larger narrative. Slideware, on the other hand, may do just the opposite:

PowerPoint favours information that can be displayed on a single projected 4:3 rectangle. Knowledge that requires more space is disadvantaged … How to include a story on a slide? Distributing the associated text over several slides literally breaks it into fragments, disturbing its natural cohesion and thus coherence … PowerPoint renders obsolete some complex narrative and data forms in favour of those that are easily abbreviated or otherwise lend themselves to display on a series of slides [ 74 ] (p399)

Of course these arguments are speculative, and one can also speculate on the psychological costs of ZUI or benefits of standard slideware. Perhaps PowerPoint does confer some of same spatial processing benefits of Prezi—after all, slides are spatial canvases, and they must be arranged to form a narrative—but in a way that better manages the limited attentional resources of the presenter or audience. Our point here is simply that Prezi, as a ZUI presentation tool, offers a psychologically interesting alternative to standard deck-based slideware, with a range of possible advantages that could be explored empirically to discover the psychological mechanisms of effective communication.

Like the PowerPoint literature, most of the published literature on Prezi is limited to observational reports or case studies. Brock and Brodahl [ 75 ] evaluated Prezi favorably based on their review and students’ ratings of course presentations. Conboy, Fletcher, Russell, and Wilson [ 76 ] interviewed 6 undergraduates and 3 staff members about their experiences with Prezi in lecture instruction and reported generally positive experiences. Masood and Othman [ 77 ] measured the eye movements and subjective judgments of ten participants who viewed a single Prezi presentation; participants attended to the presentation’s text more than to its other components (e.g., images, headings), and favorably judged the presentation. Ballentine [ 78 ] assigned students to use Prezi to design text adventure games and reported benefits of using the medium. Two other studies [ 79 , 80 ] surveyed college students about their course experiences with Prezi, and both reported similarly positive perceptions.

All of these studies, however, suffer from major demand characteristics, due to the fact that the researchers observed or asked leading questions of their own students about their own instruction (e.g., “Do you find lectures delivered with Prezi more engaging then[sic] other lectures?”, from [ 79 ]). Moreover, all suffer from the methodological limitations discussed earlier.

Other literature that addresses Prezi is purely theoretical and speculative: In discussing the pedagogical implications of various presentation software, Harris [ 81 ] mostly just describes Prezi’s features, but does suggest that some of these features provide useful visual metaphors (e.g., zooming in to demonstrate otherwise hidden realities). Bean [ 82 ] offers a particularly compelling analysis of PowerPoint and Prezi’s histories, user interfaces, and visual metaphors, and argues that Prezi is the optimal tool for presenting certain types of information (e.g., wireflow diagrams).

The experimental literature on Prezi is limited to three published studies. Castelyn, Mottart and Valcke [ 14 ] investigated whether a Prezi e-lecture with graphic organizers (e.g., concepts maps) was more effective than a PowerPoint e-lecture without graphic organizers. Claiming that Prezi encourages the use of graphic organizers, they purposefully confounded the type of presentation software with the presence of graphic organizers. Undergraduates randomly assigned to the different e-lectures did not differ in their knowledge or self-efficacy gains, but did prefer the graphically-organized Prezi lecture over the PowerPoint control lecture. In a follow-up study [ 83 ], the same researchers assigned undergraduates to create Prezi presentations that did or did not use graphic organizers, and found no effects of this manipulation on students’ self-reported motivation or self-efficacy. Chou, Chang, and Lu [ 24 ] compared the effects of Prezi, PowerPoint and traditional blackboard instruction on 5 th graders’ learning of geography. Whereas the Prezi group performed better than the control group (which received blackboard instruction) in formative quizzes and a summative test, the PowerPoint group did not; however, on a delayed summative test, both Prezi and PowerPoint students performed better than those in the control group. In direct comparisons of PowerPoint and Prezi, there were no differences in any of the learning measures. Taken together, the studies are not just limited in number: They present uncompelling findings and suffer from the same methodological shortcomings of the PowerPoint research.

The current study

In short, the extant literature does not clarify whether presenters should present with or without visual aids—and, if the latter, whether they should use standard deck-based slideware such as PowerPoint or a ZUI such as Prezi. One of the reasons why these basic questions remain unanswered is the methodological challenges inherent in comparing different presentation formats. We designed the current study to overcome these challenges.

To control for individual differences among presenters, we randomly assigned presenters to different presentation conditions. To control for individual differences among audience members, we used a counterbalanced, within-participants design for the first experiment, and between-participants random assignment in the second experiment. And to draw general inferences about the impact of presentation format—instead of specific inferences about particular presenters or presentations—we sampled from a large number of presentations, each created by a different presenter. Our methods have their own challenges, such as recruiting participants sufficiently trained in all presentation methods, allowing presenters adequate preparation time and context, approximating the psychological conditions of real-world presentations, and measuring the “signal” of presentation format among the added “noise” of so many presenters and presentations. In addition, the studies had to be double-blind: Neither presenters nor audience members could be aware of any hypotheses, and had to be free from any sorts of confirmation bias conveyed by the investigators.

To focus on presentations as a form of presenter-audience communication and limit the number of confounded variables, we purposefully controlled for other possible impacts of presentation software on professional practices or outcomes, including 1) the use of presentation artifacts (e.g., PowerPoint files, printed-out slides, online Prezis), and 2) facilitated collaboration among presentation designers. Unlike other research (e.g., [ 32 , 33 ]) we did allow for the possibility that presentation format not only affects how audiences perceive presentations, but also how presenters design or deliver them (e.g., by increasing their conceptual understanding of the topic, or decreasing their cognitive load during live narration; cf. [ 84 ]). In other words, presentation technologies might affect the cognition of both the audience and the presenter, so we designed the present studies to accommodate both sets of mechanisms.

To maximize the real-world relevance of this research, we relied on multimedia case materials from Harvard Business School [ 85 ]; these materials recreate the actual professional circumstances in which presentations are typically used. Because presentations are designed commonly both to inform and convince audiences, we examine outcome measures of learning as well as persuasion. And to minimize demand characteristics, we avoided the typical flaws of existing research (e.g., researcher-designed presentations, the researchers’ students as research participants) and adopted several countermeasures (e.g., recruitment language and participant instructions that obscured the research hypotheses, between-participant manipulation).

We adopted a two-phased approach in this research. In the first phase, participants with sufficient experience in oral, PowerPoint, and Prezi presentation formats were randomly assigned to create a presentation in one of those formats. We provided the necessary context, instruction, and time to create a short but realistic presentation. Participants then presented live to an actual audience, who judged each presentation’s efficacy. In the second phase, recorded versions of these presentations were presented to a larger online audience, affording us greater statistical power and allowing us to measure the impact of presentation format on decision-making and learning.

Experiment 1

Participants..

We recruited presenter participants via online postings (on Craigslist, the Harvard Psychology Study Pool, the Harvard Decision Science Lab Study Pool), email solicitations to the local Prezi community, and campus flyers. To create the fairest comparison between PowerPoint and Prezi, we recruited individuals who “have expertise in using both PowerPoint and Prezi presentation software.” Interested individuals were directed to a prescreening survey in which they reported their experience with and preference for giving different types of presentations. Only individuals who reported that they were “not at all experienced” with PowerPoint, Prezi or giving oral presentations were excluded from research participation. Out of the 681 respondents who completed the prescreening survey, 456 of them were eligible and invited to sign up for an available timeslot. Out of this group, 146 individuals—105 from the Harvard study pools, 33 from Craigslist, and 8 from the Prezi community—participated as presenters in the study and were compensated $40 for approximately two hours of their time. There were no significant differences between the three presentation groups on any demographics variables.

We also recruited 153 audience participants from the Harvard Decision Science Lab Study Pool and Craigslist using the following announcement:

Do you use Skype? Does your computer have a large screen (13 inches or larger)? If so, you may be eligible to participate in a 45 minute long online study. In this study, you will watch professional presentations over Skype from home on your personal computer.

Anyone who responded to the recruitment notice was eligible, provided that they were available during one of the prescheduled testing sessions. Audience participants were compensated $10 for approximately 45 minutes of their time. Table 2 presents demographic information for the presenter and audience participants. This study was approved by the Harvard Committee on the Use of Human Subjects (Study #IRB14-1427), and all participants in both experiments provided written consent.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.t002

Presenter procedure.

Presenter participants completed a survey remotely before attending the in-person, group sessions with other participants. In the online pre-survey, presenters first answered basic demographic questions (gender, age, education level, English fluency, and occupation). Next, they answered questions about their prior experience with, opinions about, and understanding of the different presentation formats (oral, Prezi, and PowerPoint). This section was prefaced with the following note:

A note on language: When we use the term "presentation," we mean a formal, planned, and oral presentation of any duration, including a public speech, an academic lecture, a webinar, a class presentation, a wedding toast, a sermon, a product demonstration, a business presentation, and so on. Examples of things we do NOT mean are: a theatrical performance, an impromptu toast at dinner, and any presentation with no audience. When we say PowerPoint presentations, we mean presentations that were made using Microsoft PowerPoint, not other software such as Apple's Keynote. When we say Prezi presentations, we mean presentations that were made using Prezi presentation software. Also, when we refer to "oral presentation", we mean a presentation that is only spoken and does not include any visual aids or the use of presentation software.

Participants were asked the following questions for each type of presentation:

• How experienced are you at making the following types of presentations? [5-level rating]
• When you give a presentation, how effective are the following types of presentations for you? [5-level rating, with “not applicable” option]
• When somebody else gives a presentation, how effective are the following types of presentations for you? [5-level rating, with “not applicable” option]
• How difficult is it for you to make the following types of presentations? [5-level rating, with “not applicable” option]
• In the last year, approximately how many of the following types of presentations did you make? [free response]
• In your lifetime, approximately how many of the following types of presentations have you made? [free response]
• For approximately how many years have you been making the following types of presentations? [free response]

As part of the expertise-related measures, we also asked the participants to identify the purported advantages and disadvantages of each presentation format, according to its proponents and critics, respectively. For PowerPoint and Prezi, we asked participants to identify whether or not it had particular functionalities (e.g., the capacity to record narration, create custom backgrounds, print handouts). Finally, participants viewed three sets of four short Prezi presentations and rank-ordered them from best to worst. In each set we manipulated a key dimension of Prezi effectiveness, according to its designers: the use of zooming, the connection of ideas, and the use of visual metaphor.

Presenter participants were tested in person at the Harvard Decision Science Lab, and randomly assigned to one of the three groups: Prezi, PowerPoint, or oral presentation. A total of 50 data collection sessions were held. In each session, there were typically three presenter participants (one for each presentation format); as a result of participants who failed to arrive or overbooking, there were ten sessions with only two presenters and six sessions with four presenters.

After providing informed consent, participants completed an online survey (in the lab) in which they rank-ordered three sets of recorded example PowerPoint and oral presentations. Identical in form to the example Prezi presentations they judged in the pre-survey, these short presentations were designed to assess their understanding of effective presentation design by manipulating a key aspect specific to each format. For PowerPoint presentations, we manipulated the use of text, use of extraneous “bells and whistles,” and graph design; for oral presentations, the three dimensions were verbal behavior, nonverbal behavior (other than eye contact), and eye contact. In selecting these dimensions (and those for Prezi), we consulted with a variety of experts, including software designers, speaking coaches, and researchers.

Next, presenters were shown material from a multimedia case created for and used by the Harvard Business School. Specifically, they were told the following (the company featured in the business case will be referred to anonymously here as “Company X” to respect their contractual agreement with the school):

For the next two hours, you are going to pretend to be the chief marketing officer of i-Mart, a large chain of retail stores. i-Mart recently made an offer to [Company X] to sell their products in i-Mart stores. Your boss, the CEO of i-Mart, has asked you to make a presentation to [Company X]’s leadership that persuades them to accept i-Mart’s offer. In your presentation, you will need to argue that accepting i-Mart’s offer is in [Company X]’s strategic interests, and address any concerns they may have about how accepting the offer might affect their corporate identity.

As a participant in this study, your primary job today is to prepare and then deliver this presentation. The presentation will be very short (less than 5 minutes) and made live (via Skype) to an audience of participants who are playing the part of [Company X] executives. Before you start planning your presentation, you will first learn more about [Company X] and how they’re thinking about i-Mart’s offer.

On their own computer workstation, participants studied the multimedia case for 30 minutes and were invited to take notes on blank paper provided for them. The multimedia case material included video and textual descriptions of Company’s X’s corporate culture, business model, and constituent communities.

Following this study period, participants were given 45 minutes to create a presentation in one of three randomly assigned presentation formats: PowerPoint, Prezi, or oral. To assist participants in the PowerPoint and Prezi conditions, we provided them with a set of digital artifacts including text, data, and graphics related to the case. Participants were not told that other participants were asked to present in different formats, and the workstations were separated from each other to prevent participants from discovering this manipulation.

After this preparation period, participants were taken individually (in a counterbalanced order) to another room to present to a live audience via Skype. For PowerPoint and Prezi presentations, we shared each participant’s presentation with the audience via screen sharing; thus they viewed both the presenter and the presentation. For those presenters who consented, we also recorded their presentations for future research purposes. After making their presentations, presenters completed a final survey about their presentation (e.g., “How convincing do you think your presentation will be to [Company X’s] board members”), the corporate scenario (e.g., What do you think [Company X] should do?”), and their presentation format (e.g., “How likely are you to recommend the presentation tool or presentation format you used to others to make professional presentations?”).

Audience procedure.

Audience participants completed the entire experiment remotely and online. Their participation was scheduled for the end of the presenter sessions so that the in-lab presenters could present live to a remote audience via Skype. We recruited between three and six audience participants per session, although participants who failed to arrive or Skype connectivity issues resulted in some sessions with only one or two audience participants: Five sessions had one participant, twelve sessions had two participants, sixteen sessions had three participants, eleven sessions had four participants, four sessions had five participants, and two sessions had six participants.

Individuals who responded to the recruitment notice completed a consent form and three online surveys prior to their scheduled Skype session. The first survey was a slightly modified form of the presenter pre-survey (demographics, background on presentation formats, rank-ordering of example Prezis) in which they also scheduled their Skype session. In the second survey, audience participants were told that they were “going to play the role of a corporate executive listening to several short business presentations,” and that their task was “to evaluate the quality of these presentations, each made by another participant engaged in a similar role-playing scenario.” They were then shown a brief video and textual description of the fictionalized corporate scenario (an abridged version of what presenter participants studied), and told the following:

You are a board member for [Company X], an innovative clothing company. Another company, i-Mart, wants to sell [Company Y’s products] in its stores. You and your fellow board members must decide whether or not to accept i-Mart's offer.

And in the third survey they rank-ordered the three sets of recorded example PowerPoint and oral presentations.

At the time of the scheduled session, the audience participants logged into Skype using a generic account provided by the research team, and were instructed to turn on their webcams and put on headphones. Once the first presenter participant was ready to present, the experimenter initiated the group Skype call, confirmed that the software was functioning properly, invited the presenter into the room to begin, left the room before the start of the presentation, monitored the presentation remotely via a closed-circuit video feed, and re-entered the room at the presentation’s conclusion. For Prezi and PowerPoint presentations, Skype’s built-in screen-sharing function was used to share the visual component of the presentation; audience participants viewing these presentations were instructed to use the split-screen view, with windows of equal size showing the presenter and the accompanying visuals.

Immediately after viewing each presentation, participants evaluated it via an online survey. They rated each presentation on how organized, engaging, realistic, persuasive, and effective it was using a five-level scale with response options of not at all , slightly , somewhat , very , and extremely . They were also invited to offer feedback to the presenter on how the presentation could be improved. After the final presentation, participants rank-ordered the presentations on the same dimensions (e.g., effectiveness, persuasiveness). Halfway through the experiment we added a final question in which we asked participants to rank-order PowerPoint, Prezi, and oral presentation formats “in terms of their general effectiveness, ignoring how well individual presenters (including today's) use that format,” and to explain their rank-ordering.

Prior experience and pre-existing beliefs.

Participants’ prior experience with and pre-existing beliefs about each presentation format provide a baseline that informs the research findings. If presenter participants had more experience with and more positive beliefs about one format than the others—and those assigned to that format induced more positive assessments from the audience members than did those assigned to the other formats—then the results are less compelling than if there was no correlation between these baseline measures and the experimental outcomes. The same applies to audience participants: Are they merely judging presentations according to their initial biases? Conversely, the results are most compelling if there is a negative association between the baseline measures and the experimental findings. For this reason—and to check that presenters assigned to the different formats did not happen to differ in these baseline measures—we analyzed participants’ prior experience with and pre-existing beliefs about PowerPoint, Prezi, and oral presentation formats.

Both audience and presenter participants were least experienced with Prezi and most experienced with oral presentations. At the outset, they rated PowerPoint as the most effective and easiest to use to present material and Prezi as the least effective and most difficult to use to present. For watching presentations, audience participants rated PowerPoint most effective and oral presentations least effective, but rated Prezi as more enjoyable than other formats. For watching presentations, presenter participants did not find any format more effective than the others. Table 3 presents full descriptive and inferential statistics for all self-reported measures of prior experience with and preexisting beliefs about Prezi, PowerPoint, and oral presentations.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.t003

Presenters assigned to different formats did not differ in their experience with or pre-existing beliefs about presentations formats. They also did not differ in how well they identified the purported advantages and disadvantages of each presentation format, how well they identified the software features of PowerPoint and Prezi, or how accurately they could identify effective presentations of each format.

Audience ratings.

In term of their prior experience with and pre-existing beliefs about presentation formats, both audience and presenter participants were biased in favor of oral and PowerPoint presentations and against Prezi. After presenters were randomly assigned to these different formats, how did the audience evaluate their presentations?

In examining how presentation format affected the audience’s ratings of the presentations, two complications arose. First, sessions with two presentations were missing one presentation format, and sessions with four presentations had two presentations of the same format. To address this complexity we only conducted pairwise comparisons of different formats (e.g., PPT versus oral) instead of omnibus tests, and—for those sessions with four presentations—we averaged ratings for the two same-format presentations. To be certain that the differing number of presentations per session did not somehow bias the results even after adopting these measures, we also conducted an analysis on the subset of sessions that had exactly three presentations.

Second, the number of audience participants per session ranged from one to six. In calculating descriptive statistics, some sessions would be weighted more heavily than others unless ratings were first averaged across participants within the same session, then averaged across sessions. In calculating inferential statistics, averaging across ratings from different participants within the same session who received presentations in the same format was necessary to ensure that the sampling units were independent of each other, an assumption of all parametric and most nonparametric tests. In other words, for both descriptive and inferential statistics, we treated session (instead of participant) as the sampling unit.

As an empirical matter, this multi-step averaging—within participants across identical presentation formats, then across participants within the same session—had little impact on the condition means (i.e., the average ratings of PowerPoint, Prezi, or oral presentations on each dimension). Compared to the simplest, raw averaging of all ratings in one step, the maximum absolute difference between these two sets of means was .07 (on a 1–5 scale) and the mean absolute difference was .04.

To test whether the presentations’ format affected their ratings, therefore, we conducted paired t -tests for each rating dimension, with presentation format as the repeated measure and mean session rating as the dependent variable. Because we conducted three tests for each dimension—pairing each format with every other—we controlled for multiple comparisons by dividing our significance threshold by the same factor (i.e., α = .05/3 = .017). Results revealed that presentation format influenced audience ratings. In particular, the audience rated Prezi presentations as significantly more organized, engaging, persuasive, and effective than both PowerPoint and oral presentations; on a five-level scale, the average participant rated Prezi presentations over half a level higher than other presentations. The audience did not rate PowerPoint presentations differently than oral presentations on any dimension. Table 4 and Fig 1 present these results.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.t004

Audience members rated presentations on each dimension on a 5-level scale (1 = “not at all,” 5 = “extremely”). The figure shows session-level means from all available data, including those from sessions with two or four presentations.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.g001

By limiting the analysis to the 34 sessions with exactly three presentations (one of each format), we could ensure that the sessions with two or four presentations did not somehow bias the results. Moreover, this procedure enabled us to conduct omnibus tests of presentation format for each rating dimension. These omnibus tests revealed significant effects for organization, F (2,66) = 12.9, p < .0001, engagement, F (2,66) = 4.6, p = .01, persuasion, F (2,66) = 3.9, p = .03, and effectiveness, F (2,66) = 7.2, p = .001. The results from post-hoc tests (Fisher’s LSD) aligned with the original pairwise comparisons: On all dimensions, the audience rated Prezi presentations higher than PowerPoint and oral presentations, p s < .05; PowerPoint and oral presentations were not rated differently on any dimension, p s>.05. (Note: All p -values for pairwise tests here and elsewhere are two-tailed.)

To explore whether the obtained results were somehow the result of demand characteristics, we analyzed ratings from only the first presentation in each session. This analysis yielded the same pattern of findings, with a to-be-expected reduction in statistical significance due to the loss of power. On all four dimensions, a one-way, independent-measures ANOVA yielded significant or marginally-significant results: organized, F (2,49) = 5.1, p = .01; engaging, F (2,49) = 2.5, p = .09; persuasive, F (2,49) = 2.6, p = .09; and effective, F (2,49) = 5.8, p = .006. In all cases, Prezi was rated higher than oral and PowerPoint presentations (post-hoc LSD p s ≤.08).

On average, the audience rated the presentations as realistic, with a modal rating of “very realistic.” Our intent in including this rating dimension was merely to verify that our experimental protocol resulted in realistic rather than contrived presentations; we therefore did not test for differences in these ratings as a function of group differences.

Audience rankings.

As just noted, participants randomly assigned to present using Prezi were rated as giving more organized, engaging, persuasive, and effective presentations compared to those randomly assigned to the PowerPoint or oral presentation conditions. In addition, at the end of each session audience participants rank-ordered each type of presentation on the same dimensions used for the ratings. Here we ask: Did the audiences’ rank-orderings align with the ratings?

The same complexities with the ratings data—the variable number of conditions and audience participants per session—applied as well to the ranking data. We therefore adopted a similar analytic strategy, with one exception: we conducted non-parametric rather than parametric pairwise tests, given the rank-ordered nature of the raw data and distributional assumptions that underlie parametric tests.

Using the session-level mean ranks, we tested the effect of presentation format with three sets of Wilcoxon signed-rank tests. The results had the identical pattern as those from the ratings data: the audience rated Prezi presentations as significantly more organized, engaging, persuasive, and effective than both PowerPoint and oral presentation (all p s ≤ .006); the audience did not rate PowerPoint presentations differently than oral presentations on any dimension. Table 5 and Fig 2 present these results.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.t005

Audience members ranked the presentations from best to worst, with lower ranks indicating better presentations. The figure shows session-level means from all available data, including those from sessions with two or four presentations.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.g002

As with the ratings data, we also conducted omnibus tests of only those sessions with exactly three presentations to validate that unbalanced sessions did not somehow bias the results. These tests (Friedman ANOVAs) revealed significant effects for organization, exact p = .0005, engagement, exact p = .04, and effectiveness, exact p = .003; we found only a marginally significant effect for persuasion, exact p = .08. Post-hoc tests (Fisher’s LSD) showed that the audience ranked Prezi presentations higher than PowerPoint and oral presentations on all dimensions, p s < .05; PowerPoint and oral presentations were not ranked differently on engagement, persuasion, or effectiveness, p s>.05, but the audience did rank PowerPoint presentations as more organized than oral presentations, p = .04.

Audience omnibus judgments of effectiveness.

Before and after the experimental session, audience participants judged the general effectiveness of the three presentation formats. In the pre-survey, they rated each format on its effectiveness for them as presenters and audience members. In the post-survey, they rank-ordered the formats on their “general effectiveness” and were instructed to ignore “how well individual presenters (including today's) use that format.” Although the pre- and post-questions differed in their phrasing and response formats, they nonetheless afford us an opportunity to investigate if and how their judgments changed over the course of the experiment.

As already described (see Table 3 ), the audience began the experiment judging PowerPoint presentations as most effective for presenters and audiences. They ended the experiment, however, with different judgments of efficacy: A majority (52%) ranked Prezi presentations as the most effective, a majority (57%) ranked oral presentations as least effective, and a plurality (49%) ranked PowerPoint presentations second in effectiveness. A Friedman’s ANOVA test (on the mean rankings) confirmed that participants rated presentation formats differently, exact p = .00007. Post hoc analysis with Wilcoxon signed-rank tests revealed that the audience ranked both Prezi and PowerPoint presentations as more effective than oral presentations, ps ≤.003). They did not rank Prezi and PowerPoint presentations significantly differently ( p = .15). Fig 3 presents these results.

Note: Means shown from pre-survey items are calculated based on responses from all participants (as opposed to only those who had experience with all presentation formats).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.g003

In the pre-survey, some audience participants reported prior experience viewing Prezi presentations but others did not (i.e., those who selected the “not applicable” response option). Compared to participants with no prior experience watching Prezi presentations ( n = 34), participants with prior Prezi experience ( n = 117) rated PowerPoint presentations (but not oral presentations) as less effective, t (149) = 2.7, p = .007, mean difference = .47, and less enjoyable for them, t (149) = 2.9, p = .004, mean difference = .53. Thus, prior experience with Prezi was associated with negative pre-existing judgments of PowerPoint.

Audience correlates of presentation ratings and rankings.

What, if any, individual-level variables—demographics and baseline survey responses—correlated with the audience’s judgments of the presentations? If, for example, the more experience the audience had with Prezi, the worse they evaluated those presentations, such a correlation would suggest that the current findings reflect a novelty effect.

We did not find any significant relationships between the audiences’ prior experience with a given presentation format (presenter experience rating, number of years, number of presentations watched last year or lifetime) and their ratings or rank-orderings of that presentation format on any dimensions, all | r| s < .16. The only pre-existing audience beliefs about the presentation formats (presenter effectiveness, presenter difficulty, audience effectiveness, audience enjoyableness) that correlated with their ratings or rankings were for oral presentations: the more effective participants rated oral presentations for them as audience members before the experiment, the more effective they rated and ranked oral presentations in the experiment as engaging, r = .22 and .26, respectively, p s < .01.

Among demographic variables, only age showed reliable correlations with the audiences’ evaluations of presentations: the older the participant, the more effective they rated PowerPoint presentations, r = .23, p = .007, the more persuasive they ranked PowerPoint presentations, r = .24, p = .006, and the less organized and persuasive they rated oral presentations, r = -.32, p = .001, and r = -.21, p = .01, respectively.

Audience participants’ success in distinguishing better from worse presentations of each format (i.e., their rank-ordering of short expert-created examples) did not correlate with their evaluations of the experimental presentations, nor did it correlate with the audiences’ self-reported experience with each format.

Audience free response.

Although we cannot assume that participants understood the reasons behind their rank-orderings (cf. [ 86 ]), their explanations may nonetheless offer some insight into how they perceived different presentation formats. In explaining their rank-ordering of the presentation formats in terms of their general effectiveness, 8% of participants who preferred Prezi mentioned that it was new or different or that PowerPoint presentations were old or outdated . More commonly, they described Prezi as more engaging or interactive (49%), organized (18%), visually interesting , visually compelling , visually pleasing , sleek , or vivid (15%), or creative (13%). Of participants who preferred PowerPoint, 38% described it as more concise , clear , easy to follow , familiar , professional , or organized than the other presentation formats. An equal percentage explained their choice in terms of negative judgments of Prezi, including comments that Prezi was disorienting , busy , crowded , amateurish , or overwhelming . Participants who rank-ordered oral presentations as most effective remarked that they felt more engaged or connected with the presenter, could better give their undivided attention to the presentation (29%), valued the eye contact or face-to-face interaction with the presenter (14%), or found presentation software distracting (14%).

Presenter outcomes and correlates of success.

A series of one-way ANOVAs revealed that presentation format did not affect the presenters’ judgments about the business scenario (e.g., “What do you think [Company X] should do?”), self-reported comprehension of the business scenario (“How much do you think you understand the situation with [Company X] and i-Mart?”), or ratings of their own motivation (e.g., “This activity was fun to do”), self-efficacy (e.g., “I think I am pretty good at this activity”), effort (e.g., “I tried very hard on this activity), and effectiveness as presenters (“How convincing do you think your presentation will be to [Company X]’s board members?”); participants using different presentation formats also did not differ in their performance on the multiple-choice test about the business scenario, all p s >.05.

The presenter groups did differ in how inclined they were to recommend their presentation format to others (“How likely are you to recommend the presentation tool or presentation format you used to others to make professional presentations?”), F (2,144) = 4.2, p = .02, with presenters who used Prezi or PowerPoint being more likely to recommend their format than those who made oral presentations, LSD p = .03 and p = .007, respectively.

Presenter variables—including demographic characteristics and experience with their assigned format—generally did not predict their presentation success, either in terms of audience ratings or rankings. The one exception was that Prezi presenters who were better able to identify effective Prezi presentations were rated and ranked as giving more effective and engaging presentations, .008 < p s < .04.

Participants who were randomly assigned to present using Prezi were judged as giving more effective, organized, engaging, and persuasive presentations than those who were randomly assigned to present orally or with PowerPoint. This was true despite the fact that both audience and presenter participants were initially predisposed against Prezi. What might explain these findings?

One explanation is a novelty effect: Perhaps the audience preferred Prezi simply because it is relatively new to them. It appears that this was not the case, however: Only 8% of participants claimed that they preferred Prezi because it was new or different, and there was no significant relationship between the audiences’ experience with Prezi and their ratings or rank-orderings.

Another explanation for these results is that the presenters or audience members were somehow biased towards the Prezi presentations. Again, however, this appears not to be the case. The presenters were least experienced in Prezi, judged themselves least effective presenting with Prezi, and found Prezi presentations hardest to create. We recruited only a small minority (8%) of presenters based on their prior association with Prezi, and used the most conservative exclusion criteria feasible: only individuals without any experience with Prezi or PowerPoint were excluded from participating. All presenters were randomly assigned to their presentation format and were blind to the experimental manipulation. In recruiting audience participants, we did not mention Prezi or PowerPoint, and selected participants only based on their access to Skype and a sufficiently large computer screen. In addition, we minimized contact between the investigator and research participants, and presentations were never identified based on their format; at the end of the experiment, in fact, some participants did not even realize that they had seen a Prezi presentation (as evidenced by their free responses). Data were collected through standardized, online surveys, the investigator was not in the room with the presenter during his or her presentation, and the investigator interacted with the audience only briefly to set up their Skype session. Finally, an analysis of ratings from only the first presentations yielded the same results as the full analysis, making implausible an interpretation based on audience demand characteristics.

Thus, the most likely explanation is that individuals do, in fact, perceive Prezi presentations more favorably than PowerPoint or oral presentation. Experiment 1 has several limitations, however. First, because each audience participant in Experiment 1 was exposed to multiple presentations, we were unable to evaluate presentations on their ultimate goal: to convince the audience (role-playing Company X board members) to accept i-Mart’s business offer. In other words, Experiment 1 demonstrated that Prezi presentations are more effective than other formats in terms of audience perceptions but not decision-making outcomes. Second, we asked the audience about their pre-existing beliefs and prior experiences with PowerPoint, Prezi, and oral presentations at the beginning of the Experiment 1; although it is difficult to imagine how this questioning could have produced the obtained results—particularly given the nature of their pre-existing beliefs and prior experiments—it is a remote possibility. Third, just like the results from any single experiment, the findings of Experiment 1 should be treated cautiously until replicated. We designed a second experiment to address these limitations and extend the findings from the first experiment.

Experiment 2

In Experiment 2 we showed online participants a single presentation from Experiment 1, and varied randomly which type of presentation (Prezi, PowerPoint, or oral) they viewed. We also randomly assigned some participants to view a presentation on material that was not related to the case material; this control condition served as a baseline that allowed us to estimate the impact of each presentation format. To minimize demand characteristics, we asked participants about their experiences with different presentation formats at the conclusion of the experiment (instead of the beginning), and did not expose participants to multiple presentation formats. Finally, to investigate better the nature of participants’ perceptions about presentation effectiveness, we distinguished between perceptions about the presentation, the presenter, and the audiovisual component of the presentation.

We recruited native-English speaking participants via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk using the following language: “In this study, you will read a business case, watch presentations, assume a role, and make a decision.” They were compensated $4 for approximately one hour of their time. Excluding pilot participants who offered us initial feedback on the survey and protocol, 1398 individuals consented to and began the experiment. Of these, 16 participants were excluded because of evidence that they didn’t complete the task properly (e.g., answering a long series of questions identically, incorrectly answering a “trap” question), and 305 were excluded because they dropped out before completing all of the outcome measures, leaving 1069 participants in the final dataset: 272 in the Prezi group, 261 in the PowerPoint group, 275 in the oral presentation group, and 261 in the control group. The number of excluded participants did not covary with group assignment or demographic variables. Table 6 presents demographic information on the included participants.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.t006

The main stimuli for this experiment consisted of recorded presentations from Experiment 1. For Prezi and PowerPoint presentations, these were split-screen videos showing the presenter on one side of the screen and the visuals on the other side. For the oral presentations, these were simply audiovisual recordings of the presenter.

Of the 146 presenter participants from Experiment 1, 33 either did not consent to being video-recorded or were not recorded due to technical difficulties. We therefore had a pool of 113 presentation videos to use for Experiment 2: 41 from the Prezi condition (out of a possible 50), 40 from the PowerPoint condition (out of possible 49), and 32 from the oral presentation condition (out of a possible 47). The proportion of presentations that were video-recorded did not vary with their format, exact p = .61.

Some of the recorded presentations from Experiment 1 were unusable because of intractable quality issues (e.g., inaudible speech, incomplete video, partially occluded presenter), leaving a total of 89 usable videos (34 Prezi, 28 PowerPoint, 27 oral). The proportion of videos removed because of quality issues did not vary with presentation format, exact p = .57.

We randomly selected 25 videos in each format, resulting in a total pool of 75 videos. Because of a URL typo that was not detected until after testing, one PowerPoint video was not presented and participants assigned that video were not able to complete the experiment. Video length varied by format, F (2, 71) = 4.2, p = .02, with PowerPoint and Prezi presentations lasted longer than oral presentations ( M = 5.9, 6.0, and 4.6 minutes, respectively).

We were concerned that we could have, perhaps unconsciously, selected better stimuli in the Prezi condition, which would have biased the results. To ensure that our judgments of major audiovisual problems and subsequent exclusion of some videos were not biased, we recruited a separate group of participants to rate the audiovisual quality of the 113 presentation videos. Using the following language, we recruited 455 individuals from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to serve as judges:

In this study you will judge the technical quality of three short videos. To participate you must have a high-speed Internet connection. We will compensate you $2 for 15–20 minutes of your time.

These participants were totally blind to the experimental hypotheses and manipulation. They completed the audiovisual rating task completely online via the Qualtrics survey platform, and were given the following instructions:

We need your help in determining the audiovisual quality of some Skype presentations we recorded. We want to know which presentations we can use for additional research, and which need to be eliminated due to major technical problems with the recordings. The sorts of technical problems that might exist in some of the videos are: incomplete recordings (the recording starts late or stops early), cropped recordings (the camera isn’t positioned properly), choppy or blurry video, and absent or inaudible audio.

You will watch a single presentation video. Please ignore any aspect of the recording other than its audiovisual quality. In particular, do not base your judgments on the presentation itself, including the presenter’s argument, appearance, or the nature of the accompanying slides. The only thing we care about is whether the audio and video were recorded properly.

Finally, please keep in mind that because these videos were recorded through Skype, even the best recordings are not very high quality.

These judge participants then watched a presentation video (selected at random), rated the quality of its audio and video (on a five-level scale from “very bad” to “very good”), and indicated whether or not there were “any major technical problems with the presentations audio or video”; those who reported major technical problems were asked to identify them.

To address any possibility of experimenter bias—which seemed unlikely, given that we designed the procedure from the outset to guard against such effects—we conducted a series of Presentation Format (Prezi, PowerPoint, oral) x Quality Judgment (inclusion, exclusion) ANOVAs to test 1) whether audiovisual quality was for any reason confounded with presentation format (i.e., the main effect of Presentation Format), 2) whether the excluded videos were indeed lower quality than the included videos (i.e., the main effect of Quality Judgment), and 3) whether our exclusion of videos was biased based on their format (i.e., the interaction between Presentation Format and Audiovisual Quality). We conducted the ANOVAs on the three measures of audiovisual quality collected from the independent judges: ratings of audio quality, ratings of video quality, and judgments of major audiovisual problems.

The results were straightforward: For all three dependent variables, there were no main effects of Presentation Format, p s > .13, but we did find a significant main effect of Quality Judgment (with included videos being judged better quality than excluded videos), all p s < .002, and did not find any interaction effects, all p s > .31. In other words, presentation format was not confounded with audiovisual quality, our judgments of quality corresponded to those of blind judges, and our exclusion of videos was unrelated to presentation format.

Participants completed the experiment entirely online through Qualtrics. After providing informed consent, and answering preliminary demographic and background questions (e.g., about their familiarity with business concepts and practices) they were told the following:

In this part of the study, you are going to play the role of a corporate executive for [Company X], an innovative clothing company. Another company, i-Mart, wants to sell [Company X’s] t-shirts in its many retail stores. You must decide whether or not to accept i-Mart's offer.

To help you make your decision, we will first provide you with some background on [Company X] and the i-Mart offer. You will see a series of short videos and text that describe relevant aspects of [Company X’s] origins, business model, practices, culture, and community. Please review this background material carefully.

Participants were then shown a series of brief video and textual descriptions of the fictionalized corporate scenario, including information on Company X’s business model, business processes, community, and culture. This material was an abridged version of what Experiment 1 presenter participants studied, but an expanded version of what Experiment 1 audience participants studied.

After viewing the multimedia case material, the participants were asked to identify what product Company X sells (a “trap” question to exclude non-serious participants) and to rate the background material on how engaging it was, how much they enjoyed it, how much they paid attention to it, and how difficult it was to understand.

Participants randomly assigned to the Prezi, PowerPoint, and Oral Presentation conditions were then told the following:

Now that you know a little bit about the company, you will watch a video presentation from another research participant. Just as you are playing the role of a [Company X] executive, the other participant is playing the role of i-Mart's Chief Marketing Office (CMO). In this presentation, he or she will try to convince you and your fellow [Company X] executives to accept i-Mart's offer.

Because this presentation is from another research participant playing the role of an i-Mart executive--and not an actual i-Mart executive--please disregard the presenter's appearance (clothing, age, etc). And because we did not professionally videorecord the presentation, please also try to disregard the relatively poor quality of the video compared to the videos you just viewed.

The purpose of this research is to understand what makes presentations effective. So please listen carefully and do your best to imagine that this is "real".

Identically to Experiment 1, participants rated the presentation on how organized, engaging, realistic, persuasive, and effective it was on a five-level scale from “not at all” to “extremely.” Using the same scale, these participants also rated the presenter on how organized, engaging, persuasive, effective, confident, enthusiastic, knowledgeable, professional, nervous, and boring he or she was.

Participants in the Prezi and PowerPoint groups were asked three additional questions. First, they were asked to rate the visual component of the presentation (i.e., the Prezi or the PowerPoint slides) on how organized, engaging, persuasive, effective, dynamic, visually compelling, distracting, informative, distinctive, and boring it was. Second, they were asked to rate whether the presentation had “not enough”, “too much” or an “about right” amount of text, graphs, images, and animations. And finally, there were asked to comment on the visual component of the presentations, including ways in which it could be improved.

All participants then summarized the presentation in their own words, with a minimum acceptable length of 50 characters. Participants were asked to rate how well they understood the “situation with [Company X] and I-Mart,” and to decide whether [Company X] should accept or reject i-Mart’s offer (on a 6-level scale, with the modifiers “definitely,” “probably,” and “possibly”).

In addition, we asked participants a series of recall and comprehension questions about the case. An example recall question is “According to the background materials and the presentation, approximately how many members does [Company X] have?”, with four possible answers ranging from 500,000 to 1.5 million. An example comprehension question is “According to the background materials, what is the biggest challenge [Company X] is facing?”, with possible answers ranging from “marketing” to “logistics.” These comprehension questions were based on the instructor’s guide to the business case material, and included open-ended questions (“Why do you think [Company X] should accept or reject i-Mart's offer?”). At this point we also asked another trap question (“What is 84 plus 27?”).

Finally, and after answering all questions about the business case and presentation, participants answered background questions about their experience with, knowledge of, and general preference for different presentation formats. They also rank-ordered the mini examples of Prezi, PowerPoint, and oral presentations in terms of their effectiveness. These background questions and tasks were the same as those used in Experiment 1.

Participants in the control condition completed the same protocol, with a few exceptions: First, instead of being shown presentations from Experiment 1, they viewed one of three instructional videos (matched for length with the Experiment 1 presentations). Before they viewed these videos they were told “Before you decide what to do about i-Mart's offer to [Company X], we would like you to watch an unrelated presentation and briefly answer some questions about it.” Second, they did not rate how realistic the presentation was, nor did they rate the visual component on how organized, engaging, persuasive, effective, dynamic, visually compelling, distracting, informative, distinctive, and boring it was. And finally, they did not complete the final set of background questions on the different presentation formats or rank-order the example presentations.

At the outset, participants rated oral and PowerPoint presentations as equally effective in general, and Prezi presentations as less effective than the other two formats. Just as we found in Experiment 1, participants rated themselves as more experienced and effective in making and oral and PowerPoint presentations compared to Prezi presentations. They also rated oral and PowerPoint presentations as more enjoyable and effective for them than viewing Prezi presentations. When asked how difficult it was to make the different types of presentations, they rated Prezi as more difficult than oral and PowerPoint presentations, and oral presentations as more difficult than PowerPoint ones. In terms of the number of presentations watched in the last year and in their lifetime—as well as the number of years of experience—they reported more experience watching oral compared to PowerPoint presentations, and more experience watching PowerPoint than watching Prezi presentations. The same pattern was true for their reported experience in making presentations, with one exception: They reported making more PowerPoint than oral presentations in their lifetime. Table 7 presents full descriptive and inference statistics for all self-reported measures of prior experience with and preexisting beliefs about Prezi, PowerPoint, and oral presentations. The experimental groups did not differ significantly on any of these variables.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.t007

Most participants (78%) were either “not at all familiar” or “slightly familiar” with Company X, and the modal participant reported being “somewhat experienced” with “concepts and practices from the business world, such as strategy, innovation, product development, sales, and marketing.” The groups did not differ significantly on these variables, nor did they differ on demographic variables such as age, gender, or education.

For overall judgments of the presentations, participants rated Prezi as more organized, effective, engaging, and persuasive than PowerPoint and oral presentations, and rated PowerPoint no differently than oral presentations. They also rated Prezi presenters as more organized, knowledgeable, effective, and professional than PowerPoint presenters and oral presenters; Prezi presenters were not rated differently from other presentations on how nervous, boring, enthusiastic, confident, persuasive, or engaging they were, and PowerPoint presenters were rated no differently than oral presenters on all dimensions. In judging the visual components of the Prezi and PowerPoint presentations, the audience rated Prezi presentations as more dynamic, visually compelling, and distinctive than PowerPoint slides, and marginally more effective and persuasive.

Examining the magnitude of mean differences, some effects are clearly larger than others. Most notably, Prezi presentations are rated as most organized and visually dynamic, and Prezi presenters are rated as most organized. Fig 4 and Table 8 present the descriptive and inferential statistics, respectively, for these audience ratings.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.t008

Note: rating dimensions are ordered by the magnitude of the difference between Prezi and the other presentation formats; for dimensions with no significant differences between presentation formats, only the overall mean is displayed.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.g004

The modal participant rated the background case material on Company X as “very engaging” and “completely enjoyable,” reported “mostly” understanding the situation with i-Mart and Company X, and rated the presentations as “very realistic.” Seventy percent of participants expected to do “somewhat well” or “very well” when quizzed about the case. There were no significant group differences on any of these variables.

Audience decision-making.

Did the presentations actually influence participants’ core judgment of the business scenario and, if so, was one presentation format more effective than others?

Participants who received a Prezi presentation accepted i-Mart’s offer 53.7% of the time, participants who received a PowerPoint presentation accepted the offer 49.8% of the time, participants exposed to an oral presentation accepted it 45.5% of the time, and participants exposed to the control presentation accepted it 37.5% of the time (see Fig 5 ). In an omnibus test, these differences were significant, exact p = .002. Specific comparisons revealed that Prezi presentations were significantly more influential than control presentations, exact p = 0003, marginally more influential than oral presentations, exact p = .06, and no more influential than PowerPoint presentations, exact p = .39; PowerPoint presentations were significantly more influential than control presentations, exact p = .006, but not oral presentations, exact p = .34; oral presentations were marginally more influential than control presentations, exact p = .07. In order to investigate the impact of presentation software on decision-making, we contrasted the Prezi and PowerPoint groups with the oral presentation groups. We found a marginally significant effect, exact p = .06.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.g005

On the whole, therefore, the participants’ decision-making results were concordant descriptively (if not always inferentially) with the rating results.

If participants’ perceptions of the presentations and decisions about the case were both influenced by presentation format, then we would expect them to be associated with each other. And this is indeed what we found. Excluding participants in the control group (who did not make judgments about comparable presentations), those who rejected the i-Mart offer rated presentations as worse than those who accepted the i-Mart offer. This was true for 23 of the 24 rating dimensions (“visually boring” was the exception), with the largest effects for ratings of effectiveness and persuasiveness. Those who rejected the offer rated the overall presentation, visual aids, and presenter as less effective than those who accepted the offer, with effect sizes (Cohen’s d ) of .93, .83, and .78, respectively. These effects were consistent across formats, all interaction p s > .05.

We conducted an analogous set of analyses that preserved the original 6-level scale of the decision variable (“possibly accept,” “probably accept,” “definitely accept,” “possibly reject,” “probably reject,” “definitely reject”). These analyses produced qualitatively identical results, both in terms of decision-making as a function of group assignment and the correlation between decision-making and presentation ratings.

Memory and comprehension.

Participants’ performance on the four rote memory questions did not vary across conditions, nor did their correct identification (according to the case designers) of reasons to accept or reject the offer, with one exception: Compared to those in the treatment groups, control participants were more likely to identify Company X’s ability to meet production demand as a reason to reject the i-Mart, omnibus exact p = .00004.

Correlates of presentation outcomes.

There were no notable correlations between demographic variables and participants’ ratings or decisions. In particular, participants’ experience with or preexisting beliefs about each presentation format did not correlate with their ratings of the experimental presentations, mirroring the results from Experiment 1 (but with much greater statistical power). Presentation length or recording quality (as assessed by the independent judges) did not correlate with presentation outcomes.

Participants’ success in distinguishing better from worse presentations of each format—that is, their rank-ordering of short expert-created examples—correlated slightly with their evaluations of the presentations. Most notably, the better participants did on the rank-ordering PowerPoint task, the worse they rated PowerPoint (but not Prezi) presentations on visual dimensions; the same was true for the Prezi task and presentations. For example, participants’ performance in the PowerPoint task correlated negatively with their judgments of how “visually dynamic” PowerPoint presentations were, r = -.22, p = .0005, and participants’ performance on the Prezi task correlated negatively with their judgments of how “visually dynamic” Prezi presentations were, r = -.16, p = .009. Thus, individuals with more expertise in PowerPoint and Prezi were more critical of PowerPoint and Prezi presentations, respectively.

Audiovisual attributes of Prezi and PowerPoint presentations.

To understand the media attributes and psychological mechanisms that underlie the observed effects of format, we examined how participants’ judgments about amount of text, graphs, animations, and images in the presentations correlated with their judgments of the presentations, the visual component of the presentations, and the presenters themselves. To examine these relationships, we conducted one-way ANOVAs with the various ratings as the dependent variables, and participants’ judgments (“not enough,” “about right,” “too much”) about the amount of text, graphs, animations, and images in the PowerPoint and Prezi presentations as the independent variable. For nearly all (80 of 96) of these ANOVAs, the results were highly significant, p s < .001. In judging the amount of text, participants typically rated “too much” or “not enough” text as worse than an “about right” amount; in judging graphs, images, and animations, participants typically rated “too much” and “just right” both as equally better than “not enough.” Averaging across all rating dimensions, the text and graph effects were over twice as large as the animation and image effects; averaging across all attributes, the effects for visual ratings was over twice as large as the effects for presenter and overall ratings. Participants’ judgments about the media attributes of presentations did, therefore, relate to their overall assessments of the presenters and presentations.

Summing across PowerPoint and Prezi presentations, the modal participant indicated that there was the “about right” amount of text, graphs, animations, and images. Only 21% of participants thought there was not enough or too much text; for the other dimensions, this percentage ranged from 42–51%. More participants indicated that there was not enough text, graphs, and animations in PowerPoint presentations than Prezi presentations, with animation as the most distinguishing attribute. Table 9 presents the descriptive and inferential statistics for these variables.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.t009

As shown in Table 10 , participants’ judgments about the audiovisual attributes of the Prezi and PowerPoint presentations were associated with the decision about the business scenario. Individuals who reported that there was not enough text, graph, animation, or images tended to reject the offer for i-Mart, whereas those who reported that there was the “about right” amount of those attributes tended to accept the offer. This effect was particularly pronounced for judgments of graphs and text. Participants who reported too much text also tended to reject the offer.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.t010

In sum, participants’ perceptions of presenters and the presentations correlated with their evaluations of the amount of text, graphs, images, and animations that were included in the presentations. Presenters and presentations were rated worse if they had too much or not enough text, and not enough graphs, images, and animations; in terms of audience decision-making, presentations were less effective if they contained too much or not enough text, or not enough graphs, animations, and images. PowerPoint presentations were judged to have too little of all attributes, particularly animation.

Replicating results from Experiment 1, participants rated presentations made with Prezi as more organized, engaging, persuasive, and effective than both PowerPoint and oral presentations. This remained true despite participants’ preexisting bias against Prezi and the different context of Experiment 2: the audience did not view multiple presentations of different formats and presentations were prerecorded instead of live. Extending the Experiment 1 results, participants also judged Prezi presentations as better in various ways (e.g., more visually compelling, more dynamic) than PowerPoint presentations; participants even rated Prezi presenters more highly (e.g., more knowledgeable, more professional) than PowerPoint presenters.

In making decisions as corporate executives, participants were persuaded by the presentations. Compared to the baseline decisions of the control group, those in the treatment group shifted their decisions by 16.2%, 12.3%, and 8.0% depending on whether they viewed Prezi, PowerPoint, or oral presentations, respectively. The non- or marginal significance of some between-format comparisons (e.g., PowerPoint versus Prezi) is difficult to interpret. We hesitate to dismiss these differences as statistical noise given their general alignment with rating results, as well as the correlation between business decisions and presentation ratings (which do vary significantly with format). For the more objective outcome of decision-making, we can, at the very least, provisionally conclude that Prezi presentations are more effective than oral presentations, and that software-aided presentations are more effective than oral presentations.

We did not find any evidence that the presentations affected participants’ memory or understanding of the case, nor did we find evidence that certain presentation formats impacted learning more than others. Given the goals of the presentations and design of the experiment, however, we hesitate to draw any conclusions from these null results.

General discussion

The most important finding across the two experiments is easy to summarize: Participants evaluated Prezi presentations as more organized, engaging, persuasive, and effective than both PowerPoint and oral presentations. This finding was true for both live and prerecorded presentations, when participants rated or ranked presentations, and when participants judged multiple presentations of different formats or only one presentation in isolation. Results from Experiment 2 demonstrate that these presentations influenced participants’ core judgments about a business decision, and suggest that Prezi may benefit both behavioral and experiential outcomes. We have no evidence, however, that Prezi (or PowerPoint or oral presentations) facilitate learning in either presenters or their audience.

Several uninteresting explanations exist for the observed Prezi effects, none of which posit any specific efficacy of Prezi or ZUIs in general: namely, novelty, bias, and experimenter effects. We consider each in turn.

Novelty heavily influences both attention and memory [ 87 , 88 ], and the benefits of new media have sometimes dissipated over time—just as one would expect with novelty effects [ 3 ]. However, we found no evidence that novelty explains the observed benefits of Prezi: Participants who were less familiar with Prezi did not evaluate Prezi presentations more favorably, and only a small fraction of participants who favored Prezi explained their preference in terms of novelty. We therefore are skeptical that mere novelty can explain the observed effects.

We also considered the possibility that participants had a pre-existing bias for Prezi. This seems unlikely because presenter participants were selected based only on minimal experience with both PowerPoint and Prezi and were assigned randomly to the experimental groups; audience participants from both experiments were selected based merely on high-speed internet access, and the words “Prezi” and “PowerPoint” were not used in any audience recruitment material. In fact, both sets of participants entered the research with biases against Prezi, not for Prezi: They reported more experience with PowerPoint and oral presentations than Prezi, and perceived PowerPoint and oral presentations as more (not less) efficacious than Prezi. Thus, we reject the idea that the results simply reflect pre-existing media biases.

For many reasons, we also find it unlikely that experimenter effects—including demand characteristics (i.e., when participants conform to the experimenters’ expectations)—can explain the observed effects. First, at the outset we did not have strong hypotheses about the benefits of one format over the others. Second, the results are subtle in ways that neither we nor a demand characteristics hypothesis would predict: the effects on subjective experience diverged somewhat from the effects on decision-making, and there were no memory or comprehension effects. Third, the between-participants design of Experiment 2 (and between-participants analysis of Experiment 1 ) limited participants’ exposure to a single presentation format, thereby minimizing their ability to discern the experimental manipulation or research hypotheses. Fourth, we ensured that the presentations were equally high-quality; we did not unconsciously select Prezi presentations that happened to be higher quality than presentations in the other formats. Fifth, the random assignment of presenters to format limits the possible confounding of presenter variables with presentation formats or qualities; and no confounding with format was observed in presenters’ preexisting beliefs, prior experience, or demographics. And finally, in Experiment 2 we only explicitly mentioned or asked participants questions about Prezi, PowerPoint, and oral presentations at the conclusion of the experiment, after collecting all key outcome data.

We therefore conclude that the observed effects are not confounds or biases, but instead reflect a true and specific benefit of Prezi over PowerPoint or, more generally, ZUIs over slideware. If, however, these experimental effects merely reveal that Prezi is more user-friendly than PowerPoint—or that PowerPoint’s default templates encourage shallow processing by “[fetishizing] the outline at the expense of the content” [ 89 ] (pB26)—then we have learned little about the practice or psychology of communication. But if these effects instead reflect intrinsic properties of ZUIs or slideware, then they reveal more interesting and general insights about effective communication.

It is difficult to understand Prezi’s benefits in terms of user-friendliness because the odds were so clearly stacked in PowerPoint’s favor. Presenters were much more experienced in using PowerPoint than Prezi and rated PowerPoint as easier to use than Prezi. Especially given the task constraints—participants only had 45 minutes to prepare for a 5-minute presentation on a relatively new, unfamiliar topic—Prezi’s user interface would have to be improbably superior to PowerPoint’s interface to overcome these handicaps. Moreover, participants’ prior experience with PowerPoint or Prezi did not correlate with their success as presenters, as one would expect under an ease-of-use explanation. Finally, audience participants did not simply favor the Prezi presentations in an even, omnibus sense—they evaluated Prezi as better in particular ways that align with the purported advantages of ZUIs over slideware. This pattern of finding makes most sense if the mechanism were at the level of media, not software.

Participants’ evaluations of Prezi were particularly telling in three ways. First, in participants’ own words (from Experiment 1 ), they frequently described Prezi as engaging , interactive , visually compelling , visually pleasing , or vivid , and PowerPoint as concise , clear , easy to follow , familiar , professional , or organized . Second, in participants’ ratings (from Experiment 2 ), the visuals from Prezi presentations were evaluated as significantly more dynamic, visually compelling, and distinctive than those from PowerPoint presentations. And third, in judging the audiovisual attributes of presentations, participants’ identified animations as both the attribute most lacking in presentations and the attribute that most distinguished Prezi from PowerPoint; furthermore, the more a presentation was judged as lacking animation, the worse it was rated. Taken together, this evidence suggests that Prezi presentations were not just better overall, but were better at engaging visually with their audience through the use of animation. Because ZUIs are defined by their panning and zooming animations—and animation is an ancillary (and frequently misused) feature of slideware—the most parsimonious explanation for the present results is in terms of ZUIs and slideware in general, not Prezi and PowerPoint in particular. The medium is not the message, but it may be the mechanism.

The animated nature of ZUIs makes more sense as possible mechanism for the observed effects when one considers relevant literature on animation. Past research has shown that animation can induce physiological and subjective arousal (e.g., [ 90 , 91 ]) and facilitate attention, learning, and task performance (e.g., [ 92 – 94 ]; but see also [ 95 , 96 ]). Most pertinently, people appear to prefer animated media over static media. Participants rate animated online advertisements as more enjoyable, persuasive, effective, and exciting than static online advertisements [ 97 , 98 ], animated websites as more likeable, engaging, and favorable than static websites [ 99 ], and animated architectural displays as clearer than static displays [ 100 ]. In an experiment of online academic lectures, participants preferred whiteboard-style animations over a slideware-style version matched for both visual and audio content [ 101 ]. Moreover, ZUI’s use of animation aligns with recommended principles for using animation effectively in presentations, which include the creation of a large virtual canvas and the use of zooming to view detail [ 102 ]. Slideware, on the other hand, encourages the use of superfluous animation in slide transitions and object entrances/exits, despite evidence that adding such “seductive details” to multimedia presentations can be counterproductive [ 72 ].

Therefore, we not only conclude that audiences prefer Prezi over PowerPoint presentations, but also conclude that their preference is rooted in an intrinsic attribute of ZUIs: panning and zooming animations. Compared to slideware’s sequential, linear transitions (and oral presentations’ total lack of visual aids), zooming and panning over a virtual canvas is a more engaging and enjoyable experience for an audience.

From this perspective, the reason that participants rated Prezi presentations as more persuasive, effective, and organized than other presentations—and Prezi presenters as more knowledgeable, professional, effective, and organized than other presenters—was because they confuse media with messages and messengers. Dual-process models of persuasion contend that opinion change occurs through not just slow deliberations grounded in logic and reason but also through fast shortcuts rooted in associations and cues [ 103 – 106 ]. If better presenters with better arguments tend to give better presentations, then an audience’s experience while viewing a presentation may shade their judgments about its presenter or argument. This is the same basic logic of research that demonstrates PowerPoint’s persuasion advantage over oral presentations [ 53 , 54 ]. Just as audiences appear more persuaded by slideware than by oral presentations, they also appear more persuaded by ZUI than by slideware presentations. But unlike past research, we do not argue that audience members use technological sophistication as a cue for argument quality [ 53 ] or presenter preparedness [ 54 ]; instead, we suggest that they use their subjective viewing experience as a heuristic for judging both presentations and presenters. Because ZUI presentations are more engaging than slideshows, ZUI presentations and presenters are judged more positively than slideshows.

Concluding remarks

Media research, including research into presentation software, is plagued methodologically by a lack of experimental control, the unjustifiable assumption that media effects are constant across individuals and content, and a failure to account for the biases of all involved: the presenters, the audiences, and the researchers. In the research reported here we strived to overcome these challenges by randomly assigning presenters and audience members to competing presentation formats, blinding them to the experimental manipulations, and sampling a sufficient array of presentations within each format.

Our conclusions about the advantages of ZUIs (such as Prezi) over slideware (such as PowerPoint) and oral presentations are, of course, tentative. Further research will need to replicate the findings across different presentation contexts, clarify whether the subjective benefits of ZUIs over slideware result in decision-making or behavioral advantages, and better investigate the precise media attributes responsible for these advantages. Like others [ 107 ], we caution against technological determinism: Presentation medium is but one of many factors that determine presentation success, and presentations that rely on any given medium can succeed or fail. Because slideware can be used to zoom and pan over a virtual canvas just as ZUIs can be used to create slideshows, the benefits of ZUIs over slideware are ultimately based on affordances: How much do certain formats encourage or enable psychologically advantageous media attributes, such as zooming and panning animations?

In many ways, it is surprising that we found any effects of presentation medium. The presentations differed in many ways aside from their format, ways that surely influenced their effectiveness: Each presentation was made by a different person (sampled from a diverse pool of participants), presenters chose what content to include in their presentation, and presenters decided how to convey that content within their assigned format. Under real-world circumstances in which presentations of different formats are actually contrasted with each other, we expect this background “noise” to be greatly reduced and impact of format correspondingly greater.

Supporting information

S1 file. experiment 1 audience pre-survey..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.s001

S2 File. Experiment 1 audience post-survey.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.s002

S3 File. Experiment 1 presenter pre-survey.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.s003

S4 File. Experiment 1 presenter post-survey.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.s004

S5 File. Experiment 2 audience post-survey.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.s005

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Erin-Driver Linn, Brooke Pulitzer, and Sarah Shaughnessy of the Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching for their institutional guidance and support, Nina Cohodes, Gabe Mansur, and the staff of the Harvard Decision Sciences Laboratory for their assistance with participant testing, Michael Friedman for his feedback on pilot versions of the study protocol, and Tom Ryder for his support in adapting the multimedia case for research purposes.

Author Contributions

• Conceptualization: SMK ST STM.
• Data curation: ST STM.
• Formal analysis: ST STM.
• Funding acquisition: SMK ST STM.
• Investigation: ST.
• Methodology: SMK ST STM.
• Project administration: ST STM.
• Resources: ST STM.
• Software: ST STM.
• Supervision: SMK ST STM.
• Validation: SMK ST STM.
• Visualization: STM.
• Writing – original draft: STM.
• Writing – review & editing: SMK ST STM.
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The Disadvantages of Presentation Technology

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Multimedia Presentation Tips

What are some of the benefits of presentations in business & professional settings, what strategies can you use to incorporate effective visual elements into a business presentation.

• How to Make a New Slide in Google Docs
• How to Connect an Interactive Whiteboard to a Computer

As a small business owner, you're used to standing up in front of a crowd, whether you're leading a staff meeting or chairing a sales presentation to land a new client. Chances are you rely on presentation technologies to supplement your speech. Although one of the advantages of using technology in presentations is that it adds visual support for your discussion, you also have to consider the disadvantages that can diminish the impact of your presentation. Knowing the advantages and disadvantages of presentation software will help you use the technology more effectively.

Disconnect Between Speaker and Audience

If you're using presentation technology such as a PowerPoint presentation, you might rely on it to the point of alienating your audience. Sophia Learning explains that rather than facing your audience, you might face the projection screen so you can constantly refer to the presentation. You risk reading the screen to your audience rather than truly engaging with them. Moreover, you might hover over the computer screen and mouse rather than making use of your space and moving around the room while sharing information about your small business.

Delays from Technical Issues

When considering the advantages and disadvantages of presentation methods using technology, you'll find that one of the distinct disadvantages is its ability to fail. Drexel University warns that technical troubles can hamper your presentation and lead to an awkward delay. Rather than grabbing your audience's attention, they're left bored while you try to get your presentation up and running.

If you aren't presenting in the comfort of your own office, you might be working with computers with which you're unfamiliar. This can increase the risk of technical glitches during your presentation.

Distraction From Overwhelming Presentations

Presentation technologies allow you to share a great deal of information with your audience — but Lumen Learning warms you might share too much. A presentation of endless digital slides means you can add as much information as you want. Text-heavy slides leave your audience reading rather than listening to your message. On the other hand, presenters may use too many effects and transactions and end up distracting rather than engaging the audience.

Presentation technologies, when used ineffectively, can take the focus away from you, the speaker, and onto the presentation technology itself. So rather than seeing the advantages of using technology in presentations, your message may get lost.

Lack of Purpose

Presentation technologies aren't always necessary. Building a computer-based presentation that lacks any real substance may actually harm the impact of your presentation. Listing keywords haphazardly on slides confuses the audience rather than helping them. Ultimately, your audience may wonder what your message was if they're focused on a poorly put-together presentation.

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Using PowerPoint for Presentations

If you want to make visually captivating and professional-looking presentations, understanding PowerPoint and the benefits of PowerPoint is vital for you. Microsoft PowerPoint is a popular presentation tool used by students and professionals daily. 

Using PowerPoint has made communicating complex ideas and data easier and more engaging, thanks to its user-friendly interface and customizable presentation templates . While there are many benefits of powerpoint, it also has some drawbacks. This article examines what PowerPoint presentations offer and what they don’t. If you are still determining whether it is the right tool for your next presentation, we will help you decide.

What is Microsoft PowerPoint and How Does It Help Create Presentations?

Microsoft PowerPoint is a part of the Microsoft Office Suite developed by Microsoft Corporation. It is a widely used tool for making slideshows or presentations, including images, video, text, animation, and other multimedia elements. Users can use PowerPoint to effectively present their ideas and data to a broad audience in a simple and easy-to-understand manner.  It also helps in creating presentations real quick! So, let us see how it helps with the same: 

• Visual Appeal : Visual appeal is one of the main benefits of PowerPoint. Incorporating PowerPoint graphics , images, and multimedia elements facilitates the creation of visually appealing and engaging presentations in PowerPoint.
• Customization : One of the many benefits of PowerPoint presentations is the freedom to customize the template. It offers various customizable templates with different designs, tools, and effects that help the users or presenters to tailor their slides or presentations to the subject matter and audience.
• Multimedia Integration : To improve the quality and impact of the presentation, users can integrate multimedia elements in PowerPoint, like high-quality videos, audio, animations., etc.
• Audience Engagement : PowerPoint provides various tools and features, such as interactive polls and quizzes, to engage the audience and promote participation during the presentation.
• Accessibility : Accessibility is one of the advantages of PowerPoint that allows users to create presentations accessible to a broad audience, including those with hearing or visual impairments, through features such as closed captions and alternative text descriptions.

What Are The Top 10 Benefits Of Using PowerPoint For Presentation?

The benefits of using PowerPoint are not limited only to efficiently conveying ideas in a meeting, college or school presentations. Apart from students and business professionals, people in the creative field also use PowerPoint to create mood boards or to ideate any creative project. So, if you are wondering what are the benefits of using Microsoft PowerPoint then keep on reading: 

Offers Excellent Data Visualization

• Great Audience Engagement 

Create Visually Stunning Slides Quickly

Multiple interactive features, gives accessibility to different features, has various designs, and you can even create yours, highly collaborative tool.

• PowerPoint Presentations Can Be Saved In Various Platforms
• Helps To Communicate With The Audience Professionally

Offers Consistency To Each Slide

Great audience interaction.

PowerPoint Presentation Can Be Saved In Various Formats

Helps communicate with the audience professionally.

Now that we have discussed the advantages of Microsoft PowerPoint, let us jump onto seeing some of its disadvantages.

What Are The Disadvantages Of Using PowerPoint For Presentation?

Apart from the various benefits of Microsoft PowerPoint, it also has some disadvantages. Let us see some of the drawbacks of using PowerPoint for presentations: 

• Over-Reliance on Slides

Information Overload

• Files are not saved automatically
• Lack of originality
• Most features usually remain unexplored

Over Reliance on Slides

Files are not saved automatically, lack of originality, most features usually remain unexplored, when should i use powerpoint to create presentations.

Due to the diverse benefits of Microsoft PowerPoint, there are various instances when a user can use PowerPoint for Presentations. For example, when a user wants to present complex information or wants to include visual aids to support the information or wants to present to an audience that is not physically present or intends to propose an idea in a business meeting or conference. Here is a table showing how different professionals can use PowerPoint: 

Final Thoughts

Presenting visually appealing and engaging presentations can be achieved with PowerPoint. In addition to offering a wide range of design tools and features, it offers several communication tools that help presenters effectively communicate their ideas to a wide audience. 

However, apart from the benefits of a PowerPoint presentation, it’s imperative to remember that it also has disadvantages. The disadvantages include the potential for information overload, lack of originality, and the risk of disengaging the audience if not used appropriately. 

When choosing PowerPoint for a presentation, the decision should be based on the presentation’s goals and needs. In addition, the audience and the presenter should have their preferences taken into consideration.

Can I rely solely on PowerPoint to deliver an effective presentation?

How can i avoid information overload in my powerpoint presentation, can i use powerpoint presentations for remote presentations or online meetings, is it necessary to use templates for my powerpoint presentations, how can i ensure my powerpoint presentations are accessible to all audiences.

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Lack of communication in the workplace: causes and effects

Workplace communication is the exchange of information and ideas within an organization. Effective workplace communication is essential for companies to work effectively and productively.

With great internal communication between employees and employers comes increased morale, productivity, and commitment, especially with employers who spend the time and energy to create open communication lines.

These types of managers quickly build trust among employees , resulting in increased productivity and performance. Employees who effectively communicate with their colleagues and bosses continue to be valuable assets to the company.

Why is communication so important in the workplace?

• It avoids confusion
• It provides purpose
• It fosters a transparent company culture
• It creates accountability
• It builds productivity and growth

Effective communication in the workplace is central to reaching all business goals, as it defines organizational goals and helps coworkers better collaborate with one another. However, not all communication in a business environment is created equal. Some companies suffer from poor communication, resulting in friction, frustration, and confusion.

Poor communication often creates a tense environment where people are not motivated to be productive and not inspired to collaborate. This lack of motivation then affects how employees relate to clients and potential customers, negatively affecting the bottom line. So what is poor communication, exactly, and what are some of the causes and effects of poor communication?

What is poor communication in the workplace?

Poor workplace communication might mean that lines of communication are entirely broken, but this is relatively rare. More often, communication issues occur when there is a discrepancy between what is said and what is heard, whether between colleagues or between an employee and a manager. More specifically, the understanding between two people is not mutual when the person being communicated with misunderstands what you’re trying to communicate.

Here’s an example. An employer sets a deadline for turning in data on Friday, and an employee readily agrees to get the data in on Friday. On the surface, this may seem like good communication. However, the employee might think they have until 5 p.m. to deliver the data when it is actually due on Friday at 10 a.m. This mismatch of deadlines stemmed from poor communication — the information communicated between the employer and employee was incomplete.

What are the causes of poor communication in the workplace?

Poor leadership.

Employees look to business owners and their managers for direction in the workplace. Good communication that starts from the top down motivates staff members to be more productive and innovative. These good leaders clearly communicate objectives, goals, and future visions.

Poor leaders, on the other hand, are often indecisive and unable to inspire their teams. They may be impatient in their communication style, conveying that impatience through their tone of voice, facial expressions, or other means of nonverbal communication.

Poor communication and bad leadership may also stem from managers who lack information themselves. These managers are unable to answer questions or clarify points, so their employees are left even more confused and frustrated than when they started.

Unclear Objectives

Goals and objectives are powerful in business, as they focus attention on achieving desirable outcomes, such as profitability. Profitability does not just happen magically. It requires attentive employees who know what management expects them to accomplish and transparent objectives provide that direction.

If organizations lack clear strategic goals, or if managers are not informed of the tactical objectives their teams are expected to meet, employees will not receive the direction they need. This leads to confusion and frustration. Employees may end up underperforming even when trying their best.

Limited Feedback

Feedback is information that flows to a person who performed an action, informing that person of the results of that action. It is one of the most important forms of communication because it’s where real learning happens.

Effective employee feedback , both positive and negative, provides valuable information for making important decisions and improvements in the future. Top-performing companies recognize feedback as a key step in their continuous improvement cycles.

Without clear testing steps for each iteration and action, feedback will be limited. For example, does a new website form represent a significant improvement over the old one? Is a new product feature significantly easier to use? Without good feedback, employees will not have clear direction for improvement.

Demoralized Employees

When an employee loses interest in their work, they often become disengaged, creating communication problems for the company. Employees who feel demoralized often feel unvalued, unappreciated, and even disrespected despite their capacities and talents. This will often lead to the employee becoming unproductive and irritable, disregarding open lines of communication.

Restoring employee morale may involve reevaluating workplace culture to create an environment in which employees are personally invested enough to work—and communicate—with a good attitude.

Learn 5 Ways to Motivate Disengaged Employees

Cultural Diversity in the Workplace

Diverse work environments have been proven to help companies grow, as they bring in new ideas for greater creativity and innovation. However, one challenge of increasing diversity in the workplace is the potential for poor communication. Different people from different backgrounds relay messages in different ways, with varied nonverbal cues, and the way messages are interpreted will often be different.

What are the effects of poor communication in the workplace?

Unpredictable work environment.

Poor communication causes a lack of predictability and stability within the workplace, leading to an uneasy environment for employees to work in. Employees might not clearly understand their objectives for the week or might misunderstand the process for a project, leading to poor productivity and ineffectiveness at their job. Employees and employers have a responsibility to facilitate an active dialogue in order to create a stable work environment in which employees can do their best work.

Less Effective Collaboration

Collaboration and communication go hand in hand. If employees are unable to communicate effectively, collaboration is very likely to suffer as well. Collaboration in the workplace is important in many ways, from promoting self-analysis to efficient problem-solving. Without collaboration, teams end up working in isolated silos, unaware of the progress and learning that has been achieved in other areas.

Workplace Conflict

The effects of poor communication may cause tensions to rise, resulting in potential conflicts between employees. Although they might not be immediately obvious, these tensions can cause two-way communication to break down even more.

An unwillingness to communicate may cause employees to make the wrong assumptions, resulting in work that has to be repeated—sometimes over and over. Good communication prevents workplace tensions from arising in the first place.

With poor communication, employees may have a harder time meeting expectations and deadlines, resulting in them falling behind. This could leave them with a sense of guilt, embarrassment, or even low self-esteem. This, in turn, can lead to significant drops in job satisfaction and a significant rise in attrition.

Lack of communication between management and employees

Although the lack of effective communication between management and employees can lead to significant frustration, poor communication is rarely intentional. In most cases, breakdowns in communication can be traced back to poor communication skills or simply not having the right communication tools.

Tips for more effective communication in the workplace

Effective workplace communication starts with strong workplace communication skills. The following communication strategies and effective communication practices can significantly improve communication between coworkers.

Active Listening

Ineffective communication often begins when the desire to communicate information is so strong that it overpowers the impulse to listen. Effective teams employ strong two-way communication to ensure that messages are communicated well in both directions.

When a manager conveys information, for example, employees may raise concerns about what they are being asked to do. Managers need to listen actively to those concerns, repeating them to ensure understanding and addressing them directly.

Constructive Feedback

Constructive feedback is the art of conveying feedback that is clear, actionable, and positive. For example, a creative director might say something like this: “I love how you’ve incorporated our brand elements into this design. Let’s make this section here larger to really draw the eye to the focal point. Nice work.”

The first statement is positive, making sure the listener feels appreciated. The next statement provides clear, actionable direction that the artist can easily follow. It will improve the design while also conveying information the artist can learn from. The final statement returns to the overarching message of appreciation, recognizing the effort that the artist has put into the work.

Eye Contact

In oral communication, maintaining eye contact while listening will reassure the speaker that they are being heard. It is important, however, that facial expressions remain calm and open. Eye contact can be perceived as aggressive or derogatory when accompanied by negative emotional cues.

Nonverbal Communication

Eye contact is just one example of the nonverbal communication that makes up a huge portion of the information we take in during face-to-face communication. Effective workplace communication skills involve profound self-awareness of body language and facial expressions. The speaker must be aware not just of the words they’re choosing but of the way in which those words are delivered.

One common misconception is the idea that strong communication is delivered with a sense of force. In fact, remaining calm, even under pressure, conveys inner strength and is a far more effective communication method. A team leader who listens openly and addresses concerns with empathy is much more likely to foster active team collaboration and achieve operational results.

Frequent Communication

To combat poor communication, good team leaders write project descriptions clearly, assign individual tasks fairly, check in regularly to ask how things are, and set aside time each week to address workplace concerns. They also maintain an open-door policy to make sure grievances are addressed quickly and efficiently.

For these leaders, informal conversations, casual interactions, and honest communication often play key roles in their effective communication skills.

How to address poor communication in the workplace

To open communication channels, break down communication barriers, and build more effective teams, conveying key communication skills may not be enough. Company goals and company policies need to be conveyed consistently, across multiple communication channels. Senior management depends on middle management to bridge the gap between strategy and tactics, fostering collaboration and strong communication across every human interaction.

This requires more than good communication skills—effective communication also requires the right communication tools. At the managerial level, this might include project management tools to keep everyone on the same page or video conferencing tools to include remote teams in face-to-face interactions. Effective teams need many types of workplace internal communication tools to foster and maintain employee satisfaction.

For enterprise organizations, company communications present an even bigger problem. Maintaining a strong, vibrant company culture across remote teams in different cities and even around the world requires communication tools that are designed to address these unique needs.

Improving company communications—how to solve poor communication in the workplace

From demoralized employees to workplace conflicts, poor communication detrimentally affects an organization’s productivity and overall workplace culture. Improving communications can prove valuable for any business, leading to increased productivity, higher morale, and a positive benefit to the bottom line.

Enterprise businesses in particular need to prioritize investment in communication for a strong, vibrant corporate culture —including new technologies that can promote and maintain open lines of communication across a widely distributed workforce.

Here at Simpplr, we devote our time to simplifying employee communication , making it easier to connect and align with your employees. Our modern intranet solution opens multiple lines of communication with your employees so you can reach them where they are—in the ways they want to communicate—fostering an open culture of growth and transparent communication.

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Related Resources

Key Communication Styles for Leaders

Enhancing Employee Communication Strategies

Key Insights on Internal Communication Statistics

Effective Communication Strategies in the Workplace

Common Communication Mistakes in the Workplace

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Home Essay Examples Technology Disadvantages of Technology

Advantages And Disadvantages Of Presentation Technology

• Category Technology
• Subcategory Impact of Technology
• Topic Disadvantages of Technology

In the present world of technology, there is an emergence of different strategies companies and business people can use to effectively deliver messages. The technology has been with us for some time and is mainly used by business persons to sell their goods as well as advertising to attract clients. The messages are conveyed through media such as live videos and slide presentations. Gone are the days where the messages were presented through written reports. Business people and other organizations are quickly embracing presentation technology to help them create powerful reports or messages for their audience. A presenter, with the help of computer software, can incorporate images, films, charts, and into his/her presentation. These elements enhance the presenter in driving the point home and help the audience to understand the topic. Since the presentation is usually live, the audience can directly get clarification on the point they have not wholly understood. Preparation of the presentation may be time-consuming, as the presenter has to source the information, create films, charts, and audios to perfection before taking it to the audience. A poorly constructed presentation can be a disaster and your audience may fail to get your message. They are several advantages and disadvantages of presentation technology as discussed below;

1. Face to face

With a presentation, you can interact with your audience face to face. The presentation allows you to meet with your current and prospective customers or clients. Face to face interactions helps in building trust and strong the relationship between the business people and their clients. You are also to gauge the reaction of the audience, if they are not happy you can immediately alter your presentation to their like.

2. Engagement

With a presentation, it becomes easier to engage your audience. Attractive images will captivate the audience’s mind thus capturing their attention. You can also display your points in a more enhanced way, like using bullet points or summary text to help your audience follow the logic of your presentation. With this kind of engagement, you are sure to get your message across to the audience. With graphs, charts, and films used, you are sure to create a greater impact than a person trying to deliver the same message by a written report or by just talking.

3. Flexibility

Flexibility is another benefit of presentations as you can easily alter the contents or modify a presentation to suit different audiences. Each group of your audience could have a different taste and understanding as what attracts an audience up may not be so to an old audience. Since the presentation can easily be modified, it makes it more flexible than printed materials, whereby to modify them would be quite expensive.

4. Consistency

The standard presentation will ensure that different individuals within an organization communicate/relay information in a consistent way/manner.

5. Versatility

You can use presentations in a manner of ways, as they are versatile. On one side, you can use them in a meeting with two or three individuals using a laptop or tablet to view the contents and on the, you can use the same presentation in a large meeting where you use a projector and screen. Besides, you can upload the same presentation on the internet for viewers to watch it online or it can also be viewed during web conferences.

Disadvantages

1. technical troubles.

Technical problems can ruin or delay your presentation as technology can fail. Your presentation may fail to run, and this may leave your audience bored as you take time to get it up and working.

2. Disconnect between Speaker and Audience

When using presentation technology such PowerPoint, you rely on it too much to point of not focusing on your audience. To explain your point, you are constantly forced to face the projector rather than facing your audience and talking directly to them. This makes the audience feel disconnected from you, as you are not fully engaging them. Also, you may spend your entire time on the computer screen and mouse instead of using your time to walk around the conferencing room as you emphasize your points as well as having eye contact with them.

3. Audience distraction

Presentation technology may lead to distraction on the audience’s side. Including slides with heavy texts in your presentation may divert the audience’s attention from you, as they will concentrate more on reading rather than listening to your message. When presentation technology is not used effectively, it can take the focus away from the speaker and transfer it to the technology itself. Some presenters may lose the audience’s attention, as they may prefer to ask questions at the end of the presentation. This might not go well as the audience may switch off and forget the intended question by the time you are done with the presentation.

4. Lack of Purpose

Presentation technologies are not always necessary and sometime they may be harmful rather than useful to the audience. A computer-based presentation with no real substance can lead to a negative impact. Listing key words on slides is not necessary as it leaves the audience confused instead of helping them.

When presenting you be aware of the advantages and disadvantages of presentation techniques regardless of the software used. You must thoroughly understand the scope of the topic you intend to present as well as having the needs of your audience at heart before deciding on the most appropriate method to present their content. A point to note is that each group of individuals has different needs and you must address this before putting together your presentation. One method of presentation may be acceptable to one group of your clients but not to another group. When using images, charts and other illustrations they have to be precise and clear to the audience so that they can to easily understand your message. To take the concept across to the audience, some messages may require only talking, while others will require images to complement it.

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Multimedia Communication

Looking for advantages and disadvantages of Multimedia Communication?

We have collected some solid points that will help you understand the pros and cons of Multimedia Communication in detail.

But first, let’s understand the topic:

What is Multimedia Communication?

Multimedia communication is when we use a mix of text, pictures, videos, and sounds to share information or tell stories through devices like computers, TVs, and smartphones.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of Multimedia Communication

The following are the advantages and disadvantages of Multimedia Communication:

Advantages of Multimedia Communication

• Engages multiple senses – Multimedia communication involves sight, sound, and sometimes touch, making it easier for people to understand and remember information.
• Enhances learning experiences – By using videos, animations, and interactive content, learning becomes more interesting and can help people grasp concepts better.
• Improves message clarity – When you use pictures, sounds, and videos, it can make ideas clearer and help avoid misunderstandings that might happen with just words.
• Allows creative expression – People can show their ideas and feelings in unique ways through multimedia by combining different types of media, like music, graphics, and text.
• Increases audience reach – With the internet and social media, multimedia messages can quickly reach a lot of people all over the world.

Disadvantages of Multimedia Communication

• Can be expensive to produce – Creating multimedia content often involves high costs due to equipment, software, and sometimes hiring professionals to get the job done.
• Requires technical skills – You need to know how to use complex tools and software to make or change multimedia content, which can be tricky for some.
• Potential for information overload – People might get too much information from multimedia, with so many sounds, images, and texts all at once, making it hard to understand.
• Accessibility issues for some users – Not everyone can use multimedia easily; some might have trouble because of disabilities or lack of access to the right tech.
• Dependence on technology reliability – If your gadgets or internet connection fail, you can’t use or share multimedia content, which can be a big problem when you need it.
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MIT Faculty Newsletter

• I. Congratulations to Grads and Families II: Resolution in Support of the FNL III: Revised Policies & Procedures; Editorial Board Election; Clarification
• The Hayden Library Renovation: Living Up to Its Promise
• The Danger of Nuclear Weapons and the Efforts at MIT to Reduce the Threats
• The News You Get From Poems
• New Transportation Connectivity Has Roots at MIT

Non-Native English-Speaking Graduate Students Still Face Significant Disadvantages

• Statement by MIT Faculty in Support of the Student Encampment on Kresge Lawn
• Encampment on Kresge Lawn
• Improving Our System of Faculty Governance
• Candidates for Election to Faculty Newsletter Editorial Board
• No More MIT Research for Israel’s Ministry of Defense
• Antiracism or Oppression: MIT Must Choose
• US Defense Spending Compared to Other Countries
• Past Issues
• Current Issue

https://fnl.mit.edu/may-june-2024/non-native-english-speaking-graduate-students-still-face-significant-disadvantages/

Almost half of MIT graduate students arrive from outside the United States and immediately enter a communication-intensive culture here in which they must understand lectures, read voluminous amounts of material, speak (and comprehend) in class and lab meetings, write papers and lab reports, and begin applying for internships and jobs. They then move toward writing proposals, a thesis, and journal articles and presenting at conferences and being teaching assistants, among other tasks. And although in many ways and from many places, students arrive with higher skills in English today than previously, many students – even those who have graduated from English-instruction undergraduate institutions – still have significant gaps in their linguistic skills and cultural knowledge about communication that impact their ability to participate fully and succeed at MIT and beyond.

This situation is reflected not only in the results of the annual English Evaluation Test (EET) – established in 1983 at the behest of faculty – but also in the results of the 2023 MIT Graduate Communication Survey as well as a recent meta-study (Amano, et. al. 2023) showing that non-native English speakers (NNESs) still face significant disadvantages in conducting and communicating their research compared to their native-English-speaking counterparts (NESs).

As director of MIT’s English Language Studies (ELS) group, I write to alert you to this ongoing need, and in the hopes of opening a broader dialogue on the subject. For now, though, I urge faculty and the administration to work to:

• Help NNES students understand the importance to their success at MIT and beyond of improving their communication skills in English,
• Help NNES students understand what is really involved – time, engagement, feedback, and practice/revision – in achieving that improvement, and
• Try to make it easier and more desirable for students to do that by affording them time and space to take the ELS classes recommended to them on the basis of the English Evaluation Test.

In a paper published last year, Amano, et. al. found that it takes early-career NNESs almost 50% longer than native English speakers (NESs) to read a journal paper and 50% longer to write one as well. Given the number of papers that students must read, that first discrepancy cumulatively represents enormous amounts of extra time and effort. And while MIT students are not immediately writing papers for publication, the finding suggests the greater difficulty in writing for NNESs generally. And these discrepancies stretch beyond the reading and writing processes to affect students’ wallets as well as others’ time: NNESs, Amano found, generally ask others to edit their work more often as a favor and also pay professionals more often to edit – not a negligible expense. Worse is that NNES researchers face rejection of submitted papers for the quality of the writing in English three times as often as do native speakers (Figure 1).

Students’ responses to the 2023 MIT Graduate Communication Survey – which I conducted last year with Dr. Elena Kallestinova, director of MIT’s Writing and Communication Center – echo these discrepancies. Of the over 7,200 graduate students sent the survey, almost 14% (996) responded, and NNESs reporting much greater difficulty in, first of all, reading and writing than their NES counterparts (Figure 2). For example, almost a quarter (23%) report a significant impact of slowness or inefficiency in reading (a rating of 4 or 5), compared to only 14% of native speakers. Adding in responses of tangible impact (a rating of 3), almost half (46%) of NNESs report their performance being affected, compared to only 38% of NESs.

With writing, almost 30% of NNESs report a significant impact of slowness or inefficiency in writing on their overall performance, whereas 20% of NESs report this. Again adding in ratings of 3, almost 60% of NNESs report a tangible impact, compared to 46% for NESs.

Students’ assessments of their own skills help explain these results. Three times as many NNESs (13%) rate their academic writing skills as “weak” or “very weak” as do native speakers (4.5%), while at the other end of the scale, less than half of NNESs (49%) rate their writing skills as “strong” or “very strong,” compared to three-fourths of native speakers (75%).

And while students’ perceptions of their own skill levels can either be too low or too high, these perceptions have their own significant impacts. When students were asked how much anxiety about their communication skills impacted their performance at MIT, similar gaps arise. In academic writing, one-fifth of non-native English speakers say that anxiety about their skills has significantly impacted their performance, and adding in tangible impact (a rating of 3 out of 5), the number rises to almost half (46%). Compare those numbers to 12% and 36%, respectively, for native speakers.

The discrepancies for oral communication are even starker. Almost a third (31%) of NNESs say that anxiety about their oral academic skills has significantly impacted their performance, and including tangible impact (3 out of 5), that percentage reaches 55%. The analogous figures for native speakers are 19.5% and 44%, respectively. Similarly, a full one-fifth of NNESs rate their oral academic communication skills as “weak” or “very weak,” compared to only 6% for NESs.

While we did not ask as much about what those impacts were, Amano, et. al.’s findings suggest some possible answers. They found that almost one-third of early-career NNESs always or often declined to attend conferences due to language barriers (pp. 6-7), and almost half always or often choose not to give oral presentations due to such barriers. And when they do present, it takes them almost twice as long (93% more time) to prepare as it does their NES colleagues.

Comprehending spoken English at MIT is also as great a problem for many NNES students as is speaking. As can be seen in Figure 3, NNESs (yellow) face much greater difficulty than NES students in understanding native speakers speaking at a normal pace and using idiomatic language (which most of us do much more than we might realize). Indeed, these results echo comments by several first-year students in ELS’s intermediate listening, speaking, and pronunciation course that they understand perhaps 60% of their lectures their first year.

Finally, cultural issues pose great, unique challenges to NNESs. As Figure 3 also shows, understanding and adapting to American classroom culture, in which much more interaction and engagement is expected than in many other cultures, is also a challenge. Moreover, significant differences exist in the norms and expectations in communication such as the structure of documents and talks (e.g., placement of key messages), lexical register (properly formal or informal vocabulary), and even how to engage in small talk at conferences, which serves important professional and social purposes.

What Can Be Done at MIT?

The English Evaluation Test (EET) was created to address such issues at the behest of faculty who were frustrated that many NNESs students could not write sufficiently clear theses (which advisors then often had to – and still often have to – edit significantly) or could not participate sufficiently well in lab meetings. Although NNES students take a standardized test such as the TOEFL or IELTS for admission to MIT, such tests have been shown not to be reliable indicators of academic readiness. Moreover, since those test scores are composites of separate scores for the four “core” skills, students may arrive with adequate skills in some areas but not in others. My colleagues in English Language Studies and I thus administer the EET, a four-part instrument tailored for MIT students, in August and again (on a much smaller scale) in January and provide not only scores on various skills but corresponding recommendations for ELS credit-bearing subjects that address these skill gaps.

Only a small percentage of students end up taking those classes, however. For example, this academic year, 298 students took the EET, and about 25% of those, or 72 students were recommended for a high-intermediate class, which is designed to be taken during students’ first year. Such a recommendation comes out of scores in the “Limited” range, meaning that the student will face significant difficulties completing regular academic communicative tasks that year. Seventeen students, or less than a quarter of those recommended, took those classes this year.

Recommendations for our advanced classes numbered even more (~120) – classes that focus on writing or speaking in particular contexts such as a thesis or conference presentation and that are thus designed for students’ second year or beyond, when they can use their research work for the assignments in our classes – but are fulfilled at an even lower rate.

Of course, while the Institute mandates the test for international students, it leaves the decisions – in the spirit of decentralization and departmental agency – of what to do with those recommendations to departments, advisors, and students. Some departments require students to fulfill those requirements, but most do not. So why do students not take the classes that the Institute tells them are necessary for them to be able to succeed fully here? While I am still coming to understand the many forces and factors at work here, I have come in my twelve years at MIT to believe that most students do not understand how important communication skills are going to be to them even in a STEM subject, or if they do, they feel too much pressure to focus on their disciplinary classes and their research. In short, without departmental and faculty encouragement or requirement, many will not find the time or impetus to take these subjects. Moreover, while undergraduate enrollments in ELS classes have rebounded to pre-Pandemic levels, graduate enrollments for some reason have not. Many students do want to take these classes, however, and in the MIT Graduate Student Survey, 93 NNESs out of 225 said a class had been recommended for them. Just under a quarter had taken those classes, and another 15% said they planned to take one. Of those who had not taken a class, several said that improving those skills was not as important to them as their other academic priorities, while others said that the classes conflicted with their other academic or research work.

However, as Figure 4 shows, many are interested and say they would be more likely to take an ELS class if their departments and faculty helped them fit the courses into their schedules or if their departments promoted the classes more to them

Departmental and faculty encouragement is also necessary because, due to cultural factors, the very people who need such support are the very ones who are less likely to do so. In our survey, 45% of NNESs said that “feeling shy about seeking out communication support” has tangibly affected their performance at MIT, compared to less than 30% for native speakers.

I do not pretend to understand all the factors that go into determining students’ curricula, and of course students need to be in the lab to do research. One idea might be to allow ELS classes to count as elective credits toward graduation, which apparently not all departments do. Another would be to encourage students to use their elective credits to take an ELS class rather than, say, an “extra” math class that may not be crucial for that student’s work.

It can be easy to underestimate how much a second-language student has to adjust on a daily basis to communicate clearly. And tangible improvement in language and communication skills requires dedicated attention (i.e., over the course of a semester), practice, detailed feedback, and revision. One cannot “phone it in,” absorb skills by sitting in occasionally, or improve skills tangibly with self-study (which inevitably falls by the wayside). Ultimately, though, it seems to me that granting a student admission implies to them that either they are already equipped to do all the work asked of them or else will be given the tools to do so once they get there. If once they are here, though, we tell students that they are not quite prepared but then do not afford them the time and space to utilize the resources available to them to become so, then we are, if not setting them up for failure or at least significant difficulty, depriving them of the chance to compete on a fair playing field. We are also ultimately depriving the rest of the Institute of the full range of the intelligence and creativity that these students have to offer.

I had the chance in October to ask President Kornbluth how important she thought linguistic and communication skills are for students, and she said: “When you’re competing in the job market as an MIT student or new graduate, potential employers will almost take for granted your technical and scientific qualifications. But they’re also looking for people who can express complex ideas in compelling ways and work effectively with everyone from co-workers to investors. In other words, to develop your own potential, learning to write and speak clearly and professionally is just as important as any technical skill.” I thus invite the Institute and faculty to explore ways to afford non-native-English-speaking graduate students the time and space to equip themselves communicatively and linguistically to tackle all the challenges and opportunities that MIT lays before them.

I also invite you to explore the full results of the Survey at https://cmsw.mit.edu/communication-survey-2023/ . And I invite anyone and everyone to reach out to me to discuss further how we in ELS can aid in these endeavors.

Amano, Tatsuya, et. al., The manifold costs of being a non-native English speaker in science PLOS Biology , July 2023, pp. 1-27. The 2023 MIT Graduate Communication Survey . MIT’s English Language Studies Group and the Writing and Communication Center. https://cmsw.mit.edu/communication-survey-2023/