How PowerPoint Took Down the Columbia Space Shuttle

I don't build PowerPoint presentations as a general rule, but not for the reasons that many of my colleagues avoid same. While many designers absolutely despise PowerPoint for its ungodly design limitations and cheesy effects that are inevitably overused by presenters, I avoid it because I think it's senseless overall.

By senseless, I mean that the information provided within a PowerPoint presentation, as well as the method of presentation itself, is better achieved through other means. That is: not only are the graphic representations allowable via PowerPoint too often ineffective, the delivery method is ineffective, and the very existence of a PowerPoint slide too often renders the human presenter ineffective, too. Therefore, all of the information contained within any given PowerPoint slideshow can and usually should be delivered through more appropriate means. What are those means? Simply, they are:

• The speaker's own words
• Printed handouts for later reference
  

Maybe, you say, if the PowerPoint slides were nicely done, they'd have more of an impact. This is true, to a finite degree. What constitutes "nicely done?" I'd include:

• Relevant content
  
• Quiet graphic elements that don't intrude on this relevant content
• Logical progression

But then you're faced with the problem of what the presenter and the audience each do with the content of each "nicely done" slide. Does the presenter read the slide verbatim? Usually—thereby negating the need for the slide in the first place. Does the audience read the slide while the presenter is talking? Usually—thereby by negating the need for the presenter.

Which leads us to: the use of an abbreviated medium such as a slide to deliver a content-rich message is inevitably damaging to the message itself. PowerPoint typically leads the speaker to reduce his message to a series of bullet points. The speaker's elaboration on each bullet point—if provided at all—is often lost to note takers, slide scanners and the spaced out. In such cases when the PowerPoint presentation is turned into a PDF file and emailed off to the audience after the presentation, all of the speaker's elaborations and nuanced points are gone, forgotten.

Edward Tufte, god of information design, goes a step further than myself:

George Orwell's classic essay 'Politics and the English Language' gets right the interplay between quality of thought and cognitive style of presentation: 'The English language becomes ugly and inaccurate because of our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.' Imagine Orwell writing about PP: 'PowerPoint becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of PowerPoint makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.'" [Ask E.T.]

Which brings me to how PowerPoint took down the Columbia Space Shuttle. Tufte is renowned for his analysis of a particular NASA PowerPoint presentation, in which he argues that the PowerPoint presentations—28 slides in total—used to assess the safety of the Columbia were inherently flawed thanks to the bulleted-list format (PowerPoint's fault) and lousy choice of language and progression (presenter's fault).

The analysis is fascinating and well worth reading in its entirety, as it describes many of the nuanced ways in which PowerPoint quietly destroys the messages it delivers. Why shoot yourself in the foot by using a medium that necessarily simplifies, omits and distorts the very thing you're trying to communicate?