It has happened to us all. You are sitting in a PowerPoint presentation trying – and probably failing – not to yawn as slide after slide flashes across the screen. You may blame your boredom on the speaker, but Edward Tufte has another explanation. Microsoft PowerPoint, he believes, is a badly designed medium for communicating the information people need to make informed decisions. That is why it is so dull.
Tufte reckons that the bottom 10 percent of speakers probably benefit from using PowerPoint because it at least “forces them to have points,” and that the top 10 percent are able to overcome its limitations. As for the remaining 80 percent, he suggests that these speakers print their thoughts on paper handouts instead.
Alice Rawsthorn discusses more on the International Herald Tribune site.

