Even Better – Read Edward Tufte

Edward Tufte (Prof Emeritus, Statisitical Evidence, Information Design, Interface Design Yale) wrote a 28 page mongraph on the Cognitive Style of Powerpoint that will change your ideas on it forever. Powerpoint suffers from low information density from the large fonts (Dick and Jane Syndrome), low attention span from resulting from the low information density, and enables burying too much value in the structuring of the presentation. The Shuttle Challenger Fuel Tanks presentation is the classic example where Powerpoint, inadvertantly, but still directly, enabled overlooking critical information that led directly to the disaster and deaths of the crew.