As a teenager living in Sao Paulo, Brazil, I owned a machete. It had a 20-inch blade, a shiny black handle and a leather sheath decorated with beads and tassels. Now Sao Paulo was a city the size of NYC at that time… a place where machetes were seldom used for any constructive purpose. In fact, the only time I really needed my machete was during a month long trip with my dad and two older brothers into the interior of the country.
This past week however, I felt a little like I was hacking through the Brazilian underbrush again as I tried to track down the origin of a common presentation related statistic.
If I were to ask you how many PowerPoint presentations are given every day around the world… what would you say?
If you need help answering this question, you can look here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here… or in countless other electronic repositories of valuable information across our great and wonderful Worldwide Web.
The answer of course is 30 million presentations every single day. Most people apparently know this. But is it true? Where does this number come from? How was it calculated? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Robert Befus at 11:43 AM .
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Many thanks to Lynn Oppenheim of the Center for Applied Research for being kind enough to send me a copy of the original Wharton report entitled: “A Study of the Effects of the Use of Overhead Transparencies on Business Meetings” dated October, 1981. After reading this report, I can add some additional information to this post.
Read the update at the bottom of the post.
Posted by Robert Befus at 3:04 PM .
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In part 1 of this post, I briefly described the background and study design of the UM/3M research conducted by Doug Vogel in 1986. In this post, I will highlight the primary results along with some interesting information I had never heard before about a small side study Vogel did with some “extra” subjects in this study.
If you haven’t reviewed part 1 of this post, please do so because it is the excellence of the design and conduct of this study that lends credibility to the findings. Vogel intended this work to be a baseline for continuing research and in the design of this study has given us a great model of what quality research in the use of presentation visuals looks like. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Robert Befus at 6:48 PM .
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Background
Douglas R. Vogel is a professor and chair of Information Systems at the City University of Hong Kong. He is recognized worldwide for his research in areas like group support systems, MIS and collaborative information systems. Although most Presentation Professionals would not know Vogel by name, he has played a key role in developing our understanding of how visuals support persuasion in a presentation setting.
After graduating with a B.S. in electrical engineering from Montana State University, Vogel earned an M.S. in computer science from UCLA in 1972 followed by a Ph.D. in Business Administration/MIS from the University of Minnesota in 1986. While working on his Ph.D., Vogel was an assistant professor of MIS and the research coordinator for the Management Information Systems Research Center (MISRC) at the University of Minnesota.
In 1986, Vogel submitted a doctoral thesis paper to the faculty of the UM Graduate School entitled: “An Experimental Investigation of the Persuasive Impact of Computer Generated Presentation Graphics.”
Later a summary of this experimental investigation was published as a Working Paper Series entitled “Persuasion and the Role of Visual Presentation Support: The UM/3M Study.”
Vogel’s thesis paper is by far the most comprehensive look into the effectiveness of presentation support I have found thus far. The paper is 232 pages long, excluding the appendices and contains an abundance of information not included in the 19 page UM/3M summary report. Vogel did an extensive literature review, drawing from scholarly work in speech communication, social psychology and persuasion theory. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Robert Befus at 12:38 PM .
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Without a doubt the most often quoted presentation related research is the 1981 3M/Wharton study. The second most frequently quoted research is the 1986 University of Minnesota/3M study. The purpose of this Presentation Facts article, and the one that will follow it, will be to provide brief overviews of these two studies.
What does this oft quoted but little understood research really say… and how does it relate to us today?
Both Wharton and UM/3M are foundational presentation studies, and much of the subsequent work I have read reference one or the other or both. A quick internet search returns dozens of Web pages that reference the Wharton study in some way. Often partial or erroneous information is attributed to this research. While still a significant problem among many who write about presentation matters today, overstating the Wharton study is not new. In 1986 Douglas R. Vogel wrote the following in the introduction to the UM/3M Study:
“Although there have been many claims made regarding how presentations are improved by visual support, there is little empirical evidence to back up the claims. The study conducted in 1981 at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania is the one empirical study that is often cited, but frequently the claims exceed the study’s explanatory capabilities.”
The results from Wharton were used to aggressively sell presentation products and services, which may account for the often exaggerated claims. Another problem seems to be that once information gets distorted, subsequent published papers and documents cite the erroneous source. It is like the game you played as a kid where a whisper gets passed along through a dozen or so players and the final content has no resemblance to the original statement. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Robert Befus at 12:36 PM .
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How many times have you heard some version of the following?
“It’s estimated that we retain only 10% of what we hear. But by adding visual aids, the retention rate zooms to 50%.”
An internet search will lead you to dozens of different versions of this “statistic.” I quickly found this quote (or a version of it) used over a hundred times on presentation and education related Websites, and not once was any kind of reference provided that might hint at the source of the “data.” The 10% of what we hear numbers are usually given as fact and rarely even include the “it’s estimated” of my example. So is this oft quoted information a true Presentation Fact? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Robert Befus at 8:24 AM .
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What started as a a little rant at the end of a long day a few weeks ago has become a quest.
For years I have been highly suspicious of quite a bit of the presentation related common wisdom that is so often given and received as fact in our field. It has bothered me that there is so little hard data in an area of communication that is so important. It’s also bothered me that what little data I was aware of was 20 years old.
So we have launched a new category of VB called Presentation Facts. Starting in the next day or so, we will begin exploring what is known for sure about presentations and presentation visuals. ..or at least what can be supported with reasonably well done research. I think there is more out there in terms of good research than I first thought. We will also explore presentation common wisdom and try to determine the origins and validity of some of the notions many of us have taken for granted.
We are committed to posting only well researched and referenced information in this category… and we hope you will join in with a lively and thought provoking discussion.
Posted by Robert Befus at 6:19 PM .
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