Reducing Cognitive Load and Slide Layouts
I had an interesting short conversation with a colleague on Facebook in January. I went back and screen captured it to show what we wrote and here, I'm going to further explain my thoughts about his question and my answers.
His question:
Hi
everyone! Just joined as I’m looking for some insights into this slide
design issue: how do you make use of slide layouts in developing
training slide decks? One slide layout would be repetitive and boring
but too many slide layouts would appear inconsistent. The training
program has 8 modules, each module has between 8-12 slides. I currently
have 6 slide layouts to work with. The type of content in each module
can be repetitive (why this topic, a quote, bold statement, activities,
topic idea with bullet points, etc). Different slide layouts could be
applied to each content (e.g. photo on the right, photo on the left,
photo in the background, etc). Hope you’re following the context setting
Do you use any slide layout organization method? E.g. Layout 1 for
Module title (that’s a given), Layout 2 for a quote, Layout 3 for the
first slide with a photo in the module, Layout 4 for the second slide
with a photo in the module, etc. Then repeat for the next module. Or do
you just use some random slide layouts in each training module. The
graphic designers I’m using don’t seem to be using any coherent slide
layout organization, so when I’m adding slides, it’s always a puzzle for
me to determine which slide layout might best (as if there’s some
overall training slide design principles out there…) I’ve done my
research and also have a great book on building PowerPoint templates but
I can’t find any thoughts, ideas, suggestions on the matter. Happy to
clarify more, if needed! Thanks!
My responses:
From the laughter and heart emoticon, we were having a good time with each other. But I want to go deeper into this topic. Because Mark* mentioned being interested in cognitive overload in some of the responses he had already received, I wanted to go that route to see how much he was willing to figure that out --was he willing to figure out that ANY simultaneous spoken words and text increases cognitive load (Dual Channel Processing Theory)...therefore eliminating that reduces cognitive load problems and can increase the "pleasantness" of a presentation.
So when he presented that so much content was already present in a prototype manner of 64-96 slides , I was first testing to see if he was willing to pull some of that content OUT and place the text in another format (a handout).
I also was intrigued that he was truly asking about slide formats which, is quite a ridiculous question actually. To me, I would advise to stick with whatever format is the most obvious-- HOWEVER I'm going to talk you out of all formats so don't put too much energy into this.
My first response:
Is there any particular reason why you can't package the "8 modules with 8-12 slides" into one PDF text-only handout and present only images?
His reply:
Yeah, I’ve looked into design like this. They can be punchy. I’d have to see from a training deck perspective how this would look like (e.g. a full deck), most of what I’ve seen are decks create for business purposes, presentations and pitches. The full slide deck has about 80 slides, so that’d be lots of images!
Oo! He misunderstood because it seems he thought that by taking content out, it would be replaced with images. No, that's not what I meant. I meant reducing the number of total slides AND reducing what was on the slide.
This is moving content that should be speaker notes to speaker notes (duh) and what should be a text handout for the audience to one of those freebies and focusing the visual presentation on looking at and listening to the presenter.
But I was willing to tease one more step with this designer. So I did one more push to see if he'd get my idea of REDUCE THE SLIDES.
My second reply:
Groovy. Time to next level the next level. Present from one slide. Go.
His final reply:
it only lasted 2 hours, thankfully lol.He's laughing here. I don't think he got that I was pushing to present with no images and no slides and all text pushed to another source. He MIGHT have thought that I meant presenting from one big image (Yikes! like one big Prezi!) but I hope not. But we did end laughing because I think he got that sometimes the power does go off and you do talk in the dark (boy, does that prove that you know what you're talking about or not.)
I haven't gone further here but I'm going towards Robin Williams' Principles for effective presentation design in The Non-Designer's Presentation Book, which does explain well that most presentations (like the one Mark describes) have probably used the slides like speaker notes and that's a no-no.
Hint: Would you like to see a presentation of just images that is compelling and works? Try the first 1 minute 26 seconds at the beginning of The Da Vinci Code. (Set aside how you feel about the content). A good speaker/presenter/teacher might NOT need words on the slide.
OK, there are times for words on the slide. I'll write about it someday.
*Mark is not his real name. :)