As Forbes.com contributor Naomi Robbins says, Despite the fact that graphs are now ubiquitous in virtually every field of business, very few people have received any training on how to read or design a graph. Naomi ran a graph makeover contest in which she explains why the bar graph shown here is a much better choice than the original…
I regularly advise writers to use grammatical parallelism and visual formatting to influence document quality. (Use the links if you don’t know what I mean.) But I saw some evidence presented by colleagues at a recent conference that led me to refine that advice. Here’s the bottom line for those who don’t want the details: Use…
In honor of those folks preparing for thanksgiving feasts in the US, I’d like to share the food prep timeline created by the writer at Ideas Illustrated. Enjoy consuming the results of all that logistically complex labor!
Hyunjin Song and Norbert Schwarz summarize the implications of some recent psychological research on format this way: Any variable that facilitates or impairs fluent information processing can profoundly affect people’s judgements and decisions. [Writers] are therefore well advised to present information in a form that facilitates easy processing: if it’s easy to read, it seems easy to do,…
More useful PowerPoint design tips from Gavin.
Rule #1 from 7 Lessons from the World’s Most Captivating Presenters: Start with paper, not PowerPoint I couldn’t agree more. I’ve mentioned my colleague, Jean-luc Doumont, when offering help to those of you writing slides for a presentation. Jean-luc taught me that if you can’t make good visuals, you shouldn’t create them. Concentrate on developing content…
OK. I know the title of this post is a little strange because of the use of “right.” But it captures the lesson I try sharing with anyone who asks me how to be a better presenter. Getting the visuals right is the single biggest hurdle for most folks. (Read a little more before you dismiss this…
The AACSB peer review team left this morning after a whirlwind onsite accreditation visit to our business school. I shared a copy of our report with you a couple of months ago. Today I want to share a lesson on bottom line messages. Some background. One area in which the College is reviewed is called Assurance of…
I recommend Gavin’s post about pie charts — especially for his “makeover”! Related articles I give up, I am embracing pie charts (simplystatistics.org)
Everybody loves show and tell. Check out this monthly event in Brooklyn. Sadly, the workplace equivalent of “showing” typically consists of PowerPoint slides filled with text. That’s tell and tell rather than show and tell. Everybody complains about PowerPoint. A Google search showed that “Death by PowerPoint” appeared 11,100 times in newly created web content in…