Rethinking the Design of PowerPoint Slides: Claim-Evidence Structure

This post continues the discussion regarding the presentation of technical and research information through the medium of PowerPoint.  My assertion in the last post is that the users of PowerPoint are the principal party at fault for lousy presentations and the wholesale disregard for their audience.
One of the criticisms leveled against technical PPT slides is the overuse (perhaps abuse is a better descriptor) of the topic/subtopic organization structure. This outline format will routinely place critical information in subordinated positions.

So one of the simple ways PPT presentations can be improved is to follow the BLUF principle. Bottom Line Up Front. In such an approach you design slides to follow the basic structure of an argument.  The structure as defined by Stephen Toulmin. Here is a link that provides a nice overview of Toulmin's argument model.

In essence a well-crafted argument must have three components:

1. Your Claim
2. The Evidence (Data underlying the claim)
3. The underlying principle that in essence answers the question: why does the data make your claim to be true?

I would suggest that this should be the basic organizational structure for all forms of technical/scientific communication, be it a technical research report or a technical presentation. In our McCulley/Cuppan consulting practice we are always reminding clients to design documents and presentations in this manner.

I want to bring to your attention a marvelous web page at Penn State University addressing the use of the claim-evidence-principle model of PPT slide design. The creators of this web page have done a nice job of loading example PPT slides, references to additional resource information, and a real nice bibliography on the genre of presentations. Here is the link to the website:  http://writing.engr.psu.edu/slides.html.  Take a couple minutes to check it out.


Originally published on our Knowledge Management blog