On PowerPoint

I was recently asked by the VizThink people to devote a post to the prompt: PowerPoint: A powerful tool poorly used or a poor tool overused?, so... here goes...

I do think that PowerPoint** can be a powerful tool that is misused, but its functions and autofills can also be overused. In many ways this is not the fault of the program, but the fault of the users for relying on the program to guide their presentations and thinking. (though, perhaps some blame should go to the programmers who design it to serve that purpose)

At its heart, the program is just a slide show. Its key function is to show slides one at a time after each other. Everything else is just bells and whistles. That potential is extremely powerful, but it can be misused. The choice of what to put on those slides makes all the difference. This is a reflection of the user — and their own abilities for storytelling, narrative, etc.

When slides are used as an alternative to substantial speaking they become a hinderance: Cramming too much information on a slide. Presenting information that people will be forced to digest at the same time as trying to follow your speech. Seeing the presentation as a rigid path not allowing the free form creativity of writing on a blackboard.

From my experience, slides should be used like gestures. Co-speech gesture occurs at a rate of roughly one gesture per clause, and usually elaborates upon some aspect of speech often adding a spatial dimension to it. It isn't something separate that happens to go with speech though — it expresses an integral and complementary part of the conceptualization that also goes into verbal expression.

Another analogy more pertinent to this blog (and one I discuss in this podcast), is that slides should serve the equivalent of a "panel." The slide is the image content of a panel, while your speech is like the text. The biggest difference between the two is the temporal quality of presenting them — otherwise they serve largely the same function.

Not all use of slide shows need to be clipped and truncated as the Powerpoint Gettysburg suggests. You can still have beautiful and powerful oration using slides — but it should not depend on the slides. Rather, the slides let speech be more than just sounds. It has to be a multimodal expression, where both slides and speech work in concert with each other to achieve something more. The ability to do this, I would suspect, is cognitively the same whether it's done in print or on a screen.

PowerPoint is not a substitute for lack of narrative skills, and its problems can largely be fingered for forgetting or believing that (whether as a user or a programmer). Excel can't make you a powerful statistician. Word won't make you a good writer. Why should we expect that PowerPoint is to blame for poor presentations?


**My personal preference is actually Keynote. I'm going to treat this as just a discussion of slide show programs in general. If we're targeting PowerPoint specifically, then you can amp up my dislike of the autofills, etc.

Thoughts on Language Evolution

In my TA class this semester we've just entered talking about Language Evolution, and combined with the recent discovery of this blog the topic has been on my mind a bit lately. Some general thoughts on reframing the overall discussion...

Some theories of language evolution postulate that ‘gestural language’ evolved prior to verbal language. While I am in support of the multimodal sentiment, parts of this rub me the wrong way.

First off, humans currently use both modalities concurrently in expression, which is offered as part of the evidence for its potential importance in evolutionary contexts. While the verbal form in most people uses more complex structure, both forms are in use at once in co-speech gesture. Why would it make sense for only one modality to develop dominantly then transfer into another? Should we perhaps be thinking in terms of concurrent development for concurrent usage?

Along these lines, humans also have the capacity to draw. While our primate cousins do have gestures and vocalizations for conceptual expression, none seem to manipulate the world for conceptual intent, which is at the heart of drawing. Yet, this is never mentioned alongside the discussions of the other modalities (though not surprisingly).

Also, I think it is largely a misnomer to say “gestural language” evolved first. As a cover phrase, I think it obfuscates the issues involved — namely, that there are various mental structures that contribute to a behavior of manual (verbal and visual) expressions.

This is even more problematic when various people use the word “language” in different ways — some refer to a communicative system, some to grammar, some to conceptual expression. Really, if the discussion is about the evolution of what we now know of as “language”, it may indeed be inappropriate to talk about its historical states as if they're the same thing as we have now.

It would be more useful to discuss the development and evolution of these structures (syntax, semantics, etc) than to talk about the capacity as if it were a whole thing. That is, we should be talking less about the evolution of “Language” and more about the development of the interacting cognitive structures that end up contributing to language as we know it in the modern context.

See Figure WTF!?

I recently received a French book on comic theory from interlibrary loan that has been decently interesting. While reading it though, I started noticing something very strange. I'd be progressing along, and the graphic examples weren't there — there was only a little tag "Figure X". Quickly, I had the infuriating realization that they were all at the back of the book.

Seriously, can anything be more annoying than reading a lovefest of papers about the joys of integrated text-image relationships in a book where text and image are as far apart as possible?

As an upcoming of podcast of mine will discuss, there are many functions of panels. Yet, one of the most useful is their ability to bundle text and image into a singular unit. This same process happens with gestures and speech by virtue of their co-occurring in time. In a spatial form, proximity can allow this integration, but an enclosed border does even better.

Of course, one wonders whether academia will ever figure that out.

In my paper, "Interactions and Interfaces", I demarcated "Independent" relations as those that have no physical connection between text and image — usually done through a semantic index alone like "See Figure 1." However, now I'm beginning to wonder if there's a gradation in there for physical distance. Having a Figure on the same or adjacent page, while annoying for its non-bundled nature of text-image relations, is still a lot better than having a Figure at the end of a book.

Of course, all Independent relations are inferior in integration to bundled relations using panels. Perhaps one day scholarly papers will allow for formating options that do away with the biases of text-image independence? We can only hope...

Comics and Information Design

What with the chaos of getting ready to move, I'm going to skip updates on Meditations until I get settled into Boston in a week and a half. In the meantime...

John Soellner alerts me to his site comparing qualities of "comics" with information design. He has a nice set of links down at the bottom, though his writings seem fairly limited so far. I was a bit surprised by this, since I think there's quite a lot of overlap that can be discussed. Perhaps we can hope for more to come?

Robert Horn has made some to do about some of those connections, and Soellner seems to pick up on some of that at least (I do appreciate his using the term "information design" as opposed to Horn's meaning of "visual language" which is vastly different from mine).

Perusing some of the links there, I will vent that one of the things that bugs me about most discussions of "comics" from information design perspectives (though, thankfully, not here) is the sheer lack of treating the visual language as any sort of language. Since ID is mainly concerned with demonstrating data or information graphically, the intuituve aspects of the visual sequence seem wholly ignored for the properties of spatial juxtaposition (as if that's all there was to it).

My sense is that most of the people talking about these sort of things come from computer interface design or information design backgrounds, yet don't have much productive fluency in this visual language of "comics." In some ways, I feel like McCloud oversold the universality of creating "comics" to the point where people feel empowered to talk about it, even when they might lack the intuitions and expertise of graphic fluency. Perhaps this can be added to the list of illusions cast by that "veil of iconicity"?

Interestingly, his last post has a quote from Dennis O'Neil amounting to saying "images plus words in comics = a language." This "images + words = language" is roughly the same as the way Horn means it too. I have never understood this sort of reasoning... why should words, already a language, plus anything-else equate to some larger language (which, ahem, doesn't seem to have real intrinsic properties like a natural language)? Though perhaps less poetic, I far prefer to be accurate by saying that the visuals might become a language that then meets up with the written to become two languages working together in a broader multimodal communicative act.

This same trend has gone through gesture research too, with some people saying that "language + gesture = language". .... "1+1=1"? Huh? Why isn't it that "language + gesture = multimodalism beyond language"? This is yet another of those papers lying half written in my computer. Someday, I swear!

Looking Ahead to the Past

Akin to the spirit of my last post, in the latest issue of Cognitive Science is an article about Aymara Andean metaphors for time. The authors claim that Andeans have a conception of the future as something behind the speaker and the past as in front. This is the opposite of English where most of the time we "face the future" or "look back to the past."

I have not read the piece yet, but apparently, press releases have been claiming that this reversal is unique to Andean, which the Language Log dispels quite quickly. I find it interesting that much of the data relied on gestures as well as spoken utterances, as it acknowledges the inseparability of conceptual expression in different modalities. What I'm curious about regarding this is what types of graphic narrative system this culture has (if any… I'd be floored if a culture didn't have a graphic system, but narrative — i.e. VL — is another story).

While not reliant on a front/future type metaphor, the linearity of panels in comics does echo this spatial-temporal metaphor. Would Andean allow for a similar native graphic system? I have no doubt that Andeans could learn and acquire a paneled system, but I'm more curious what sort of native system might arise, since other graphic cultural examples imply conceptual integration with language and gestures.

Hopefully before long "graphic" will become a category as centrally inquired about for studying concepts as language and gesture.

Update (6/17/06): More from the Language Log, this time a defense about the uniquness of Ayamara back/future time metaphors.

Mayan Visual Language?

I haven't done a review for a while, so here's an absolutely fascinating one (again, listed in my bibliography):

Nielsen, Jesper, and Wichmann, Søren. 2000. America’s First Comics? Techniques, Contents, and Functions of Sequential Text-Image Pairings in the Classic Maya Period. In Comics and Culture: Analytical and Theoretical Approaches to Comics. Magnussen, Anne, and Hans-Christian Christiansen (Eds.).

This absolutely fascinating article provides a structural analysis of what could be interpreted as Mayan Visual Language. Some examples very clearly use the VL grammatical categories I've been researching, such as this one here (read here, R-to-L, click for high res.):



Most of these artifacts were taken from “vessels” (vases), so the sequentiality of the reading (layout) would be gained by turning the object itself. This is reminiscent of the 5000 year old goblet found in Tehran with sequential art on it. The authors also speculate on the usage of speed-lines and speech balloons, which have semantic variation in representation (speech balloons turn into flames used to show anger – a notable conceptual metaphor in its own right).

They also note writing and images exist sometimes exist independently of each other, but by and large are overshadowed by text-image pairings with sequential art. It's interesting the reverence placed on image-text pairings in contrast to Western counterparts:

"In Western society, the combination of text and image was, for centuries, considered a debased form of communication. Only artists who directed their work towards a mass audience, predominently the lower classes, dared venture into text-image pairings. The Mayas, however, considered the combination of text and image the most exquisite and exclusive form of artistic communication, and reserved it for elite consumption only." (p.73)

Would that we achieve what they had. All in all an absolutely amazing piece. I wish more analyses on cultural systems were done like this.

Gestures in comics

A doubleshot of reviews:

Fein, Ofer, and Kasher, Asa. 1996. How to do Things with Words and Gestures in Comics. Journal of Pragmatics, Vol. 26.6. Dec. 1996. Pp. 793-808

This study looked at the role of gestures in comics (specifically, those in the European comic Asterix). The study had people interpret the meanings of both panels from the comics, and of photos where people took on similar poses. The backgrounds of the panels were erased, so there was no context for the gestures. In one part, they were asked to write possible dialogue for the gestures, and in another task they were given potential meanings and asked to assign them.

It concludes that gestures in comics are interpreted the same as ‘real life’ gestures, and that the meaning imbued in them comes from the ingesticular force (i.e. the intent of the expression) rather than the propositional content of the accompanying speech (in word balloons). One interesting tidbit noted that some people said the photos were actually harder to interpret than the comics panels (though the stats disputed this). If this were true, then it would support McCloud's insinuation that cartoony images are more "base" than realistic ones. I'd like to know the VL fluency of the subjects and whether people with more "comics" experience rated higher or lower in this regard.

Raecke Jochen. 1999. Using Comics as Data for Research into the Connection between Pointing Gestures and Deictics. In E. André, M. Poesio, and H. Rieser (eds). Proceedings of the Workshop on Deixis, Demonstration, and Deictic Belief at ESSLLI XI.

Uses comics to analyze the relationship between deictics and gestures in Serbo-Croation. His method codes a corpus of comics comparing the relations of the images' gestures to the conent of the speech balloons. He finds that pointing gestures by far dominate the gestures, and pointing gestures alone do not fulfill the meaning of the representations (i.e. multimodality is necessary). This isn't surprising, since pointing gestures are indexical, which means that they only indicate meaing in something else (the same way a pronoun refers to a different element for meaning).