The Worst Slide Deck Ever Joshua B. Gross, BA, MS PhD Candidate, Expected Graduation May, 2008 311B IST Building College of Information Sciences and Technology The Pennsylvania State University University Park, PA 16802 Phone: (814) 865-3859 Fax: (814) 863-1122 Email: jgross@ist.psu.edu Web: http://hci.ist.psu.edu/~jgross

An Inappropriate Talk Overview Detailed explanation of some of my work Some background, but no context Lots and lots of data If you can’t do a good job, you can at least confuse people Conclusions that do not follow from the work

Requisite Prior Knowledge for All CHI Attendees In order to understand my talk, you must know about Usability Engineering Web Design Ecological Psychology and Affordance Theory Activity Theory from Vygotsky to present Neurophysiology Geldard’s homunculus My prior work My advisor’s prior work Et cetera I will not explain any of these

Talk Overview Here I’ll include my entire abstract: Research into presentations at CHI and other conferences indicates that some people do a much better job of presenting their paper than others. While the slide deck isn’t the key to a great paper, a good slide deck is often the hallmark of a good paper. One of the most common mistakes is to put too much information on one slide. Now I’ll say that I know you can’t read this much information, but it’s really crucial to the rest of my presentation. Or I’ll read the slide to you - that’s fun for everyone!

A Really Bad Chart Example

What’s Wrong? Too much data Unreadable Poor chart choice Legend doesn’t help Can’t read the titles unless you use a white background Isn’t this a horrible background?

One Point (and a Non Sequitor at That) Participatory design is the only correct solution!

Latin and Other Foreign Languages While the argument may seem, in this case, post hoc ergo propter hoc, in reality res ipsa loquitur Latin phrases are another good way to confuse your audience Probably safe exceptions: Et al. Per se Etc. or et cetera

Questions?