THOUGHTS ON THE “DESIGNER AS AUTHOR” ESSAYS
I agree that good design leads to better communications, better products and better experiences. And I support the effort to get designers to both act and identify as content providers as opposed to service providers. This is a good approach if the goal is to elevate more designers into positions of power and influence. But if the goal is simply to inject more fundamentally good design into the world at large, I think there’s a better way.
The problem is that teaching innovative and entrepreneurial thinking is hard. In comparison, teaching design principles is pretty easy. So why concentrate on adding authorship skills to the designer’s resume? I think you’re more likely to end up with a Steve Jobs by teaching design to an innovator than by teaching innovation to a designer.
Of course, it’s easier to identify designers than innovators. The solution to this problem? Teach everyone. Basic principles of good design are easy enough to communicate on a widespread basis, and you’ll hit the big-idea people through sheer numbers.
HOW IT LED TO MY PROJECT
Unfortunately, I don’t have the ability to change the educational system. So how can I apply these principles in a design project that should take 3 weeks to complete? My solution was to identify an area in which a non-designers could use some basic design guidance, and to help as many of them as possible. And what I came up with is a long-standing pet peeve for many designers: Microsoft Powerpoint.
A combination of poor program design, poor default choices, user ignorance and user apathy has led to millions of uncommunicative communications. I’ve seen plenty of Powerpoint presentations in my lifetime, and I can’t remember a good one.
There are plenty of tutorials and tips in books and on the internet. But I’ve seen no evidence that their ideas are being adopted. My project is to improve as many people’s presentations as possible.
The project has three parts.
ONE: create a set of presets, defaults, instructions, etc. within Microsoft Powerpoint that would make it as easy as possible to create a well-designed and effective presentation. This would include both aesthetics (fonts, sizes, colors, layouts, etc.) and matters of process (creating master pages based on what people want to communicate rather than what they want it to look like).
The challenge: creating a beautifully effective look that is both universally applicable and hard to screw up.
TWO: Distribute this to the greatest number of people in such a way that convinces them to actually use it.
The challenge: what I produce will have to be appealing, shareable and probably enjoyable.
THREE: Use the communication in #2 to teach as many basic design principles as possible that may help people organize their thoughts into more successful presentations.
To begin, I did plenty of research, both on information design and the abilities/drawbacks of Powerpoint. Tufte was an obvious starting point, with his rants on the program as well as his books “Envisioning Information” and “Beautiful Evidence.” Other resources here, here and here.
I hope to update again soon…
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great.
ReplyDeleteand smart.
looking forward to seeing the product.
and, do you have an example of a powerpoint presentation you don't like?
i haven't seen many, except ones with pics.
have a great weekend.
g.