TJ WALKER - THE HABIT INFLUENCER - Personal Development | LIVE STREAM

29 Sept 2016 · 2 min

Watch on YouTube

2:06

Short live-stream segment by TJ Walker advising presenters not to use PowerPoint "builds" (incremental reveals of text/images). He argues builds are distracting, make presenters appear to read a teleprompter, and are usually misused; the only valid use is for genuine staged visual design (e.g., architectural drawings or staged images). He estimates well under 1% of presentations use builds appropriately.

Questions this video answers

TJ Walker.

September 29, 2016.

Chapters

The PowerPoint presentation tip of the week. Don't use builds. Builds are not just overused. The real problem with builds is that they're used at all. When I say a build, that's when you have a particular slide and you're typically adding one sentence. You hit advance, and then another sentence or another image or another bullet point comes on top of the same slide. It's building on top of the same slide. Slide. And what happens is quite often the presenter's head is going down to hit enter every two seconds. And they look like one of those little bobble birds at the gas station checkout that's constantly going up and down, going for the water. It's distracting, it's annoying. And again, it calls attention to the fact that you're trying to use your PowerPoint slide as the poor man's poor woman's teleprompter. Don't do it. Now, the only exception I would make is if you are showing some type of architectural drawing where you're showing a house, and now maybe you're showing, okay, right above the fireplace is where the second floor comes in. And it really is a visual image that builds one on top of the other, and people need to see it in stages. Could be a new plant, a new building of some sort, a new home. If there's genuinely a design element that is enhanced by a build, then and only then is it appropriate. And I would certainly estimate far less than 1% of the PowerPoint presentations I've ever seen was used that way. Typically, it's just a lazy way for someone to. To put in a whole bunch of text and make them feel like they're doing something. Oh, I'm being active. Or I'm putting this up and now I can read it. I'm putting another one up and now I can read it. Complete, utter waste of time. Don't use builds. Certainly don't use builds for text. Complete, utter waste of time.