Article Summary
This article is authored by two engineering tutors from Ben Gurion University in the Negev. The article explores the use of graphics when making presentations. The article investigates the factors that determine the graphics used when making presentations. According to the authors of this article, the choice of graphics is mostly determined by the presenter’s need to persuade and create impressions on his/her audience. The article presents three experiments that investigate the use of graphics in a presentation. The experiments assess different presentation formats and the presenters’ motives and objectives. The authors investigate whether “subjects make optimal decisions when making presentations, or they are just interested in creating a certain impression” (Tractinsky & Meyer, 1999).
According to the article, all three experiments revealed that the social context of the presentation directly influences a user’s choice of presentation format. The authors also claim that there is more to presentations than the usual data synthesis. The article presents two major findings from these experiments. First, the article found that when presenters strive to impress their audience, the use of more unnecessary graphics increases. In addition, the authors found out that presenting too much information works against the presenter (Tractinsky & Meyer, 1999). Therefore, presenting too much information increases the need to use gratuitous graphics. The article then discusses the implications of the experiments’ results. One of these implications is the need to train individuals on how to interpret graphics in a better way. The authors conclude by noting that there is a need to suppress behaviors that make presenters turn to inappropriate methods of making presentations.
Reflective Summary
This article dwells on a simple matter that usually influences the outcomes of presentations in a big way. The authors of the article chose a subject matter that can be easily ignored when it comes to making presentations. According to the article, the format used when making presentations is not coincidental (Tractinsky & Meyer, 1999). However, there are factors that influence the choice of the format used when making presentations. I agree with the authors’ articulations that the format used by presenters is usually influenced by other external factors. I also found the mode used to prove this hypothesis very convincing. The authors use three different experiments to prove their argument. This makes their findings more convincing.
According to the authors, presentations that relay too much information are mostly unsatisfactory. Whenever I am conducting presentations, I always find myself worrying about whether the amount of information I am conveying is too much for my audience’s synthesis. The experiments conducted by the authors found out that presentations with too much information often work against the presenter. These findings coincide with my worries concerning presentations.
One of the most important lessons from this article is that using “cute” graphics in presentations does not always yield good results. One of the two major findings in this article is that whenever a presenter focuses too much on the need to impress his/her audience, he/she is likely to employ gratuitous graphics (Tractinsky & Meyer, 1999). In my view, gratuitous graphics diminish the scientific value of a presentation. Therefore, it is better for a presenter to focus more on the information being relayed instead of striving to achieve aesthetic value when presenting.
This article is very informative, and the authors are able to formulate a good hypothesis and prove it. The article opens the readers’ eyes to an issue that is usually ignored. I would recommend this article to both scholars and researchers because it is likely to improve their presentation-making techniques.