ARE YOU
MEMORABLE? Dr. Carmen Simon
ABSTRACT
How many slides do people really remember? Four experiments examined the role of the isolation effect in predicting superior recall for isolated slides in a PowerPoint deck. Results showed that participants recalled on average 4 slides from a text-only deck, and recalled slides were not at random; they followed a pattern. Memory did not improve when neutral images were added to text-only slides. Recall rate did not exceed the cap of 4 remembered slides regardless of deck manipulations, such as changing background colors, alternating text-only and text and visual slides, or replacing neutral visuals with emotional visuals. There was a correlation between isolated slides and recalled slides when slides were changed every 5th slide. ARE YOU MEMORABLE | 01
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R ES E A R C H QUESTIONS
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RQ1
How many slides will people remember from a deck of text-only, 20 slides?
RQ2
Will the inclusion of neutral visuals improve memory?
RQ3
Will people remember the same slides or will memory differ from person to person?
RQ4
Will visual distinctiveness every nth slide improve recall?
RQ5
Is there a correlation between visually distinct slides and recall rate?
“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.“ -Herbert Simon
Nobel Prize laureate
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FRIENDS DON’T LET FRIENDS
USE POWERPOINT!
The famous article with this title, published by Thomas Stewart in Fortune a decade ago, made a strong impression on PowerPoint users, by categorizing the tool as intellectually impaired, confusing, and overall disguising the speaker under uniform and overly simplified templates. Other catchy titles in the media such as Killing Me Microsoftly or PowerPoint Is Evil continually capture and condemn the robotic display of bullet points and the truncated language typical of slideware. To emphasize the dubious nature of PowerPoint, critics use strong phrases such as “deadening sameness,” “vacuous monotony,” “the Viagra of the spoken word”—overall, a product that has led to a “general decline in public speaking.”
Other critics agree that PowerPoint separates the presenter from the audience, diminishes a presentation’s analytical quality, leads to more preoccupation with format over content, and “instead of lifting the floor, it lowers the ceiling.” Over the past few decades, PowerPoint has been particularly criticized when presentations are used in face-to-face environments. However, in the past five years, a new trend has emerged: PowerPoint-based content has been delivered as a standalone option, without the need for a speaker.
Many content creators currently use PowerPoint to post standalone, on-demand presentations. Two of the most prevalent fields for standalone PowerPoint-based files are in the corporate arena, where businesses publish promotional content; and online universities, which publish instructional content.
54% of participants reported experiencing a “high”” when spending time online. Standalone electronic content has become popular in part because people seem to seek it. According to Nielsen research, while spending a minimum of 60 hours a month online, people spend 42% of that time viewing online content. In another investigation of 1,000 managers worldwide, 54% of participants reported experiencing a “high” when spending time online and finding information they are seeking. It is consequently no surprise that many viewers are searching and viewing PowerPoint files. This is evidenced by the fact that approximately 10,000 on-demand PowerPoint presentations are published monthly and worldwide. ARE YOU MEMORABLE | 03
Unfortunately, increased demand and availability of content has also led to information overload, defined as the inability to process multiple communication inputs, which in turn can lead to emotional and cognitive breakdown. In a survey of 124 managers from various professional fields in Australia, Hong Kong, the U.K., and the U.S., information overload was recognized as a top professional issue, connected to difficulty or impossibility in managing information (62%), irrelevance or unimportance of most of it (53%), and lack of time to understand it (32%). Over the long term, information overload can lead to mental exhaustion, decreased attention span, poor decision-making, and burnout. Given that currently many sources of information compete against each other and are often similar in content and format, providing the optimal amount and type of information for either business or academia audiences may mean long-term survival and profitability for corporations and academic organizations.
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Based on the data evidenced thus far, there are three pertinent trends that may interest business and
THE STUDY
academia professionals alike: (1) Ubiquitous use of PowerPoint for presentation design and information processing, particularly as a standalone offering; (2) A dichotomy in viewer information processing habits: on one hand, people seem to crave information, and on the other, they are overwhelmed by it; and (3) The availability of PowerPoint-based presentations that are marked by too much similarity, making it more difficult for messages to stand out. These observations invite the question: how does one distinguish a particular presentation, given existing informational noise and competition? And knowing that PowerPoint is a content delivery staple, how does one bridge cognitive psychology, communication, education, and commerce to develop more memorable PowerPoint presentations? The proposed study aimed to investigate ways in which information can be made memorable, despite current trends such as information overload, which can lead to inattention and which ultimately may result in lack of retention.
Does variety have benefits?
Peter Norvig, Director of Research at Google Inc., colorfully states: “Homogeneity is great for milk, but not for ideas.� This is the idea that led to the current study: variety may have benefits, and it is worthwhile to apply this concept to the way PowerPoint presentations are created. Figure 1 illustrates different views in which content creators can analyze their PowerPoint files. Which one is likely to draw more attention and therefore become more memorable: the one on the left, marked by variety, or the one on the right, marked by uniformity? [ F I G U R E 1]
ARE YOU MEMORABLE | 04
Significance One of the ways to enable content to stand out and be potentially more memorable is to make it incongruent with the rest of the context in which it is provided. This technique is known as the distinctiveness or isolation effect in memory. The isolation effect has shown that items in a series can be made to stand out, and therefore be more memorable. The significance of this study consists of using an old theory (von Restorff isolation effect) in new ways: making specific PowerPoint slides in a series of slides stand out and be potentially more memorable. The concepts of information overload, cognitive overload, and isolation effects are not new. However, the novel combination of these dimensions when applied to the realm of PowerPoint presentations, as used in the corporate and academic milieus, provides a strong contribution. The study used scientific rigor to determine ways in which PowerPoint slides can be made more memorable by using the isolation effect. This particular approach has not been attempted in any previous scientific research. The proposed study is based on a theoretical framework related to the isolation of an item against a homogeneous background, which is supposed to facilitate retention of that item. This theory was initiated almost eight decades ago when von Restorff presented participants either a list of nine numbers and one syllable, or nine syllables and one number, and reported a higher recall for the isolated items. This theoretical approach is called the von Restorff effect or isolation effect. Ever since this classic experiment, many other researchers have investigated the isolation effect in different variations: presenting subjects with a list containing the same items and changing the property of one of the items (e.g., different color), including an entirely different item in a list with the same items (e.g., a number inserted in a list of words), or manipulating structural organization, where two item types are used
What happens on a slide may be as important as what happens before and after that slide.
of the study
in different lists, and isolation is produced by embedding an item of one type within a series of items of the other type and noticing what happens to recall at the global level of the list. This is known as the spread of the isolation effect. While researchers in the past have used items such as weights, colors, or sound frequency in order to study the impact of distinctiveness on memory, no study has linked the concept of distinctiveness to PowerPoint slides. What happens in a specific slide may be as important as what happens before and after that slide. To this end, the contribution to the isolation effect theory will be made by adding a fresh perspective on visual distinctiveness and memory applied in a new context such as PowerPoint presentations. While previous research designs focused on isolating elements such as nonsense syllables or interspersing numbers through one-word items, the current design is based on isolating slides in a PowerPoint deck—a frequent means of communication used in business presentations and academia. Taking into consideration various views on the isolation theory, the current study was initiated by several observations:
1 2 3 4
Color may influence recall when isolates are used in learning situations. Changing of “materials” may improve recall (e.g., switching from text to text + visuals and back to text). Structural organization (or spread of isolate effect) may improve recall of the overall “list.” Meaning of the isolate may lead to better recall (e.g., adding an emotionally intense image to the list).
The design of the current study was intended to test all three methods of isolation (isolation by color, isolation by material, and semantic isolation) in an intentional learning context. The design was selected because it mimics real-life content development, usage, and viewing habits for online PowerPoint files. ARE YOU MEMORABLE | 05
Calibrate Content
rk
ma Bench
Manip ula the D te esign
METHODOLOGY
The current study applied the isolation effect in various PowerPoint files in order to measure how many slides people remember from a PowerPoint presentation. The methodology in this study was based on a direct test, where audience members were invited to view 20 slides, and then asked to think back on what specific content they remembered from those slides. Performance was measured through a free-recall test, where information recall was considered the dependent variable. In this study, scores were awarded for the recall of accurate facts on the concept of webcasting, which was the subject matter for all the slides. For instance, such guidelines included: “Focus on only one main idea about your content, supported by three points,” “It’s not enough to be useful. You must be useful and interesting and quotable,” or “Don’t wear stripes because they dance around on the screen and are distracting.” Participants did not have to recall the exact words, but they needed to report back the gist of the sentence, demonstrating they understood the essence of the statement.
Data collection in the study was based on online forms and surveys. Specifically, the following were used: 1) Online form to validate the content for the PowerPoint presentations; 2) Online forms used to administer the free-recall test for the two benchmarked PowerPoint decks and the free-recall tests for each of the four formal experiments conducted to test the proposed five hypotheses. All data was captured via an online system, then exported to Microsoft Excel, and analyzed with SPSS.
Population and Sample
The study used a convenience sample of 1,540 participants, selected from an existing database of individuals from various professional organizations. Overall, the majority of participants were female (60%), 40% males. Most participants were 50+ years of age (43%), followed by 40–49 years of age (19%). In regard to field of work, the majority of participants came from corporate (63%), followed by academia. 57% of the participants had webcasting knowledge, 44% of the participants did not. Two separate invitations were sent in order to select participants in the study. The first invitation was sent with the goal to obtain 60 volunteers who helped to calibrate the PowerPoint content. The link in the email-based invitation took the volunteering participants to a Web site that included more details about informed consent, and concrete steps on how to calibrate each of the 40 slides (see Figure 2). After participants viewed the last slide, a thank-you message was displayed, which informed them that the calibration process was complete and they would receive the results of the research once the entire study was finished.
The methodology for this quantitative, experimental research was divided into three phases: Calibrate the content to be included in the PowerPoint decks to meet criteria for validity and reliability (Calibration phase); Determine a benchmark of an average number of slides that are typically remembered from a PowerPoint presentation with neutral information, and whether there is a pattern in which specific slides are recalled or whether audiences remember slides at random (Benchmark phase); and manipulate the design of the benchmarked PowerPoint decks to determine whether specific slides can be remembered and whether there will be a general improvement in content memorability (Formal Experiment phase).
[FIGURE 2]
Once the Calibration phase was complete, another email-based invitation was sent to the rest of the ARE YOU MEMORABLE | 06
database (approximately 12,000 people) in order to ask for volunteers for the other two phases in the study: the Benchmark phase and the four Formal Experiments. Volunteers were taken to a Web site that included additional details about the study, in addition to informed consent material that clarified the terms of the engagement. Viewers were invited to read the available information and informed consent, and click a Next button, which then randomly assigned them to one of the 26 conditions in the study. The 20 pieces of content from all PowerPoint decks in the study are included in Table 1. The content is important to consider because the tests and analyses conducted depend on the nature of this content. [ TA B L E 1]
SLIDE CONTENT INCLUDED (this stayed the same in all the decks, except in some decks, the sequence of the slide was shuffled)
1 2
Focus only on one main idea about your content, supported by three points.
3
You have 0% control over the questions you’re asked in the chat box, but you have 100% control over the answers you give. Prepare.
4 5 6
It’s not enough to be useful. You must be useful and interesting and quotable.
If someone asks you a question, 30 seconds is a good length of time for an answer. 30 seconds is longer than you think.
Pop culture references make for good quotes and sound bites. Don’t wear stripes because they dance around on the screen and are distracting. If you wear anything distracting in a webcast, people will remember that and nothing you say.
7 8 9 10 11
Don’t wear white. It glows and it becomes the most noticeable thing on the video screen.
12
If you want to know how engaging you look on camera, videotape yourself giving the presentation, then watch the recording with the volume off.
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Don’t sit behind a desk during a webcast that captures your entire body. Sit in an open chair, or present while standing.
14 15
Drink plenty of water before the webcast, or you will lick your lips.
16
Don’t look at the camera unless there is no one around to speak to.
17 18 19
Don’t lean back in your chair; you’ll look short and fat.
20
Smile all the time, especially when someone else is talking.
Pastel shirts work well on video. Don’t wear black; it is too harsh and can suck up all the light. Don’t wear bright reds. They “bleed” on camera and are distracting. Video will suck the natural energy out of your voice. If you don’t boost your energy level, like you are telling a story in a noisy restaurant, you will sound flat and monotonous on the video camera.
Keep your hair out of your eyes and combed neatly. Otherwise, people will focus on nothing but your hair and will miss your message. It is easier talking to a human being than it is talking to a piece of metal. Lean forward 15° into the camera; you’ll look taller, leaner, and more confident. Keep your hands out in front of you and ready to gesture. If you move your hands, you will seem more confident and more interesting to watch.
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Sample of a slide from the deck that participants viewed online.
A Web site was programmed to host all 26 PowerPoint files that were part of the experiments, the freerecall test interface, and test results. The site was programmed such that participants could access and view a PowerPoint file only once. Upon completion of each experiment (Benchmark and four Formal Experiments), participants were asked
to complete a free-recall test. Each response was associated with a correct/incorrect label by two coders. These coders assigned 1 point for a correct response and 0 points for an incorrect response, and mapped each 1 or 0 with a specific slide number. The inter-coder reliability was calculated using the kappa coefficient. For this study, the average agreement between the two coders was .87, considered a good agreement.
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4 5
[ THE RESULTS [
Participants remembered an average of 4 slides from a 20-slide, standalone, text-only PowerPoint presentation.
There was not a statistically significant difference between the recall of content in text-only slides versus slides that contained text and neutral visuals. The recall rate did not exceed 4 slides.
3
Participants tended to remember similar slides, which indicates that their content can be further analyzed to identify commonalities.
Applying the isolation effect every nth slide (3rd, 4th, or 5th) did not impact the overall recall of an entire deck.
However, when a change was made every 5th position (i.e., slides 5, 10, 15, and 20), those slides tended to be remembered better than any other randomly selected slides from that deck. The reverse was true for slides changed in every 3rd and 4th position.
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4
MAGIC MAGIC MAGIC MAGIC
NUMBER NUMBER NUMBER NUMBER
In this study, memory capacity reached four slides for the six groups (480 people) during the Benchmark phase; this number did not increase across the other 20 groups (1,000 people) during the Formal Experiments. Regardless of the distinctiveness effect applied (e.g., changing background color, alternating between slides with text-only and text and neutral visuals, or replacing neutral visuals with emotional visuals), the number of recalled slides stayed constant. The questions that arise are: Why four slides? Is four a low number, a high number, or just what is expected? Does the isolation effect help or hinder recall? And does it make a difference where the four slides are positioned in the series of 20 slides? To answer these questions, it is beneficial to revisit several theories of how memory works.
To provide a simplified view of memory processes, several researchers have offered segmentation based on time (short-term, long-term), content (episodic, semantic, procedural), and consciousness (implicit, explicit). Regarding short-term storage, no paper on memory capacity and short-term memory can escape without quoting Miller’s classic “seven plus or minus two,” which has often been used in the fields of psychology and education as pillars for creating guidelines on information processing and communication design. Miller contended that there is a limit in the number of items that working memory can retain (namely, 7±2).
The new magic number is 4±1. Other researchers have since questioned the limitations of memory capacity and suggested that the new magic number is 4±1. Others observed that people form clusters of no more than three or four items to recall and items in a list entered a fixed-capacity rehearsal buffer, and displaced a randomly selected item already
FOUR FOUR FOUR FOUR
there, when the capacity of approximately four items had been exceeded. Most studies taken into consideration, including Miller’s famous “7 ± 2,” were focused on short-term memory. The present study focused more on the concept of long-term memory. Converting short-term memory to long-term memory is called memory consolidation and is time-dependent. This process can happen within minutes or hours from learning, and results in structural and functional changes to neurons. As time passes, the connections between different neocortical regions strengthen, allowing for a single memory to be accessed independently (which is why the test for this study was sent 48 hours after participants viewed the presentation). If long-term memories are not accurate or cannot be retrieved at all, it may indicate that problems happened during encoding or retrieval. The proper encoding of memory requires attention, and since attention is limited, only a few stimuli enter conscious awareness. Researchers are still debating whether the filtering of stimuli happens during the sensory input or after the significance of the stimuli has been processed. However, there is agreement on the fact that how people pay attention to information may determine how much they remember. The isolation theory selected for this study was intended to potentially prompt people to pay attention to items that were distinct in some way (either by color or structure) and help with the overall encoding of the “list” of slides. From this regard, using the isolation effect at encoding was useful because a correlation was found between improved recall and the application of an isolation effect every 5th slide.
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[ images [ Using neutral
The surprising findings...
The inclusion of neutral images in textual slides during encoding did not seem to improve recall. Existing research suggests that the processing of a visual stimulus can have a positive influence on memory. One explanation for picture superiority springs from Paivio’s dual coding theory, which mentions that the representations for pictures and words are stored in two separate memory systems, and pictures are represented by an image code, while words by a verbal code. If the words and pictures are connected well, the images may evoke the verbal code and the words may evoke the image code. Paivio suggested that pictures often show recall superiority because they are dually encoded (i.e., they evoke both the image and the verbal code). These two memory traces increase the probability of retrieving an event.
So far, it has been noted how memory problems can occur at encoding and how the isolation effect can help mediate some of these problems (namely forcing attention toward items that are visually distinct in some way). Memory problems can also occur during retrieval. In the present study, memory was tested using free recall, 48 hours after participants viewed the PowerPoint presentation. This decision was based on the consideration that free recall tests typically yield larger size effects. A free recall test may resemble real-life situations better, because in real life, people are not often provided cues or multiple choice tests in order to prove how much they know about webcasting guidelines (the topic of the presentation). In addition, a free recall test provided a very rich dataset, on which further qualitative analysis can be conducted.
However, for this study, neutral visuals did not improve recall. This observation confirms studies, which claim that, even though lists of images are learned better than lists of words, they are not necessarily retained better over time and when free recall is used. Imagery is not always guaranteed to facilitate long-term memory.
Despite advantages, free recall may be harder on memory compared to cued recall or recognition tasks (as evidenced by many participants in the current study who, before inserting their answers, exclaimed: “What, no multiple choice? No cues?”). Free recall may be more difficult because during free recall, an item is first retrieved from memory by a search process, and then it is tested by the recognition process to determine if it belongs to the to-be-recalled list.
Using these memory theories and the findings in this study, content designers may keep in mind these two considerations: Some slides that used the isolation effect showed better recall compared to other slides in the same deck, and some of those isolated slides did not include images—all that was needed was that something was changed (or made distinct) compared to the design of the 4 preceding slides (in some cases, this meant the exclusion of the image if the preceding 4 slides had visuals). Text-based slides were remembered, especially when they contained “visual words,” or words that painted concrete mental pictures in an audience’s mind (e.g., “don’t wear white,” “don’t wear black”). These two specifications can be critical in the design of on-demand PowerPoint presentations, particularly because the inclusion of images in all slides may imply additional design time and cost. Both can be saved knowing that text is a viable design element when used as an isolation technique after more visually intense slides, and when used with words that paint mental pictures.
In addition, the organization of materials presented is known to facilitate free recall, because free recall involves a search phase; an organized list is easier to search for than an unorganized list. By contrast, recognition does not include this search phase, and therefore it is not impacted by organization. This observation matches the findings of the current study, where the four most frequently recalled slides could be “organized” around the concept of what to wear and what not to wear during a webcast; these slides grouped around similar concepts were recalled even though they were not presented in the same sequence in all conditions. Overall, the decks in all conditions did not have a specific organization. In future similar research, a potential improvement to the study design is to provide the topic to be remembered in several obvious sections and observe whether a formal structure impacts recall. How can content designers benefit from insights related to potential problems at retrieval? Prior to the creation of any on-demand presentation, assuming that remembering information is important, content creators can ask the question: ARE YOU MEMORABLE | 10
How will viewers “prove” that they remembered the content? Will they be provided with cues to which they need to react? Or will they have to rely on free recall and act on the information without any cues? If the latter, sound organization of the materials may be critical. This is not a trivial remark because, as more presentations are distributed for on-demand retrieval, many do not follow a specific organization. Figure 3 shows the typical flow of a corporate presentation. There is an agenda slide that appears only once (which is typical for business presentations—the agenda is shown in the beginning of the presentation and not repeated). It may be beneficial for this slide to be repeated after each section, so that the organization can be “practiced” and potentially retained better, especially as viewers may not be cued later. Many presentations on Slideshare.net, for instance, contain an array of slides (sometimes even upward of 80 slides), without a distinctive organization. The reader can perform a quick test by accessing the Slideshare.net site, viewing any of the popular ondemand PowerPoint decks available on any topic, and seeing how many files present an easily identifiable and manageable organizational structure.
Free recall is a two-stage process: in order for a concept to be recalled, it must be both successfully retrieved and recognized. For recognition (versus free recall), contextual cues are critical (e.g., context information originally stored with the content). In fact, one of the challenges for the isolation effect is that while it may provide distinct elements at encoding, there is no context at retrieval, especially when testing is done through free recall. This is why the use of corporate or academic templates may be beneficial (despite frequent complaints that templates lead to boring design): they can provide enough contextual cues and physical similarity so that the next time viewers experience a PowerPoint presentation, they know to associate it with a specific brand or entity.
The flow of a corporate presentation, which can benefit from repeating the agenda slide for emphasizing organization. [FIGURE 3]
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So far, observations have been made on memory capacity and problems that can occur during encoding and retrieval. The use of the isolation effect can help by drawing attention to specific items and the use of contextual cues can improve recall. A frequently asked question around the concept of memory is: To what extent does the sequence of items in a list influence long-term memory?
Serial Positioning The concepts of primacy and recency effects are well-known constructs in psychology. According to these principles, people may remember items from the beginning and ending of a list a lot more than items in the middle of a list (depending on the presence of a distracter task, the speed of the presentation, and the list length). These observations are typically linked to short-term memory recall tests. When long-term memory is concerned, and given a longer list length (conditions that describe the present study), researchers have observed that people make a fixed number of searches for items in the long-term store, and the probability of retrieving a particular item is lower when there are more items. This observation matches the findings in the current study, where the first slide in all 26 conditions did not receive a high recall rate (in both shuffled and non-shuffled decks).
More recent studies have found significant serial positioning when analyzing the recall rate of commercials broadcast during the Super Bowl. They discovered that commercials presented during the first batch of ads were remembered significantly better than commercials displayed in the middle or at the end of the program. Since alcohol and tedium that may occur during a football game are likely to interfere with a study, Terry (2005) replicated the research in lab conditions, and asked students to view 15 commercials. In a long-term test, he observed that the primacy effect held strong, while the recency effect faded. Reflecting on serial positioning effects, several researchers proposed various explanations for the
primacy and recency effects. They remarked that the first and last items in a list might be recalled better because, when analyzed globally, the beginning and ending are more distinct; their sheer positioning attracts more attention. Viewers may pay less and less attention to each item as the list progresses, thus creating a primacy effect. This gradient model could be applied to explain some of the findings in the present research study: people tended to remember slides from the first half of the presentation (i.e., 6, 7, 8, and 9), and memory faded toward the end. This held true for the shuffled and non-shuffled decks. The practical guideline derived from these observations is for content creators to consider placing the most important parts of a presentation in the first half of an on-demand file. So far, it appears that four items is a typical number to be recalled and those four items should be placed toward the beginning of a list for better recall. Is there anything else that can be done if content designers want to ensure which specific four slides are recalled (versus fearing that slides are recalled at random)?
Controlling the Magic Four Even though participants in the study remembered only four slides out of 20, they seemed to remember similar slides. This is wonderful news for content creators because even though some people may be disappointed with a low recall rate, at least they may be able to control which four slides are remembered. From this angle, two questions come to focus: 1) Did distinctiveness help with the recall of specific items? and 2) What were the characteristics of the most frequently recalled slides? This finding can be matched with observations from two separate memory models: researchers who observed that after four items, elements in a list start displacing previous items; and the distinctiveness model, according to which elements that deviate from a list tend to be recalled better. As previously stated, to impact which slides are remembered, a practical guideline for content designers is to implement a distinct change every 5th slide. In the current study, the changes consisted of switching background colors from light to dark, eliminating pictures, or replacing neutral images with more emotional pictures. Future research may consider other types of distinct contrast (e.g., switching from serious to humorous, from small to large font or pictures, from expected to unexpected concepts, etc.). ARE YOU MEMORABLE | 12
In the current study, in the decks where a change occurred every 5th slide, those slides were remembered better than any randomly selected slides from the same decks. Regarding distinctiveness, one may wonder: Why did it not make a difference where a change was made every 3rd or 4th slide? The answer may come from research which suggests that in order for the brain to perceive a difference, it must first perceive the quality of sameness. In the deck where a change was made every 3rd or 4th slide, that change may have appeared too quickly, and there was not enough time for “sameness” to be perceived. The practical guideline for content designers is to ensure that at least four slides are similar before something is changed. This may be good news for those who sometimes question the use of templates when crafting presentations (often associated with tedious design). The advantage of templates in presentations is that they prompt the designer to use the same elements, which establishes consistency and therefore some amount of sameness. Deviating from the template every 5th slide may refresh attention and lead to better recall. So far, it has been noted that a slide sequence optimized for recall is to include the most important information in the first half of a deck and to apply a distinctiveness effect every 5th slide. There are several other memory theories tied to the concept of item sequence and improved recall. Several researchers have suggested that memory works on a chaining mechanism, where the recall of an item depends on its predecessors, and items that appear later in the chain depend on the accurate recall of previous items. These observations match the findings in the current study where a few items that had tighter links (e.g., what to wear) were remembered better than items that were not strongly connected. This concept is also related to the well-known idea of chunking. Adults may expand an otherwise limited working memory capacity by grouping related units. For example, people remember the sequence PBSBBCCNN better after dividing it into three smaller units: the television acronyms PBS, BBC, and CNN .
Unfortunately, what happens often is that content designers present or train on three or four separate objectives, but not a lot of time is spent determining how these objectives tie together. This is becoming more dangerous as content designers or academic professionals advertise the availability of knowledge in small chunks; unfortunately, these small bites are the educational equivalent of unhealthy snacks. They may feel good for the moment but they do not easily integrate within a healthy diet. Each time a section in a presentation is included, it is beneficial to ask: How does it connect or integrate with everything else? Schemas—cognitive frameworks that help people organize and interpret information around them—are also known to have an impact on recall. This may be due to the fact that schemas influence the way new information is processed and they guide people’s expectations as to what should occur.
Slides that are linked together may be remembered better. One of the reasons participants tended to remember similar slides (e.g., slides 6, 7, 8, 9) may be because these slides contained information that deviated from existing schemas around presentation guidelines and may have been perceived as novel. Typically, information about webcasts may include guidelines related to how to organize a message, how to best use pictures and fonts, or how to create user interactivity with chat boxes or polling questions. These four popular slides contained information that may have been unexpected because the guidelines are derived from a different field—broadcasting—but are applicable to webcasting: don’t wear black, white, red, or stripes. The practical guideline for content creators is to include novel information for better retention (which usually comes as a result of a thorough audience analysis to find out what they would consider as new). One side note to this observation related to novelty is that in the current study, participants who identified themselves as knowledgeable in webcasting remembered less than those who labeled themselves as novices. Research in advertising hints at a similar fact: those viewers exposed to unfamiliar ads engage in more extensive processing and those exposed to familiar ads are less engaged and involved in more confirmation-based processing. This observation helps to confirm that novelty is critical for capturing attention, even when an audience may consider themselves advanced. ARE YOU MEMORABLE | 13
In addition to chunking, and novelty, another characteristic that slides 6, 7, 8, and 9 may have shared is that the language used to phrase them was highly visual or could be pictured easily, without much mental effort (e.g., don’t wear white, black, red, or stripes). This observation is tied to the dual encoding theory mentioned earlier: concrete labels are easier to remember than abstract labels because concrete words can be encoded in two separate ways, one involving an image and the other involving a verbal code or meaning. This observation matches research from advertising, according to which high-imagery words are remembered a lot better than low-imagery or abstract words. In the current study, the slides that had concrete language were recalled with higher frequency even in the decks that had no pictures. The practical guideline for content creators is to use concrete and highly visual words more often than abstract words that may be harder to visualize, therefore recall. In fact, the least remembered slides were the ones that contained abstract language (e.g., “It is not enough to be useful. You must be useful, interesting, and quotable.”) Several researchers contend that negative information is more memorable in the sense that people tend to remember more details. Some studies show that the right fusiform gyrus, a region responsible for processing exemplar-specific details, displayed higher activity during the successful encoding of negative objects. Activity in the right amygdala also correlated with memory for visual detail. If recalling details is important to content designers, then expressing content in negative terms may be a solution to consider. If remembering the gist of the information is sufficient, then positive content may be suitable. Repetition was another trait shared by the four most
recalled slides. The word “wear” was repeated four times, such as in what to wear or not to wear (e.g., don’t wear stripes, black, or white; and wear pastels). Linking this to the idea of clustering, research suggests that during recall, words that are repeated along some dimension are recalled successively. This repetition can be semantic (items that often appear together in text), temporal (items that were clustered together in the list), or source (items that were studied using the same task). Practically speaking, it may be beneficial for content designers to use similarity of items that are important in a presentation to be recalled. Figure 4 shows how in a professional presentation, words such as RPM, Revenue, and Revolution are repeated on a few slides, making these terms more likely to be recalled later.
Another characteristic of the four popular slides is that they contained negative information (e.g., “don’t wear stripes, don’t wear white, don’t wear black”). In summary, in order to influence which four slides are remembered specifically, content designers may consider applying an isolation effect every 5th slide to provide enough sameness before distinctiveness is detected, clustering important slides together, deviating from expected schemas with novel information, using concrete and highly visual language, and if details are important, expressing thoughts as negative statements. ARE YOU MEMORABLE | 14
[FIGURE 4]
Example of repetition in an on-demand PowerPoint presentation
Memory and Source Confusion In the past, psychologists believed that memory for specific information created a separate memory trace, which faded over time, unless it was given specific cues to be accessed later. The newer view, which this study is taking into consideration, suggests that when a person interacts with a presentation or content in general, the memory for it interferes with other information in storage, including pertinent information from other sources as well as personal experience.
Memory represents a dynamic process that is subject to change. Based on this newer view of how memory works and on the findings from this research study, an important issue to consider for any content designer is the fact that the amount and type of information that already exists in someone’s memory on a specific topic can
produce interference. In the current study, when asked what they remembered from the 20-slide presentation, 80% of participants submitted a combination of correct answers, some correct but incomplete answers, incorrect responses, and comments on presentation design or the research study. 8% of participants submitted valid responses, but not from this study. For example, participants remarked that they remembered that “reading from a script can lead to monotone, which is boring,” “tell a story,” “don’t read bullet points from the slide,” “get a good night’s rest,” “start on time,” “use polls and interactive exercises to keep an audience engaged”… all of which was great information, but not received from this study. Only 9% admitted to truly remembering nothing and phrased it as such (e.g., “Sorry, I don’t even remember what the presentation was about. Pretty sad…” “Truthfully, I’ve been sitting here for a few minutes trying to remember and I can’t seem to remember any of the slides. Hmmm, perhaps it’s due to menopause,” “Wow, this is really crazy, but I don’t remember one slide from that deck,” “Sorry, I truly don’t remember anything right now,” “I honestly do not remember anything.”). The rest of the participants had a lot more ARE YOU MEMORABLE | 15
information to report, even though in many cases, it was not the correct or complete information. It is important to note that some participants who viewed the on-demand presentation also viewed a few other presentations from the author, which confirms the interference theory. As one participant confesses very well (remembering Tufte, an acclaimed PowerPoint guru): “My mind is now conflating what was on the pdf from the Adobe webinar last week, and what was in this PowerPoint webcasting test, and what I’ve seen on other best practices for PowerPoint, and a dash of Tufte! Anything else I put here would be generated from my various ideas about PowerPoint webcasting, not from memory of the presentation as such.”
Source confusion is a wellknown memory error. The content (in this case the webcasting topic) is remembered first, and the source is identified later. In a classic experiment, subjects “remembered” seeing Bugs Bunny at Disneyland, even though Bugs Bunny is not a Disney character. Duracell has discovered that 40% of consumers who remember the bunny campaign, believe it is advertising Duracell, not Energizer. When seeing an ad that is similar to another from a more established company, consumers tend to remember the message from the more renowned source. This may explain why principles included in the present study were attributed to Tufte, who is an authority in the realm of PowerPoint and presentation design. Source confusion errors may occur when there is a high degree of similarity between messages. Seeing similar messages may activate similar networks in memory. The reminder for content designers is that the memory for a particular presentation is not independent from other information in memory. This poses the question: Can repetition and distinctiveness improve linkages so that people remember specific information, and attribute it to the right source? After all, it is unfair for a content designer or faculty member to create sound content if the credit goes to a better-known source. Some researchers advocate that repetition may help to solidify schematic structure and strengthen the link to the information source (in the same way that a consumer remembers both the content of the
commercial and the entity that created it). However, the reminder is that repetition must not lead to too much similarity. In fact, the more similar messages are, the more source confusion arises. The pragmatic guideline for any content designer is to consider a message carefully and weigh its similarity against other on-demand presentations of the same topic. It has been noted so far that memory is not static and can hardly be compared to a videotape from which information is retrieved later, as old memory models believed. Taking into consideration that memory is dynamic, subject to change, and reconstructive (rather than reproductive), the spreading activation model may be appropriate to consider here because it refers to memory as an evolving process. According to this model, concepts are linked via a network and when one is activated, energy is spread to other related concepts. When a viewer observes an on-demand PowerPoint presentation (in this case on the topic of webcasting), concepts related to the content become active, as do concepts related to the design and presentation of the materials. Even though complex, the process of memory is a highly efficient system. When people view similar information over time, that information is collapsed together, forming a schema or a mental model. For example, when people view information related to presentation design guidelines, they may not remember all the individual presentations, but they may remember certain principles and categories from those presentations due to continuous activation. These schemas may be explicit (e.g., viewers may remember a specific book in which they read certain presentation design guidelines), or implicit, such as having a positive affect as a result of viewing a presentation.
Memory is dynamic, subject to change, and reconstructive . Research suggests that the memory for explicit information and particular details is less stable than the underlying associations within a schema, which are more implicit. This finding was reflected in the current study because many participants mentioned in their responses that they enjoyed viewing the presentation even though they did not remember many details (e.g., “I don’t remember any specifics. I only remember that ARE YOU MEMORABLE | 16
Viewers will retain a general feeling of whether they enjoyed it or not, which influences how they may view the next encounter with materials from the same source. Designers can strive to create any presentation as a great presentation. If greater effort is placed into creating outstanding presentations, there are more chances of people coming back to a source that creates positive feelings. I thought it has good advice,” “Although I thought it was a very interesting presentation, I am drawing a complete blank,” “Wow. Either I need to go visit my doctor to get diagnosed for early memory loss, or you have made a wonderful point. I am at a complete loss. I remember the slides being very plain and the background would change per slide, but the content did not stay with me as I thought it would originally,” “I have forgotten pretty much everything! I do know that there were good tips in there, but damned if I can remember what they were or anything about the content or the paired images. I’m sorry! I only remember an overall sense of ‘that was an interesting presentation.’”). As a practical guideline derived from these observations, content designers and faculty members may keep in mind that while viewers may not remember a lot of details from a particular presentation, they will retain a general feeling of whether they enjoyed it or not, which influences how they may view the next encounter with materials from the same source. As a result, designers can strive to create any presentation as a great presentation, because in a world where everyone can create and deliver a presentation at any given moment, viewers have lots of choices. If greater effort is placed into creating outstanding presentations, there are more chances of people coming back to a source that creates positive feelings.
If memory is malleable and viewers’ past experiences ’ can be influenced, this means that what happens after a presentation can influence how that experience is remembered. Content designers and faculty members may look at on-demand presentation delivery not as a single event, but as a continuum, because materials sent after a presentation is made available may influence the way the experience of the initial event is remembered. Postexperiences can influence memories. This is confirmed by research in advertising: ads are sometimes noticed more after a consumer has used a product. In fact,
influencing consumers’ recollection of the past is likely to be greater than the ability to transform the future. Future research in the memorability of presentation design can seek to understand what happens with recall when on-demand presentations are followed up by additional materials, and what follow-up intervals are optimal for improved recall. In conclusion, memory is dynamic and reconstructive (rather than reproductive). Content designers can avoid source confusion by creating messages that are not too similar to other messages viewers may be processing. Greater effort must be placed into creating quality presentations with each delivery effort because even though viewers may not remember all details, they will retain a general feeling of whether the presentation was pleasant and useful. Follow-up may be as important to memory as the initial encoding of information, so consider providing additional materials on the same concepts after the release of the on-demand presentation. It is beyond the scope of this study to determine optimal follow-up time, but research in advertising can provide a starting point, particularly considering the concepts of how familiar or unfamiliar an audience is with the entity that designs the on-demand presentations. For example, where brand familiarity is concerned, message effectiveness increases with low levels of repetition and decreases as repetition increases. When viewers access an ondemand presentation from an unknown entity, there are two cognitive processes that may come into play: a) reaction to the unfamiliar source, and b) reaction to the new content. When the content comes from a familiar source, cognitive processes are involved only for the content. Wear-out tends to occur more frequently when the message comes from an unfamiliar brand. Keeping these considerations in mind, it may be useful for a content creator to ensure that the “brand” that issues the presentation is strong and familiar first, and then expend effort on creating memorable slides.
Memory and Emotion One of the distinctiveness effects applied in this study was the inclusion of emotional pictures (included on all slides or alternated with neutral images). The expectation was that emotional images enhance ARE YOU MEMORABLE | 17
memory because emotional information benefits from amygdala activation, which promotes consolidation and long-term memory. A cautionary remark on emotional stimuli is that due to the fact that attention and memory are limited, the inclusion of emotional elements can attract more attention, at the expense of peripheral details. Emotional components may benefit from a “spotlight” effect or act as an “attention magnet” and consequently lead to privileged processing, resulting in enhanced memory. This may account for those situations when people may remember emotional materials in a commercial (e.g., humorous or romantic scenes), but not the product that was advertised. In the present study, a similar situation was observed: some people remembered some of the emotional pictures (e.g., person skiing on sand, woman doing a yoga pose to reach a laptop, red lips, or frog asking to be kissed), but they did not remember the context behind the picture. This matches findings from researchers who maintain that when words and emotional images are concerned, if the information is part of the visual (such as color or location), those details will be better retained in memory. By contrast, if words are just paired up with images (even though there is some association), memory is either impaired, or does not increase. Several researchers showed people a set of neutral pictures and another set of emotionally negative pictures (e.g., robbery on a subway). In the corner of the
slides, researchers included unrelated, neutral objects (e.g., mittens, feathers). People showed equal recall for both neutral and emotional pictures but they struggled to remember which neutral object was related to which emotional picture or other neutral object. These findings suggest that it is harder to recall associations than it is to recall independent images. The practical guideline for content designers is to ensure that words and images included in an emotionally charged slide are an integral part of each other—otherwise, they may compete with each other and memory is either impaired or a chance is missed to improve recall. But what does being “an integral part” really mean? Research suggests the principles of proximity and continuation to ensure that words and images are an integral part of each other, and provide unity. These concepts are tied to Gestalt, a psychology term, which signifies “unified whole.” Continuation occurs when the eyes are guided to move from one object to the next object (elements arranged on a line or curve are perceived to be more related). Proximity occurs when elements that are placed together are perceived as being part of the same group. For example, in Figure 5 below, which was used in one of the 26 manipulations in the present study, the first design (Example A) shows separation of the text and image while the second (Example B) shows the text being part of the image.
[FIGURE 5]
EXAMPLE A
EXAMPLE B
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Regarding integration, a point needs to be made about the template system that currently exists in the PowerPoint software. If picture/word integration leads to better memory, most available templates are fundamentally flawed because they promote picture/ text separation. This means that greater care must be taken when being tempted to simply use default templates for creating on-demand PowerPoint presentations, without consideration for perception and memory theories. Continuation also leads to better integration as elements perceived to be part of the same line or
curve are processed together. In Figure 6, Example A (extracted from one of the PowerPoint files from the present study) indicates how the text is separated from the image because the person is looking away from the text and into the computer. In Example B, notice how the picture has been reversed and the viewer is likely to look at the image first and then “continue” processing the slide by looking at the text. This type of continuation adds coherence to the slide and makes it look more integrated. In future research, PowerPoint files created for the scope of observing recall will benefit from applying the principles of proximity and continuation.
[FIGURE 6]
EXAMPLE A
EXAMPLE B
Inserting pictures that face the text will lead to continuation and the processing of the slide as a unified whole.
Brief Qualitative Analysis All participants in the study (1,480) submitted their responses to the question “What do you remember from the 20 slides you viewed?” in a qualitative format, which coders mapped to either correct or incorrect responses. Based on the rich nature of the responses, a brief qualitative analysis was conducted to examine the nature of the entries, beyond the mere correct or incorrect assignment. Prior to the coding of the responses, it was agreed that a response would still
receive a correct score if it provided the correct behavior, regardless of the reasoning. For instance, participants who simply reported that they must not wear black, white, red, or stripes in a webcast received a correct score, even though they did not report on the reason why those colors or patterns were not appropriate. Even though 29% of the overall sample recalled zero slides, it was interesting to note what “zero” meant. To this extent, all qualitative answers were analyzed and the following eight patterns emerged (more than one category applies per participant): ARE YOU MEMORABLE | 19
1 2
Participants who truly remembered nothing: 9%.
3 4 5 6
Participants who remembered some correct content regardless of how many slides: 54%.
7 8
Participants who provided some form of incorrect content: 23%.
Participants who remembered nothing but still wrote 2–7 lines of comments, in the form of apologies, excuses, or criticism of the study: 20%. Participants who remembered some correct content but reported it incompletely: 53%. Participants who had some correct answers but incorrect reasoning: 5%. Participants who reported correct answers related to what to do in a webcast or in presentation skills in general, but not from this study: 8%. Participants who commented on the design of the slides (instead of or in addition to recalled content): 21%.
Limitations and Future Research The current study focused on observing the isolation effect in a 20-slide PowerPoint presentation. It started with a “list” of slides that contained an array of guidelines on what to do and wear during a webcast. The guidelines were not organized according to any particular criteria and the presentation was accessed via standalone means (consequently there was no presenter to “defend” the content, answer questions, or ask viewers to participate). Participants were instructed to remember as much as they could from the presentation, but not take notes. Their longterm memory was tested 48 hours after viewing the PowerPoint presentation via a free-recall test where the order in which the items were reported was not considered important. Any change in any of the conditions described here could lead to different results in future research with a similar topic and scope. For instance, some immediate questions arise: Will memory capacity still cap out at four slides if the number of slides increases from 20 to 30, 40, or 50+ slides? Will recall differ if the test is administered immediately versus after 48 hours? Will varying the size and meaningfulness of the isolate impact recall? In the present study, the isolates selected may have been too “mild.” Perhaps choosing more dramatic contrast can have a stronger effect (e.g., switching from simple slides with just a few lines of text and one small picture to slides that have no text and one large picture; or to even more emotionally charged pictures).
The topic included (webcasting) was declarative in nature. It would be interesting to note results where the content is procedural, more abstract, related more to statistics and charts, or even a combination of these items and switching between types of information. The present study involved an intentional learning situation (participants were formally instructed to remember as much as they could from the presentation). In an incidental learning situation (with no formal instructions for viewers to remember anything), will recall be higher or less than four slides? Since incidental learning is selective by nature, then using the isolation effect may be appropriate to make items stand out when the user may not have a preference. Will the isolated items have to be better linked to the learning task in order to be remembered more?
People tended to make errors toward the end of the recall process and those errors triggered more errors, which led to recall termination. It may also be interesting to study whether a different test format impacts recall rate (i.e., instead of choosing free recall, would cued recall or recognition make a difference?). Would conducting a free recall test in person (rather than online) offer additional insights into how people transition from one response to another, and when they determine that their answer is “complete”? How do they react when they realize they make errors? ARE YOU MEMORABLE | 20
For example, some researchers showed that people tended to make errors toward the end of the recall process and those errors triggered more errors, which led to recall termination. Given that participants may be in a rush when responding to questions, it may be interesting to study at what point they give up. This would be important because recall termination ultimately determines how many items are recalled, taking into consideration the contiguity effect, according to which people associate neighboring items at encoding and later successfully recall items studied in neighboring positions. If the recall of an item is perceived as poor, then proximate list positions may also be impacted. Another source for meaningful future research on the combination of the isolation effect and on-demand presentations might be the aim to observe whether isolated slides act as organizing tools. Several researchers noted that in a free-recall situation, participants tended to report items in an organized fashion. This may be due to the fact that the isolated items serve as anchor points and help to establish order in the list, particularly since no formal organization of the information is provided and participants may use the isolates to deliberately attempt to organize information. Any future research would have to find volunteers, and a brief note must be made on reaching a high population for a research study. 1,540 people had to be recruited for this study (60 people during the Calibration phase, and 1,480 during the Benchmark and Four Experiment phases). The author had access to a professional database with approximately 12,000 participants, who opted to be part of this database as a result of attending workshops or webinars provided by the author in the past five years. Consequently, this was not a “cold list,� but rather a list with business
professionals interested in constantly learning more about how to create effective presentations. 1,223 participants (out of 1,540) originated from this database. The other 317 participants were recruited with the help of several companies and individuals who asked for permission to forward the link to the study to their own databases or connections because they became interested and excited about the nature of the research and its pragmatic potential. Overall, these organizations forwarded the link to over 100,000 people, which means the click-through rate (CTR) to recruit participants from cold lists was 0.003%. This percentage was fairly low, compared to the typical CTR from cold lists, which ranges from 0.05% to 3%. Even though CTR has been declining for years due to the overwhelming amount of available ads, which have created a numbing effect, marketing a message for a research study should attempt a 3% CTR. This means that improvements can be made should future researchers advertise their studies online to cold lists. For example, bigger ads for the study, ads placed near the content for an email blast, or ads placed between the title of a post and the content of the post, and blue links for the research, seem to work best in attracting viewers. Segmentation of the audience based on specific demographics can also increase the CTR for any advertised research study. Twitter could be a useful tool in promoting research participation. A dominant site for social media, Twitter is currently used by corporations, government agencies, and celebrities to inform, educate, or advertise. For the current study, Twitter provided an opportunity to inform the community about the current study and invite the author’s followers to participate. The degree to which people re-tweet a study or react to it can speak to the value of the research and motivate others to participate. ARE YOU MEMORABLE | 21
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THE
CONCLUSION
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The research here shed some light on issues related to the isolation effect and creating memorable ondemand presentations. The study findings have implications for corporate content creators as well as for virtual professors. It has been noted repeatedly that the brain is bound to make mistakes by forgetting or misremembering things. This issue is exacerbated by content designers’ tendency to place a premium on distributing information quickly and widely, which often breeds superficiality. Society has switched from intensive to extensive presentations, often valuing quantity over quality, almost implanting forgetfulness into people’s souls. Viewers are asked to read, read, read, and designers are wondering why they forget, forget, forget. This mindset can be adjusted. When skillfully used, PowerPoint and the memory theories presented here can help create on-demand presentations that provide the structure, simplicity, and visual sophistication necessary for proper recall. If one can influence the specifics of what people remember, what will that mean to the future of your business?
The Anti-Presentation Company 415-606-5406 info@reximedia.com www.reximedia.com
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