
Redesigning Mary Meeker's Internet Slideshow - EmilandDC
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-30/redesigning-mary-meekers-ugly-internet-slideshow
======
eykanal
What a horrible, horrible headline. Mary's analysis is incredibly detailed,
extrememly informative, and FREE. This link-bait headline chose to ignore all
the content and focus exclusively on the fact that the plots are ugly.
Strangely enough, I managed to get through the slideshow without falling
asleep, and I even was able to read her (quite well laid out) graphs and
understand her points.

The author even acknowledged this; the first paragraph does nothing but extoll
the value of the analysis. The headline, though, is pure linkbait.

Even worse, replacing a bar chart, where height scales linearly with the
metric and is easily comparable across bars, with a bubble plot, which is very
hard to use to compare sizes (tiny changes in radius cause a huge change in
volume, not so easy to see that), is simply bad design and obfuscates the
point. Color me not impressed.

Shame on you, Bloomberg. You should be better than that.

~~~
GFischer
IMO, the "redesigned" slides are more aesthetically pleasing but they lose a
lot of information in the process.

The second slide already has lower contrast (less readable), and as you
mention, the bubble plot has less information. I do like the 4th slide (55)
redesign, and the one on education (25).

Removing pictures and logos also reduces information for me.

Overall, I overwhelmingly prefer the first set of slides over the second - the
point should be information first, aesthetics second.

------
snail22
Yet another poseur "designer" who clearly hasn't read Edward Tufte's books,
and has made crucial mistakes such as making the graphs less accurate than
they were before and adding additional extraneous clutter (such as those extra
icons) on top of the original information. Real design is supposed to make
information more legible, not less, and it doesn't necessarily have anything
to do with how slick or "pretty" the end result appears to be.

~~~
fastball
"Real" design?

No true scotsman.

~~~
sp332
Snail22 isn't complaining that the result's not perfect. It's that it's not
even moving the right direction. The new "design" is strictly worse than the
original.

------
ZoFreX
I don't normally pick on the design of sites submitted, but people in glass
houses...

As soon as I scroll down a little the header changes and the entire first
paragraph disappears behind it. It's very jarring and it's actually making it
difficult to read. I'm sure it seemed like a cool idea, but design has to play
second fiddle to functionality: It doesn't matter how fancy the design is if
the product cannot perform its function.

A similar poor choice between shiny visuals and functionality has torpedo'd
their redesign of the slides. They aren't the prettiest but I can very easily
read the original charts. The new design massively reduces the contrast
between text and background and makes the axis labels much smaller and a
lighter font weight to boot. The result is very difficult to read.

~~~
jmuyskens
The scrolling bothered me too, but it's not technically their fault. I paused
ad blocking, and sure enough there's supposed to be a banner before the
headline. With ads displayed it works more or less seamlessly (though it still
is a bit distracting).

~~~
ZoFreX
Whoops - I feel bad for complaining now, as you say it works without Ad
Blocker.

------
workoy
Cubbers slides are prettier. However i'm able to grasp content better from
Meekers slides.

I guess the people (Meeker, NSA) who make these presentations just want to get
the message across and care little about pretty slides.

~~~
prepend
It's interesting how superficial some of the presentation designers can get.
You don't need beauty to present data clearly and make it actionable.

I'd be interested in seeing some cost/benefit analysis on spending money on
improving these kinds of presentation. Do you actually get a return from
beautification projects like this.

Of course, there is a difference between bad presentation and competent. But I
don't think Meeker's presentation is bad. Businessweek is just trying to
attract controversy by throwing out "a crime against good design."

I work in a scientific field and we frequently get pitches by design firms
trying to win work by spending money rebuilding paper presentations, etc. I
think there is room to fix broken presentations. But there is diminishing
returns from trying to improve a perfectly competent presentation.

------
bowlofpetunias
So now we have to amateurish approaches to design.

One with the esthetic sensibility of a visually impaired 3 year old, and one
that completely ignores the goals and requirements of both the publisher and
their audience.

Both of them are equally unprofessional, but only the latter is unforgivably
pointless and arrogant.

------
teh_klev
For me I'm distracted by the design - which is nice enough - but the key
information doesn't jump out at me like with the originals.

Also, the use of green on green (or is it Teal?) isn't agreeing with my ageing
eyesight.

------
bernardom
Wow, so much hate here.

I like the re-design. Yes, he makes it readable by reducing some information.
But it's a _lot_ easier to read. Sometimes that's a good trade-off.

~~~
prepend
I don't know. I find the originals easier to read. I don't think the new
design understands the information and its meaning.

Take slide 15 for example, changing a histogram into a bubble chart.
Aesthetically it looks nicer, but when you try to comprehend the data it's
more difficult. For example, easily comparing side by side bars is easier than
trying to determine the difference in bubble sizes. One of the main points of
Meeker's slide is that there is $30B in opportunity in the difference between
Internet and Mobile time spent vs. ad spend. This is completely gone visually
in the redesign and now adds a sentence to describe in text "Underspending on
Internet and Mobile"

------
eli
I don't understand how you can design something without even talking to any of
the stakeholders. Does the new deck accomplish the goals better than the
original? How would you know?

I'm not a fan of unsolicited redesigns. Design is easy when you have none of
the constraints of a real project.

~~~
EmilandDC
I would love to discuss with Mary about it. But I'm pretty sure she has better
things to do!

And I agree with you that I don't have all the constraints. But it looks that
they just used some of the default Powerpoint charts and shapes, so I just
thought I could give it a humble try.

You can see the full-size slides here:
[http://fr.slideshare.net/EmilandDC/kpcb-internet-
trends-2014...](http://fr.slideshare.net/EmilandDC/kpcb-internet-
trends-2014-redesigned-slideshare-version)

~~~
judk
Calling something "ugly" isn't humble.

Putting "humble" in bold is an ironic admission of obliviousness.

~~~
EmilandDC
"Ugly" is in the title of the article, not in my Slideshare presentation. I
just posted the title of the article here.

And I think you are over-interpreting things by seeing irony everywhere.

------
danso
> _The Paris-based designer kept the “serious look and feel” and stuck with
> the shade of grayish green favored by Meeker, a partner at the Silicon
> Valley venture capital firm of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. But De
> Cubber introduced a dark background—white, he says, is harder to read on a
> big conference-room screen—and reduced the number of different colors to
> create visual consistency. Finally, he got rid of an unnecessary color block
> at the top and the firm’s logo at the bottom to eliminate clutter and create
> some breathing space._

I'm sorry, but isn't the usual advice that you use _dark_ text on a _light_
background, because in a presentation room with ambient light, the dark
background may wash out?

~~~
drb311
Who cares what it looks like on a big conference-room screen? 99% of viewers
are looking at it on a desktop or laptop.

I've always wondered how you can apply the banal "story-telling" presentation
advice to slide decks that share detailed information that requires
discussion, analysis and thought. Now I know -- you can't.

Emiland has, in fairness, greatly improved the text. "77% less financing
volume" is a far better annotation than "77% below". Meeker would be better
advised to improve her writing skills. Her design skills are just fine.

~~~
prepend
"Who cares what it looks like on a big conference-room screen?"

It was written to be presented at the Code conference. I think it's rather
silly to ignore the design constraints of its initial presentation mode just
because it will later be viewed online.

------
alukima
The original slides were to the point and effective. The redesign makes them
generically prettier at the expense of readability.

------
yeukhon
I don't care if the slides are full of words as long as the presenter doesn't
just read word from word. The art of public speaking is more important than
slides. I pay attention to slides but I also pay attention to speakers.

Leonard Kleinrock, one of the important father of Internet, is not shame of
his 1997 style powerpoints. They work. He is a very good public speaker. He
can tell stories.

[http://www.lk.cs.ucla.edu/bibliography-
presentations.html](http://www.lk.cs.ucla.edu/bibliography-presentations.html)

------
neil_s
I don't know why there's so much hate here, but I actually find the redesign
much easier to comprehend quickly, without constant head-turning to read axis
labels. The rephrasing of charts labels to, eg "Number of companies financed",
in readable fonts makes things so much easier.

@EmilandDC, I really hope you do a complete redesign of the admittedly long
presentation. I gave up a few slides in when I came across the original, but I
am more likely to make it all the way through if I can read it in your
presentation style.

~~~
EmilandDC
Thank you Neil!

Unfortunately, making slides requires a good amount of time and redoing the
160 slides would take weeks.

------
doctornemo
Not bad. I like the way he streamlined the text.

Dark background... yes, that would be better for a conference room projection.
But I prefer the white for my laptop view.

------
marcgg
Compared to the NSA redesign you did before, I love that this time we get the
whole process and not just a before/after result.

------
vdm
The biggest improvements are to typography, color palette and using a single
background across headline and body.

The changed plots, not so much.

------
barryhand
Is the full deck available somewhere?

~~~
EmilandDC
You can see a bigger version of the slides here:
[http://fr.slideshare.net/EmilandDC/kpcb-internet-
trends-2014...](http://fr.slideshare.net/EmilandDC/kpcb-internet-
trends-2014-redesigned-slideshare-version)

------
foobarqux
What tools does one use to make nice slide decks with charts?

------
001sky
Props to whoever modded the headline.

