Computer generated slides: a need to curb our enthusiasm

The popular use of computer generated slides for presentations during plastic surgery scientific meetings has opened a fresh chapter in audiovisual techniques. Although the profusion of colours seen during presentations is a visual treat, the information imparted by these slides leaves much to be desired and raises the question of whether such attractive and apparently professionally made slides are visual aids during such presentations. Presentation slides are displayed for a very short time (10-15 seconds) as compared to slides displayed during a lecture and therefore these presentation slides should have the ability to impart their information very quickly. We conducted a study wherein 36 slides, each having a different colour combination, were displayed to a class of third year medical students who were asked to judge the efficacy of each slide. The attractiveness, clarity and recall of each slide was graded by every student and, with the information obtained, the most effective format and colour combinations to be used while making slides for presentations were established. We conclude that the best format for slides is a plain dark coloured background (blue, purple or green) and a separate, contrasting plain dark coloured title text background (red, green or purple), with white letters for the text and yellow letters for the title.