The Human Factor in Software Engineering

The only place where the content of a presentation is more important than form are scientific conferences. There, the study presented and the results achieved are discussed. I believe that this is because the audience

1. is competent enough to understand the presentation´s content,
2. is interested in the content,
3. has clear criteria for judging scientific studies,
4. and has a lot of experience in listening and judging.

The audience of most other presentations lacks one or several of these competences. Maybe, this is the reason why most questionnaires asking participants of trainings and audience of presentations contain more questions about the form of presentation than about the content. For instance, I like the question: "The lecturer appears to be competent". It is correct to ask it this way because if the students could judge whether I am competent and teach them the most relevant content, they could give the lecture themselves.

However, I see a clear trend towards a general social development, even within science to be more interested in a presentation´s form than the content. I think that several trends lead in this direction:

• Life, science, technology etc. become more and more complex and it is difficult to keep up with the development. Therefore, it can happen that you do not understand each presentation´s content. But you can still judge the speaker according to criteria like voice, body language, which are so general that you can even apply them to a presentation given in a language you do not speak at all or to a presentation which you followed only five minutes, because the rest of the time you spent writing e-mails. So, judging the way of presentation can superbly hide that you did not follow the presentation mentally.
• In order to become a good speaker yourself, you have visited several speaker courses. They were hard. Every muscle of your body was criticized and you must control yourself completely. Like this, you learn to observe. And as people are critical with you, you are also critical with others. Hey, they are so much worse than you, because they evidently have spent less time in presentation courses than you did! They even do not know the basics.
• According to two studies cited by almost everyone, it is scientifically proven that audience judges a presentation by form and only to a very small fraction by content. I would be very interested in reading the original study, but the references are never given. It is possible that this research result has some threats to validity. Nevertheless, these claims influence people´s behaviour. Of course, they imitate the study´s participants because they receive the message that if everyone does this, it must be natural and good. Even if the purpose of presenting these studies is always so evident. It is either the motivational slide of a seminar about presentation techniques or a sales presentation for such a seminar. Well, as meanwhile these studies are so well-known, we can be sure that in replicating the study, we will find similar results. But in the good old times, I listened to a lot of really bad presentations, and we never said more than one sentence about it. We were really interested in the content, and as long as the presentation style did not keep us from understanding (even that happened), it was OK. Scientists did not need to be actors in these days. Meanwhile, there is a complete industry of people who earn their living by embellishing presentation slides, turning videos for presentations, consulting about the ideal style of clothing, hair-dress and make-up, and coaching presenters for hours for a 20-minutes-presentation.
• In literature, it is said that the fiercest book reviews stem from unsuccessful authors. This means, too, that the more critically and nastily the form of presentations is judged by the audience, the more critical become those who have been criticized severely themselves. This can lead to a vicious circle where the atmosphere in presentations becomes more and more aggressive. Nothing less than a perfect presentation is accepted. People not able to give perfect speeches are not allowed to talk. And not elected president anyway.

The problem about this development is that the discussion about a presentation´s form distracts from the content. With every year, I must spend more care on colours, forms, font types, multimedia, entertainment, didactics and body language. Next week, I will attend to a theatre course. I know from my
presentation and course evaluations that my competences as an actress are not sufficient. As a lecturer, I must take an actor training to authentically simulate the passion that I really feel. The audience does not perceive real passion (any more!). They are used to the exaggeration which is so typical for the stage. Of course, the theatre training costs a lot of time which I then can not spend for preparing content. But the audience is demanding for actors on the stages of science and seminars.

I would wish that we concentrate more on content, even in the days of multimedia. I do. Because my passion for knowledge is still stronger than my passion for colourful empty boxes.