The Evils of PowerPoint Engineering

While in grad school, one of my engineering professors once defined engineering as "science for the real world". The remark was a tongue-in-cheek riposte to a fellow physics professor, who in the previous week had made an equally provocative declaration that real scientists only work in disciplines without the word "science" in their names - upstarts like "political sciences" or "engineering sciences" need not apply. Aside from the good natured cross-campus rivalry, the remark did leave one lasting impression with me: engineers create gizmos aimed to make life better. Whether they are physical machinery like a spacecraft or a toaster, or more abstract items like a smartphone app - they all do something. Imagine my surprise then when I entered the aerospace workforce and found myself spending the vast majority of my time creating ... PowerPoint charts. Charts don't do anything, yet it was an apparently established industry practice to make a decent living by creating (lots of) them.

At what point did it become acceptable for engineers to deliver what essentially amounts to an infomercial on the gizmo they intend to create - rather than the actual gizmo itself? Google recently released their Ngram viewer, which allows you to compare the frequency of a given word or phrase in all of humanities publications over time. It shows that the appearance of the word "PowerPoint" directly coincides with the first decline of the word "Prototype" since 1920, and the trend continues to date. Coincidence? You decide.

Don't get me wrong - the effective communication of information is a very important aspect of any engineering project, and it is possible (although woefully uncommon) to achieve this with the help of chart based presentations. Especially in today's culture of miniscule attention spans, it still holds true that "a bad idea presented well will fail eventually; a good idea presented badly will fail immediately." However, just like access to computational fluid dynamics software doesn't turn a layman into an aerodynamicist, the ability to churn out "professional looking engineering presentations" doesn't make you an engineer. While watching over my shoulder as I was writing / debugging code for a plasma physics experiment, my adviser once remarked how in "his days" he had to make damn sure each line of code he wrote was accurate, because debugging cycles involved the creation of new punch cards and could take weeks! In the same vein, the wizard-style content creation of today's presentation software may actually be a detriment to the process of really thinking about what needs to be said, before putting pen to paper (or mouse to screen as it were).

Engineering is done with numbers. Any chart without numbers should immediately be treated as suspect - it is (at best) only an opinion. The same goes for illustrations; a photo shows a real object that can do something; a clipart image does not. When I see an "outline" chart that has four bullets on a variation of "Introduction, Analysis, Discussion, Conclusion" I brace myself and start looking for more caffeine. On the other hand, an opening chart that states "the launch vehicle concept to be shown will deliver 100 metric tons to orbit, fly 15 times a year, and cost 6 million per launch" makes me take out the notepad and pay attention.

However, even more important than good" chartmanship" is the practice of avoiding them altogether. "Small Business Incubation" contracts that allow for payable deliverables in the form of PowerPoint files make me cringe. Who actually believes that these startups will mature into successful commercial endeavors - selling what ... PowerPoint charts? Especially in government funded aerospace programs, charts seem to be ubiquitous in their use as payable milestone deliverables and "final reports". Do you think Isaac Newton's "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy" would still be in print today, if it had been created in PowerPoint? I think not. Presentation charts are a "means", but should never be an "ends".

One of my most recent (and most amazing) experiences was working in SpaceX mission control for the inaugural flight of the Dragon spacecraft on December 8, 2010. During the launch countdown on the first day, we encountered an anomaly with the second stage engine. The issue was resolved and we flew just 2 days later. The more "traditional" response was humorously captured by this Klyde Morris comic strip.