posted on
Wednesday, January 07, 2009 8:00 AM
The problem with PowerPoint is that most of the time it is used by people that don't known how to make a presentation:inexperienced presenter with PowerPoint acts in the same way as a children in a workshop with many things to make noise with. He can use many bells and whistles but he's not able to build anything.
I think that it's very difficult to make a "catchy" presentation using PowerPoint for such an user, because he is driven by the tool to a wrong approach. But PowerPoint is the most used application, the most usable software to share short presentation and it can be used for any topic and target.
After a series of boring presentation with speakers whose body language says the opposite of the concept they want to expose, my question is often the same: which was the message?
When we approach a presentation the first question should be: which is the message I want to transmit to the audience? How I can say it without boring and leaving a positive sign in the memory of my audience?
So I have to pay attention to the focus. Then organize the content in a logic way, that will be immediately clear to my audience.
We can put a summary in the beginning and other one at the end of presentation: it naturally drives to the conclusion.
We could introduce the topic area and then go to the focal point. It's not necessary to write everything in the slides, only the most important things: pay attention to the words you write and give them the right place on the path of presentation!!
To better explain the content, metaphors and examples are very useful. We can introduce pictures, one per concept that we want to discuss. It's not important the pictures' quality, but the association of pictures and word. We have a visual memory, so if we use image and word associations it's easier that we'll remember a concept.
Don't forget that people don't have an infinite capacity in our memory, so if we use few concepts and spend time to explain each one, we help our audience to remember.
And don't forget to repeat and summarize every important part of your discussion.
If you feel confident with the audience, you can introduce some jokes during the presentation, especially when the topic is very difficult and you see the person in the front raw close their eyes :)
So what do we have to remember for our next presentation?
One slide for each topic (more than one only if is really necessary), metaphor+concept association and leave EMPTY SPACE on the slide: don't put a lot of phrases, pictures, data on it!
If we build our presentation that way, clear and simple, where we can introduce effects? And why? Are they really important to focus on our topic?
I leave the answer on your decision.
I leave you with two links:
@media 2008 (and the old version): here are some presentation made by “designer” to designer. They are static pdf presentation and they are pleasant and useful .. this leads me to think.....
E. Tufte: One of the data visualization guru. In this article he starts with an example that puts the focus on the importance of organizing the content to expose the topic in more effective way.
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