power point presentation

power point presentation

The Art of Effective Power Point Presentations

1. Introduction

The art of effective PowerPoint presentation is a skill that astounding numbers of persons both young and old should master. The potential uses for PowerPoint presentations are inexhaustible, but the only way to fully harness the potential of this software is having accredited skill in the techniques of producing sound, effective, high-quality presentations. Many persons have discovered these skills through the pain of trial and error, a method which is guaranteed to work, but at a cost of many frustrating hours and not to mention a few grey hairs. Lucky for you, this method is not the only one. By using this guide, you can successfully cut the time it takes to fashion a first-class presentation by a third, as much as double the quality of your work, and enable you to discover new levels of pride and satisfaction in the work that you produce. All this and more can be achieved by developing an understanding of some basic design principles and methods of using the PowerPoint software. (Robert Blake, The Art of Effective PowerPoint Presentations)

2. Creating Engaging Slides

Finally, don’t forget that slides are meant to enhance a presentation, not become the presentation itself. A common mistake is to rely too heavily on what is on the slides, and the presentation becomes more about reading the slides than transmitting the intended message. Always remember to keep the audience in mind and test the slides on someone who is not already familiar with the subject to see if the slides are dependent on the one giving the presentation.

Lists: Use simple bullets or numbers and keep lists short. Each individual point should only be a line or two of text. Too much text in a list can easily become confusing or give the viewer a sense that the list is more important than what is being said.

Color: Maintain a consistent color scheme throughout the whole presentation. Use light colors on dark backgrounds and dark colors on light backgrounds for the best contrast. Avoid using color schemes that are too loud or difficult to read with the chosen background. Use specific colors to represent specific ideas or points, but be careful that the use of color in this manner is not confusing in some way.

Text: Keep text to a minimum. During a presentation, the viewer is trying to divide attention between what is being said and what is being read. If a slide is overloaded with text, the viewer will lose focus, become confused, and/or miss what is being said.

Title: This should alert the viewer to the subject of the slide and be a logical piece of the slide as a whole. Space titles so they are aligned on the left side for easy reading.

The most crucial aspect of a PowerPoint presentation is the content you deliver to your audience. The most widely used visual aid for any kind of presentation is slides. A successful slide incorporates the right data in the right format. Practically anything can be a slide: a picture, a word or short phrase, a diagram, etc. And when dealing with slides, it is important to remember to maintain consistency throughout the whole presentation. Each slide should maintain the same feel as the first to keep a clean look and minimize confusion. When creating slides, remember the following:

3. Enhancing Visual Appeal

The most effective visual aids are usually the simplest. For the PowerPoint novice, it is tempting to use flashy, attention grabbing transition effects. Or, to demonstrate a lack of understanding in the power of concise messaging, blocks of text are often thrown at an audience at a speed that can hardly be read. Stick with simple transitions between slides. The most effective method to explain data is through the use of charts (pie, bar, line etc) or dash graphs. Instead of spilling the beans with information overwhelming to the viewer, the presenter can announce trends and specific data points. The information is easy to take in, and can be elaborated on if need be with further slides.

When creating visual aids that are to be presented, it is generally a good idea to keep images and words (whether on separate slides or the same) somewhat related. An image with no text can be given limitless interpretations; adding a line or two of accompanying text provides a specific interpretation the author intended to the viewer. The opposite (text with no visual aid) is data said to the viewer, and easily completely forgotten. With the information now having a visual association, retention and comprehension of the message is much higher. Data with trend is showing a combination of visual aid with audio explanation has a far more profound and positive effect on information transmission and retention.

Like it or not, beautiful images make information more meaningful. They clarify, intensify, and enforce information. They explain things not easily described and tell stories that can’t be told with words alone. Incorporating strong, specific images (as opposed to abstract conceptual images) contributes to the eye making a direct connection between the image and the intended message thus eliminating ambiguity. Visual connections help the viewer understand data, and act as a mnemonic to reinforce the speaker’s words.

4. Delivering a Compelling Presentation

After all, your slides should only contain point form outlines of the spoken text. This may not seem like a lot of effort for a 5-10 minute presentation, but if you want your audience to remember your content after the presentation, you should practice the technique for the sake of building rapport. It will likely take much longer than you imagine for the first few times, and you will be experiencing the curse of knowledge to a large degree. But after a few goes, you will get to the point where you can successfully deliver a PowerPoint presentation without having to read from slides, which will greatly enhance its effectiveness.

Listen and watch your audience. Reading from your slides guarantees that no one will listen after the first 5 minutes. It’s also a recipe for anxiety because your audience will grow annoyed and they will sense this from your demeanor, which will make you more nervous. What a vicious cycle! Instead, engage your audience by narrating the content of each slide in your own words. This is referred to as explaining each slide. It’s one of the most important techniques you can use. You may need to work on your presentation a little more to create a smooth narrative, but it’s worth the effort.

5. Conclusion

You have learned some key concepts which can help you create more effective project presentations. We visualized a project presentation as the transfer of information from one mind (the presenter) to another (the audience). The complete presentation process can be represented as in the below figure. In this representation, the complex activity of a presentation is divided into a number of smaller sub-activities. Now what most presenters do is directly jump to the third step i.e. “Preparing Presentation Tools”. They start making slides using PowerPoint. But as you have now understood, the more effort you put into the earlier sub-activities, the easier will be the later ones. And more importantly, the greater would be the impact on your audience. We focused more on the first two BUILD steps and the DESIGN step, as they are the ones most crucial to the achievement of overall presentation effectiveness. These steps are also the ones that differentiate the most outstanding presentations from the mediocre. From our analysis of the BUILD steps, you understood why traditional speaker. This focus on what the presenter would say and do, has resulted in what PP experts have labeled as the scourge of the “Slideument” i.e. a presentation that is a poor version of a document instead of a good version of an oral communication. From the above discussion about the causes and negative effects of “Slideuments”, one can appreciate the importance of maintaining a clear separation between slides and speaker in space and time. The more the presenters mix these up, the more likely they are to do the audience’s thinking (create cognitive load). PowerPoint makes it very easy to violate this separation. It encourages presenters to use slides as a teleprompter outlining everything the speaker will say. But often the audience can listen and understand significantly faster than the speaker can talk. So if the audience is forced to sit through an explanation of a slide that they already understand, they get bored. If on the other hand the speaker notices the audience getting bored and skips ahead, the new slide may no longer make sense to the audience. Thus redundancy is a common problem in PowerPoint presentations. Slides that are redundant with spoken explanation create a heavy cognitive load on the audience, as they must engage in unnecessary split-attention activity trying to compare the slide and the spoken words.