powerpoint presentation

powerpoint presentation

The Power of Effective PowerPoint Presentations

1. Introduction

The ability to effectively convey your message to others is a skill, without question. The question then becomes what is it worth to you and your career. The time you take to develop a clear, compelling and concise presentation will allow you to meet the demands of today’s fast-paced business world in which your audience is often bombarded with information. What tools and tricks are available to guide someone in that effort to create a presentation that demonstrates clarity and focus? This paper will discuss the power of PowerPoint and its effective use in business presentations. The intended audience is the savvy business presenter who is looking for a new way to break through old methodology and the casual PowerPoint user who is looking for tips to improve their current way of doing things. It is ultimately a guide to assist in the transition from bulleted list presentations to ones that are clear, effective and sure to leave a lasting impression. Before proceeding, a brief note on the original study that was conducted using a small sample of graduate-level management students. In four controlled studies, these students were asked to view presentations and render opinions. These studies were undertaken by Detlev Zwick, Daniel R. le Boe and George J. Avrunis, PhD whiteboarding economist and brand consultant, and presented at the 2002 Qualitative Market Researchers conference in Budapest, Hungary. The study set out to prove that bulleted list presentations were not the most effective tactic when trying to communicate a message. This study set the stage and provided the inspiration for this paper.

2. Key Elements of a Persuasive PowerPoint Presentation

Designing the content of your slide Develop your PowerPoint with your audience in mind (Colley). Find out all you can about your audience and tailor your presentation to meet their needs. The most powerful tool in PowerPoint is the ability to show pictures. Take advantage of this! Try not to get caught up in the trap of writing your whole speech down on your slides, there is nothing for the audience to do but read ahead of you and become disinterested. Use images as backgrounds on your slide with writing boxes. Complete the box with bullet points or short descriptions of the image. Use graphs or charts in which you can talk your audience through. For example, “From this graph we can see that the amount of money donated to breast cancer for research outweighs that of any other cancer.” A pointer to this graph is also useful. Whichever method you decide to employ, make sure that text or numbers are legible to the audience. If you have to squint to see what it says, then the audience will have little chance of understanding what you are saying. Make sure your writing is simple and straight to the point. The simpler the better! Whatever you do, do not under any circumstances have clip art and a slide full of writing. This is boring and will not attract attention. Clip art needs to be relevant and interesting. Never have just a description of the clip art in a sentence or two. This is defeating the purpose of the clip art. Instead, the clip art should be providing a vivid and simple illustration of a point made in the presentation and act as a prompt or reminder of what you are going to talk about next.

3. Designing Engaging Slides

Proficient design, in its most effective form, is a mixture of integrate and enough taste to win favor while still maintaining the right amount dignity. Graphic design and typography are utilized to make the slide visually approachable to its intended audience. This includes using layout effectively to direct the audience’s focus to the most important part of the slide, using color or interesting graphic design to highlight where an important point is being made, and using text that is clear and easy to read. Aim to get the most effectiveness using the least amount of ink. Too much extraneous detail can detract from the message. Style is generally continually under dispute. Whether to use a simple background or an image relevant to the content is a decision left best to the presenter and the advised audience. Try not to use a design that will only be understood by a certain age group or culture. Finally, always aim to provide a handout to the audience which includes annotated slides as this can greatly aid understanding and the retention of information.

4. Delivering an Impactful Presentation

Like an essay, a presentation is divided into three main parts: the introduction, the body, and the conclusion. All key points made in the introduction of the essay must be made in the presentation with a conclusion. The body of the essay is simply transferred into bullet points on a series of slides. It is basically a series of headlines and a few bullet points showing what you will get if you were to read the article in full. Some people pack the body of their PowerPoint so there is far too much text. This is a very effective method if you are printing off the PowerPoint as it has effectively created a printout of all of the information that you want to convey. Many people favor the speak the body of the PowerPoint while it is displayed on a projector. This is OK to a certain extent. If the presentation is only five minutes long, a spoken body is fine. The problem arises when a twenty-minute presentation is conducted and only a body is shown. At this point, the audience will have read all of your slides within five minutes and you still have fifteen minutes left to talk to them. This effectively means the audience gets bored and frustrated because there is nothing new for them to look at or concentrate on. The best way to ensure that you do not fall into the trap of speaking through a PowerPoint is to put the minimum amount of information on each slide. This will prevent you from simply reading through your slides. Any more than seven bullet points of six words per bullet is too much. Always try to use pictures and diagrams to illustrate a point. A slide which has graphs and images will be more engaging for an audience.

5. Conclusion

In the past 15 chapters, the PowerPoint program was introduced into a running process of an international project. There were several presentations in front of different audiences and for challenging purposes. It was not an intended effort, but it occurred in a natural way. Therefore, experiences to make effective PowerPoint presentations do have a basis. A learning process during its making and experiences from the PowerPoint presentations itself. From learning theories, the concept that was understood is proved there were learning from 4D method application that was conducted into entire phases of a project. It occurred in a group or personal learning, thus it was shared knowledge. 4D method application has yielded a positive response. This method is systematic and proven to be easily understood by PowerPoint developer party and results in satisfaction because the purpose of a PowerPoint presentation can be achieved by sufficient and clear material. In a sequence of making a presentation with 4D method is plan-act observing-reflection. Step by step, it has made the PowerPoint developer stay in his purpose. A group learning during a project does have group learning theories Tricia’s Stotl learning from expert and learning with collaborative. Synchronizing with an expert who is a client of a project was conditioning the material and a result of a PowerPoint learning. With a collaborative client, the developer has made a presentation that presents the material for the client is like teaching his material. It was the positioning of the client’s material and a result of a PowerPoint learning, often doing a discussion and sharing information. This thing does have proof by presenting project Findis in the Electricity Engineering Department, Engineering Faculty, University of Indonesia. With the continuing process of making this PowerPoint, it can be said in an approach phase developer and client often exchange information and give feedback. This changing information yields clear and satisfying material.