Creating Effective Presentations
We’ve all been there – eyes glazed over, mind wandering, trying to suppress a yawn as a presenter goes through what feels like an 800 slide presentation, reading out the points to you as you struggle to stay focused on what, if anything, they are trying to tell you. Or worse, you’ve seen your audience look like this during one of your own presentations. What can we do?
As a communicator, it can be our first instinct to make our slides more interesting with flashy animations, pictures, and colours. But that may not be the best approach. As humans, there is only so much our brains can process at once. And if we are looking to share important information in our presentations, we should be considering a few best practices to give our audience the best chance to absorb it.
One thing at a time
When you’re introducing information, don’t give it all at once. Use animations to introduce one point at a time, and use simple, easy-to-understand language. Don’t just write down what you are going to say and then read it out as the point is presented. Use a few keywords and give all the information needed before moving on to the next point.
Get to the point at the beginning
Consider introducing your slides with an informative heading, instead of just a generic title. The content in your slide should support what your heading says. If you can’t figure out what the heading should be, think about if the slide you’ve created even needs to be included.
Tell people where you are
Who hasn’t tried to ever-so-subtly look at their watch to see if a speaker was almost done? I know I’m guilty of that. I’m a big fan of putting an agenda at the beginning of the presentation so that everyone is clear on what to expect. While it’s great to have that at the top of the presentation, try going back in between sections to show your progress.
Figure out what you want to say
When you’re looking to present information in a chart or graph, take a step back and consider what story you want the data to tell. Do you want to show something happening over time? Are you making a comparison? If you work backwards from here, you can figure out how to best present it.
Don’t make them have to look for it
If you have to include a legend, put it in the line of sight of the rest of the information to prevent people from having to dart their eyes across the screen. You should also use contrasting colours where necessary, to ensure that your different data sets are clearly presented.
Sometimes as communicators, we get too caught up in getting our message across – what are our key messages, who are our audiences, when should we tell them – that we neglect to remember that they are actual people. We get focused on making our presentations look good, that we can lose focus on whether they are understood.
Next time you’re creating a presentation, instead of spending hours trying to find exactly the right stock photo, or making sure that all the colours in our pie chart are aligned with our brand, let’s take a step back and consider how we can communicate it to them in a way that is easy for them to process.
- By Emily Caister, IABC Waterloo Board Member