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How are you about putting slides together for technical presentations?

I admit it – I have been derelict in my duty to you. Around PowerPoint, anyway. I’ve done you a disservice. And it’s this comment by Nancy Duarte, the PowerPoint design guru, that made me realise it (scroll down – her first point).

She said that the current trend towards PowerPoint-Zen-type slides (one full-bleed image and a bit of text) is all well and good for marketing presentations, or keynotes, but what about presentations for technical people? Someone, she says, needs to come up with the standards for slides for physicians, scientists and engineers.

Well, that person, I’ve humbly decided,  is me.

The Lightheart rule for PowerPoint slides is:

You only need a slide in a presentation if you’d need one in conversation.

I still stand by that.

That doesn’t get away from the fact that in conversations about technical topics, you might need a diagram or two. And it seems like no one has ever put together the advice for how to do that, apart from silly rules about how many bullet points to have or what colour text to use.

Here are my first thoughts about how to design visual aids for technical presentations. I reserve the right for this to be provisional as I do more thinking and research…

When thinking about the information you’re delivering…

• Think about what they know already, what they need to know in order to make the decision (more about this  in my free book)
• Start with what you would do in conversation, in terms of formality and level of detail
• If listing features (facts) about a system, check that the audience really needs to know them
• Always link facts to advantages for the audience

When designing the presentation as a whole…

• Use as few slides as possible  and only leave them up when needed.
• Think of building up a large picture one piece at at time.
• Look for sequences and cycles.
• If you break it apart by putting something on a separate slide, reintegrate it back into the whole.
• Label charts and graphs with the message of the data, not a description of it.

When designing the slides themselves…

• Show how parts connect
• Bigger is more important
• Centre is more important
• Sides are peripheral
• Left is generally the past, right is generally the future (if you set it up that way)
• Build up the picture in stages if it’s complex
• Use arrows to show the flow of information or the steps in a process
• Use words only when symbols won’t be understood without them, and make the text LARGE

I’m going to do some more research into the visual display of data and synthesise what I find out. I’m thinking these principles are going to look a little, ahem, naive in a few weeks…

What do you think – would some more help on this topic be useful, or has this already been done well by someone else? Where else do you suggest I look?

***

Comments from last week’s post about PowerPoint include:

The smart and lovely Ray Bigger:

PowerPoint is not, and never has been, the problem. Most ppt’s use 5%of it’s full capabilities and judging by the many, many presentations I have seen about the same % of people really understand how to use PowerPoint.

The very funny and insightful Jeff:

Great post. I am hoping that 2009 becomes the year of the great PowerPoint (and Keynote) revolt. It is time to come right out and say that slides seldom matter. It is the content and the skill of the presenter that matters. Content and skill are tough; PowerPoint slides are easy.

I would add one item to your Purposes list. That item is: PowerPoint makes people appear to be busy. Notice I didn’t say productive. The first steps of effective presentation design sort of look like day dreaming. Fire up PowerPoint and you get the feeling you are doing something.

The always thought-provoking  Natasha Golding:

If we were feeling really radical we could say that Powerpoint, and all the books and trainers that go along with it, is built around the fallacy that we lack the ability to impress or inspire without whizzy slides. Zooming out the big idea is that fundamentally we’re lacking and our only cure is to consume…

***

In other news:

I’m back in Singapore after a fun few weeks working in the UK. In fact, I’m typing this on the flight back home, before having a few days in Bali (thanks Airmiles).

Books:

I’ve finally gotten around to reading Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody about how technology is affecting our capability for mass collaboration. V insightful.

Movies:

Slumdog Millionaire was totally worth it, though a little bit of a straight line.

Twilight totally wasn’t worth it, despite very pretty people. In fact, it was whilst watching Twilight that I started the notes on this article. Yeah, that good.

The Reader was beautiful and ambiguous (people – please stop showing me up by asking if it was as good as the book…)

The Women was a little disappointing but with a stream of great one-liners.

Milk is a freaking masterpiece.

Tech:

I am loving my new Samsung netbook. It’s tiny, light, fast and lasts 7 hours on a single charge. What’s not to love?

Oh, and my tiny Flip Mino camcorder is a dream. Makes my ‘have I got everything?’ list a little long, but it’s worth it.

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Links to books are often to Amazon for convenience and aren’t affiliate links (i.e. I don’t make any money from them). I’d much rather you ordered from an independent bookseller. If you’re in the UK, phone Kirsty the friendly bookseller at Westbourne Books on +44 1202 768626 – nine times out of ten she’ll get the book in the post to you within 24 hours. Tell her I referred you – it’ll make her laugh. (again – not on commission – she’s just my best book enabler…)