How to use PowerPoint effectively
1. The three gifts of PowerPoint
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Sitting through countless training and conference presentations recently I began to reflect on what was going wrong with most of them and to clarify in my own mind the things that our team have learned about the medium of PowerPoint over the last three years.
Prior to that we dabbled; but now we prepare at least one new presentation each week – sometimes more – and our regular punters are a pretty critical lot. We prepare material of varying complexity with the simple goal of making the ineffable utterly comprehensible to people from nine to ninety.
It can be done, but you need to follow a few rules. But why use PowerPoint at all?
If my answer to this question is “Because it’s cool and everyone else does it” I need to think again. PowerPoint is not the only way to present information in visual form. A blackboard may do a better job.
Certainly, if your talk is going to be inspirational rather than informational you are better off not using PowerPoint. You need the freedom to express yourself without a cluttered script that will cramp your style. Use your instincts and, at the most, one well designed title slide.
The witch in the fairy tale
In other kinds of presentation PowerPoint, like a Witch in a fairy tale, will present you with three gifts. First of all it will give your audience tuning in information, secondly it will enable you to present complex information visually and finally you have ready made handouts just by printing the stuff out. But just like the fairy tale, if you use the gifts inappropriately they can backfire. How so? Please consider the following.
Ready made handouts – the small print in the original slide will be minuscule in the handout. The resulting handouts are unreadable and they look unprofessional, but that’s not the only problem. When you give your whole talk on a handout to smart people they will study it for themselves instead of listening to you! Therefore design the presentation so that handouts need explanation this encourages attention and note-taking.
Present complex information visually – this is a blessing and a curse. The blessing is obvious, but the curse is the same as for handouts. Faced with a complicated slide intelligent people will tune out of your talk and figure out the slide for themselves. This is not a problem if you use the slide as an occasion for discussion with your audience; otherwise the slide is a distraction. So build a complex slide in several simple stages this encourages people to stay focused on what you have to say.
Tuning in – however riveting your presentation style people will tune out of your talk from time to time – they have a lot on their minds – but sooner or later they come back. The slide that is on the screen when they return from their reverie tells them what you are talking about at that moment – it gives people the information they need to tune back into what you are saying. Therefore design each slide so that it answers the question, “What on earth is she talking about?”
Let me summarise these: design the presentation so that handouts need explanation - build a complex slide in several simple stages - design each slide so that it answers the question, “What on earth is she talking about?
If you want to play to PowerPoint’s strengths you need to bear these three things in mind as you design the slideshow. Which means – and this is the most important piece of advice I can give – it is usually best to prepare your presentation backwards, not forwards. In other words, do not prepare a talk and then do the slideshow to fit it, instead design the slideshow first, make it do what you want it to do, then prepare the talk.
Then you and your laptop are ready to conquer the world!
Follow this link to the next article The basics of slide design
©Dave Burke 2007
