Hey, it’s Dr. Liu here again. In this video, I will show you some tips to make an effective PowerPoint presentation. When we use PowerPoint as a visual aid in our presentation, our task usually seems easier. However, if we do not use PowerPoint properly, or if we rely too much on it, the PowerPoint slides may also become a distraction, and even prevent us to make a great presentation.
First, Let’s make it clear what are the top purposes for using PowerPoint in our presentation. Usually there are two top purposes. The first purpose is to help the audience to visualize our ideas. The second purpose is to remind the audience of our key points. In order to make an effective PowerPoint presentation, we should always keep in mind that the purpose of visualizing is much more important than the purpose of reminding. Helping the audience to visualize our key ideas, is the best way to make our presentation more impressive and influential. If we make PowerPoint slides just to remind the audience of our key points using text, we waste much of the power from the PowerPoint, our PowerPoint will lose most of its power.
Second, we also need to make it clear, the PowerPoint slides should be made mainly for the audience but not for ourselves as speaker. Of course, the PowerPoint slides have the function of reminding ourselves where we are, or what to say during our presentation. But we’d better design the PowerPoint slides to maximize the benefits of the audience but not ourselves. When we design the slides for ourselves, we tend to include more words and details, which may help us to remember but are often not understandable for the audience. Usually the more we design the slides for ourselves, the less the audience can benefit from them. Ideally, we should be so familiar with our presentation that we are able to deliver the presentation even without the PowerPoint. The PowerPoint should be just an optional aid that provides additional help to the audience. In this way, the speaker is the center, but not the PowerPoint. That is why many great speakers don’t even use PowerPoint in their speech, or only use them occasionally when necessary.
After we are clear about the main purpose of PowerPoint and who it should serve, we can start talk about the tips and rules when using it. When we use PowerPoint to help the audience to visualize our ideas, I have two tips, the first tip is “keep it simple”; the second tip is “make it new and fresh”. By saying “keep it simple”, I mean, we want to make things easy to understand for the audience in a short period of time. We want to make it easy for the audience to focus on our key ideas. Therefore, we should reduce noise and distractions as much as possible. We may want to present a lot of things we have done. But we need to learn to filter our material based on the pain points, or exciting points of the audience. We may often need to edit one year’s work down to a 15 min talk. In this case, we‘d better select one or two points to go deep rather than give a wide and shallow talk.
Ideally, for each key idea we want to deliver, we should have at least one supporting image to help the audience to visualize it and remember it. We want to keep our images simple and clean. Everything on the slides needs to be meaningful for the audience, otherwise they should be removed. We need to be cautious to use too much colors or different fonts, because they often cause unnecessary distractions. Don’t let fancy design and animations to steal the focus from the ideas we want to deliver.
So, that is the first tip, “keep it simple”. The second tip is “make it new and fresh”. New design is often more impressive than old one. The best design can always refresh the audience’s mind by creating a little surprise. So in addition to “keep it simple”, we should always try our best to generate creative visuals for our data and ideas. For example, this diagram is my attempt to generate a simple but creative visual to help presenting my ideas. There is no universal best design that works all the time. At each certain time point, a better design is always those which can bring the audience a refreshed experience at that time.
When we use text instead of images in our slides, the basic principle is “to show, but not tell”. We want to use key words only, instead of full sentences, unless for a word for word quote. There is a 6 by 6 rule when presenting bullet points. That is, 6 rows and 6 words in each row in maximum. That is because most human brain can only handle 6 words in one quick glance. If more than 6 words, people will have to start to read, and then their attention is on the slides but not the speaker. To follow this 6 by 6 rule, we need to learn to summarize our key ideas in a highly generalized, or highly refined manner.
There are two common mistakes students often make. First, they make too much fancy noise in the slides. Second, they make the PowerPoint slides the center of stage but not the speakers themselves. Thanks for watching, I am Dr. Liu with research tips for the underdogs. PowerPoint is useful but it could also be harmful if we do not use it properly. Until next time, let’s learn how to use it better, and maximize its real power.
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