7 Rules for Great PPT Presentations

Having an understanding of what makes for an awful PowerPoint presentation can make it intimidating to create your own. Who wants to be the creator of one of those presentations?
In our consulting work at McCulley/Cuppan, we've sat through, created, and helped others create many presentations (including ones to FDA and other regulatory agencies), so we have some experience with good and bad PPT. Here's a list of rules we've developed over the years for designing effective presentations:

1. Adopt your audience's mind--it's always about them, not you
When you are the subject matter expert and have done lots of research, you may feel compelled to share it all in the PPT slides. Avoid this. Instead, focus on what your audience is most interested in. (Your knowledge will come through in the way you discuss the topic and answer questions.)
2. Clarify your intentions
How will you proceed with the presentation? Will there be a Q&A session? If so, when? Let your audience know upfront how much time you will take and the basic outline of how the time will be spent.
3. Simplify, simplify, simplify
Simpler is always better. Simple design, simple text. As Hans Hofmann said nearly 100 yers ago: "To simplify, eliminate the unnecessary so the necessary can speak."
4. Embrace limitations and practice restraint--know when to stop
Once again, all of your knowledge does not need to be demonstrated in this one presentation. Respect the time and concentration limits of your audience.
5. Do like the pros do--script, storyboard, create
Planning is the key to effective presentations. Work with the end in mind even before you build the first slide and the content of your presentation will be more compelling.
6. Think communication not decoration
PowerPoint is a tool to help you convey knowledge; keep the slide design simple so the focus stays on the content.
7. All presentations are storytelling, so become a master storyteller
Learn from the master storytellers around you, people whose presentations you've enjoyed attending. If you don't have any nearby, learn from well-respected presenters such as Garr Reynolds, Steve Jobs and Guy Kawasaki. Tell a tale that engages the audience and makes them want to listen and learn from you.  

 

Originally published on our Knowledge Management blog

Top 4 Don'ts for PPT Presentations

We've all been there, sitting through endless PowerPoint presentations where the speaker drones on and on and the slides are so full of text you squint no matter how close you are to the screen. We each have our least favorite PPT foibles, but here's a list of the four worst offenders:

I never met an animation technique that I didn't like.

Slide decoration doesn't equal slide design. Animation distracts from the content of your presentation and the purpose of the presentation is to convey information, so limit distractions and keep it simple.

Why can't everyone just read what I have on the slide?

Slides make up one portion of the presentation; they should not "stand alone" (even when you are offering copies of slides for notes). If the slides can stand alone, then what is the purpose of you being there? Just write a report instead.

Charts and tables are "islands that speak by themselves".

Charts and tables are never "islands that speak by themselves", whether in presentation or report. Some explanation is required, on the purpose of the table or the conclusions drawn from the data. Once again, a table on a slide augments your spoken presentation and should not be treated as a stand alone.

Everything I know on this topic must go on these presentation slides.

Also known as "cram everything in obsession". All of your knowledge on a topic doesn't need to appear on every page of the slide. Slides should be easy to read, and as brief as possible, otherwise people will spend their time reading your slides instead of listening to and being engaged in the presentation.

And remember, PowerPoint (or Keynote for fellow Mac users) isn't right for all meetings, briefings, and presentations as shown in the article "We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint" from the NY Times about the usage of PPT in the US Military. The "bowl of spaghetti" map shown in the article is a great example of why everything shouldn't be crammed into one slide.


Originally published on our Knowledge Management blog

What’s Wrong with PowerPoint as a Document Authoring Tool?

In our McCulley/Cuppan consulting work we recently had a new client invite us to work with an authoring team on applying best practice to the planning, writing, and reviewing of a regulatory submission document. The document was going to be a significant piece of work, requiring over 500 pages and involving multiple authors across several scientific disciplines.

At the first meeting, the project leader announced she wants to continue the use of PowerPoint (PPT) as the document planning tool. Reasoning for this approach was in part because she and other team members already invested considerable time and effort in generating a 540+ slide deck representing data and messages to be in the regulatory document and PPT was a very familiar tool from extensive use in developing presentations.

I have to say we were mildly surprised by the demand to use PPT as the primary tool to plan and outline such a large, complex document. We have encountered other organizations using PPT for document planning purposes, but never on such a large scale. On the surface, the choice of PPT as the tool to produce initial draft documents seems reasonable. It is familiar to many, provides an authoring environment that produces output that can appear on screen as an outline, can be commented on in oral or remote review, and can be easily augmented and updated. All of these apparent benefits would support an argument for using PPT as an outlining tool to plan any and all documents. However, the use of this tool does not readily scale to developing large, complex technical documents.

Christine Haas, Karen Schriver, Thomas Huckin, Edward Tufte, and others tell us much about how readers interact with and read texts. From this collective body of work we have learned some things that can help us produce texts in an effective manner that, equally, is perceived as of very high quality. The prime method is to use tools that enable the design and review of texts as you expect your readers to engage in the reading and analysis of the text.

Successful collaborative authoring is significantly rooted in careful and thorough front-end planning. Choices of authoring tools are among the critical aspects of the document planning process, as tool choices impact (enabling or constraining) every other aspect of the planning and documentation processes. As authors and managers of authors, it is incumbent upon all of us to choose tools that accommodate our desired set of outcomes. Authors and managers must be cognizant of authoring tools that accommodate not only themselves and their ways of working, but others as well.

It is our position that use of PPT for document planning negatively impacts all potential collaborative authoring and review outcomes. Our claim assumes that the goal of the work is to generate an effective document, economically produced, that meets or exceeds end-user expectations.

I have outlined here key advantages and disadvantages of using PPT to plan and facilitate documentation of a multi-year, complex pharmaceutical development work.

PPT Advantages

• use is a habituated format; it’s familiar.

PPT Disadvantages

• presentations constrain data reporting rather than facilitate collaborative/interpretive processes (see my previous blog post on PowerPoint presentations).
• format creates/maintains a huge but fragmented vision of the process and product, impacting output (see Schriver and Tufte).
• PPT does not scale well to large documents as it limits information organization and searching is cumbersome, impacting review and the authors' ability to migrate material from PPT into a document-based format.
• PPT presentations do not accommodate major revisions/reorganization; impacting logic, content, and organization of the ultimate document product (see Schriver).
• the output decreases in clarity as the number of slides increases, impacting author/reviewer interpretation (see Tufte).
• PPT output is not a document; conversion to MS Word format is inefficient, time-consuming, and expensive.

The point seems clear in the choice of using PPT as an authoring tool is that familiarity wins, despite that, from a business, work, or quality perspective, the disadvantages of PPT clearly outweigh this single advantage. Eschewing proven document authoring platforms for the familiar may have unintended consequences and bear a high tariff.

Originally published on our Knowledge Management blog

Rethinking the Design of PowerPoint Slides: Claim-Evidence Structure

This post continues the discussion regarding the presentation of technical and research information through the medium of PowerPoint.  My assertion in the last post is that the users of PowerPoint are the principal party at fault for lousy presentations and the wholesale disregard for their audience.
One of the criticisms leveled against technical PPT slides is the overuse (perhaps abuse is a better descriptor) of the topic/subtopic organization structure. This outline format will routinely place critical information in subordinated positions.

So one of the simple ways PPT presentations can be improved is to follow the BLUF principle. Bottom Line Up Front. In such an approach you design slides to follow the basic structure of an argument.  The structure as defined by Stephen Toulmin. Here is a link that provides a nice overview of Toulmin's argument model.

In essence a well-crafted argument must have three components:

1. Your Claim
2. The Evidence (Data underlying the claim)
3. The underlying principle that in essence answers the question: why does the data make your claim to be true?

I would suggest that this should be the basic organizational structure for all forms of technical/scientific communication, be it a technical research report or a technical presentation. In our McCulley/Cuppan consulting practice we are always reminding clients to design documents and presentations in this manner.

I want to bring to your attention a marvelous web page at Penn State University addressing the use of the claim-evidence-principle model of PPT slide design. The creators of this web page have done a nice job of loading example PPT slides, references to additional resource information, and a real nice bibliography on the genre of presentations. Here is the link to the website:  http://writing.engr.psu.edu/slides.html.  Take a couple minutes to check it out.


Originally published on our Knowledge Management blog