I just
read a good post from Jon Thomas on good presentation ideas, which prompted me
to make a comment and, this having set my mind running, I thought I’d expand on
it a bit here.
The first
use of a PowerPoint presentation (or other app) is to support the presenter
(duh!). Jon lists five good ideas for this, and the information that resonated
with me particularly was to avoid lists of bullet points and use images (he
quotes Dr John Medina: “adding an image to a text-based message can increase
recall by 55 percent”).
Follow
Jon’s ideas and your presentations will surely be greatly improved. But
(there’s always a ‘but’). Why is this not as easy as it seems?
Much as I
would love to say differently, I think there is still a tendency for presenters
to use the presentation as a reminder of what to say. A single image with one
intriguing word is fabulous for attracting the audience’s attention. Not so
intriguing if the presenter can’t quite remember the messages that are supposed
to be conveyed alongside it.
If you’re
the presenter, that’s fine. Get off your butt and practice. But as comms
professionals we are often asked to prepare presentations for other people and they
may not always do the same.
In
addition to the provision of a ‘crutch’, the presenter may also be averse to
what they see as a ‘long’ presentation. Much as Emperor Joseph II said of a
Mozart piece “too many notes”, they see too many slides without realising that
the number of slides is immaterial to the audience – one click can take you to
the next slide or to a build on the current one. A 20-minute presentation can be on one slide
or 40.
Another
problem – presenters think they should send on a copy of the presentation to
the people who were in the audience as a reminder of what was said. (“What did
that egg mean again?”)
And worst
of all, I still see people using a copy of a presentation as a communication to
people who weren’t even there.
So slides
end up with lots of words. Lots and lots.
It’s all
just laziness really. And reinforces one
of my fave rules, which is that a range of channels are needed to communicate
anything but the very simplest of messages. (Shouting “fire!” is adequate, you
don’t need an email to back it up.)
So put the detail on a website, or in a booklet.
Put various key messages on posters, in the elevators, on the back of the loo
doors, on cards on the canteen tables, on the cardboard coffee cup holders.
Just don’t put the onus on the receiver to read through a presentation and play
guess-the-message.
