Improve Your Presentations

Posted by nnlmneo on May 22nd, 2015 Posted in: Data Visualization

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In a recent blog post, evaluator Stephanie Evergreen suggested that people no longer ask for power point slides at the end of a presentation (Stop Asking if the Slides are Available).  Her point is that the slides should support the speaker and be fairly useless on their own.  If the audience needs a reminder of what was said, the speaker should provide handouts, with main points and resources listed, as well as links to engaging dashboards and infographics.

In her blog post, Stephanie Evergreen has 10 points for improving your presentations.  You don’t like it when people read their slides? Her first point is to remove text from slides so the focus of the audience goes back to what the speaker is saying. A complementary point she makes is that the graphics on the slide be emotional to help the audience remember what the speaker is saying.

What makes Evergreen’s 10 points unique in the world of presentation advice is that many of them are about charts and graphs.  For example, her point, “Choose the right chart so that your results tell the best story,”  ties what some might see as dry charts into the story that your presentation is telling. Another one, “Keep it easy to interpret your graphs with close data labels and a descriptive subtitle,” is a suggestion that re-occurs in her blog and book, Presenting Data Effectively: Communicating Your Findings for Maximum Impact.  For a detailed checklist of how to make a better graph, take a look at her Data Visualization Checklist.