PowerPoint Slide Makeover - Showing the results of scenario analysis

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. Financial or operational analysis often includes reporting on what the outcome would be under different scenarios. Instead of listing each individual scenario in a table from Excel, use the ideas in this makeover to show the results visually.

This slide was submitted by one of the participants in a workshop - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.
To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.



To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

Use hanging indents properly on your PowerPoint slides

I saw it again this week so I need to comment on the incorrect use of hanging indents on PowerPoint slides. Here’s what happens. The presenter wants to have text on the slides, but doesn’t want it to be in bullets. It might be a quote or other text that is not bulleted. So they use the bullet slide layout and simply deselect the bullet formatting and start typing away. The problem? The first line of the text is set to the left of the rest of the text, making it look strange. The audience wonders what’s wrong with the text and pays less attention to the message.

The problem is caused by the text placeholder still having a hanging indent format from when it assumed bullets were being placed there. It sets the first line further left than the rest of the lines. This formatting causes further problems if you ever copy this slide into a new presentation or update the look with a new template. Since PowerPoint thinks you are using a bulleted list, it reformats your text as bulleted text and now you have a slide that doesn’t look like it used to.

What should you do instead? When you want to create a slide that has non-bulleted text, start by selecting a layout that does not include a bullet point placeholder. Select either the Title only or Blank layouts. Then add a text box and format it so it has the size, font and colors that you want. Now the text will have a consistent left margin and the text will not be reformatted if the design template changes in the future.

Properly formatting the text on your slides is one of the small things you can do that will make your presentations more effective.

PowerPoint Tip: More results from the Annoying PowerPoint Survey

I’ve already reported on what audiences find most annoying based on the survey completed by 548 people. The text overload epidemic continues and the number one annoyance again is the presenter reading the slides to the audience.

I’ve now gone through the hundreds of comments that people wrote in – it took up nine pages of 10 point type! It is clear that the annoyances extend beyond just the overload of text. The comments did reinforce the text issue, with many expressing frustration at reports that are copied on to slides and read to the audience. But here are five more areas that presenters need to address in order to improve their presentations.

Poor Presentation Skills
The comments were very clear that this is a big issue. One respondent captured it well when they said, “The presenter lets the technology, not the content, become primary.” Audiences get annoyed when the presenter places more importance on the slides than the basics of communication, such as proper structure and delivery skills. Many people echoed the idea that the slides should support the message, not the presenter supporting the slides. This shows up in presentations in a number of ways, from presenters having way too many slides for the time allotted, presenters using canned slides without analyzing the needs of the audience, to not knowing how to use the technology. It is imperative that presenters get training on the basics of communicating a clear message and presentation skills in order to understand that PowerPoint should just be a tool to support their message, not the message itself.

Presenters not being prepared
The second most commented area was presenters who were not prepared either on the topic or the slides. Many comments talked about presenters who were not knowledgeable about the topic they were speaking about and relied on reading the slides since it was all they knew on this subject. My advice has always been to decline invitations to present where you are not knowledgeable. You embarras yourself and your organization. It was also clear that too many presenters don’t even run through the slides a single time before getting up in front of the audience. When you fumble through what is on each slide, you say to the audience that they are not important enough for you to have spent even thirty minutes preparing for this presentation. You would be better off e-mailing it to them. Again, it looks like we have to educate many presenters on the basics of preparing to communicate a message.

Non-professional graphics and use of animation
While these areas were covered partially by the main question on the survey, the third most popular area of comments dealt with the graphics and animation that makes the presenter look silly. The presenter may think it is “cute” or “cool”, but the audience certainly has a different opinion. They look at the cartoonish clip art, joke slides, garish colors, unnecessary reflections or shadows and effects such as 3-D and they immediately think less of the presenter and the ideas they are sharing. Remember that your audience is comparing your visuals to the professional ones that others use and in that light you will come up short of the mark. Everything you use in your presentation should demonstrate your professional approach and expert position on this topic. Don’t undermine your stature with amateurish selection of visuals or wacky animation effects.

Packing too much on a slide
The issue of text overload has been clearly articulated, but the comments also showed a dislike for packing a slide with graphics and tables or spreadsheets. When there are too many graphics on a slide, the audience is confused as to how they relate to one another and they miss the point you are trying to make. With large spreadsheets that have been pasted on the slide, the audience has no hope of figuring out what is there or what it means to them. That is why I suggest using the break down and zoom in technique to explain complex visuals.

Poor or non-existent template design
The final issue that was popular in the comments was the impact template design plays on the audience’s ability to listen and understand the message being delivered. As people said in the comments they wrote, when there are many fonts, titles change position, bullet points aren’t lined up, colors don’t seem to have meaning and the design leaves little room for content because of advertising and graphics, people get distracted from the message. In my experience there are two issues here. The first is the presenters who use no template or one of the distracting built-in templates. At least create a simple, clean one that is easy on the eyes. The second issue is with the templates designed by professionals who are good at design but don’t know how to create a proper PowerPoint template. It causes the presenters to manually adjust the position of objects to make it work, and most presenters aren’t designers, so what results is an inconsistent mish-mash on the slides. Every organization who pays a design professional (in-house or from the outside) to create a PowerPoint template must ensure that they know how to create the template so it is easy to use by the presenters.

As I said recently in a keynote presentation at a conference, the single biggest issue I face (and every presentation professional faces) is convincing presenters that they need help. For the most part, they have no idea that they are doing things that annoy the audience. Once they identify themselves with items on this list, I hope they will seek some help and stop annoying their audiences in future presentations. Share this with those who could benefit from this information.

Top 5 PowerPoint Tips for Student Presentations in School

Recently a friend, Beverly, asked if I could please give some advice that elementary school kids could use when preparing PowerPoint presentations for class. For those of you who don’t have kids or grandkids in elementary school, teachers are now requiring many projects to be presented using PowerPoint (our kids started using PowerPoint in third grade).

There are two general ways that PowerPoint seems to be used in classrooms. Sometimes it is used as a way to format a report, where the output isn’t a true presentation, but more of a way to save paper (sentence structure is graded and the report may not even be read out loud by the student). In other cases, PowerPoint is used in conjunction with other written work and the students are truly using it as a presentation tool where they are graded on the use of the tool, their speaking skills and keeping within a stated time limit. Checking the rubric for the assignment will usually indicate which way the teacher expects PowerPoint to be used.

When students are using PowerPoint for a true presentation purpose, the unfortunate reality is that usually the kids don’t get much guidance on how to create and deliver an effective PowerPoint presentation (neither do adults, hence the free information on my site at www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com). So here are my five top tips for students who have to prepare a PowerPoint presentation for class.

1. Organize your story
Remember that your teacher and classmates want you to tell the story of what you have done. Whether it is a report on a book you read, an animal you researched or an experiment in science, organize your story into a logical flow of ideas. If the teacher gave you a list of areas they want you to cover, make sure you have covered all the areas in your presentation. Create an agenda slide that will help your audience know what areas you will be covering (this also helps you organize your information). Plan your slides so you cover one main idea per slide. If one area of your topic has three main ideas, plan to use three slides instead of jamming everything on to one slide.

2. Use a simple slide design
I know that PowerPoint allows you to use thousands of colors, fonts, shapes and animation effects in your presentation and you may think they are “cool” to use. The reality is that all these wild things distract from your message. And your teacher wants you to clearly deliver your message. So use a simple design. Have a solid color as your background and pick one or two fonts that are easy to read (Arial and Calibri are two that are easy to read). If you have a dark color as the background, use white as your text color and if you have a light color as the background, use black as the text color – this make your text easy to read. Keep your text at 24 point or larger so that everyone in the classroom can read it easily.

3. Use lots of pictures
Remember that you are doing a presentation, not reading a report to the class. Your slides shouldn’t be just the text that you are going to say. Use pictures, diagrams, graphs or other visuals to illustrate your ideas. You can have a title for the slide that explains the point you are making and a caption under the visual to explain what the audience is looking at, but try to minimize the text you have on your slides. If you need to list items, you can use a bullet point list on a slide, but try to have the majority of your slides as mainly visuals. It keeps your presentation more interesting.

4. Use cue cards or notes
One fear you may have is that if you don’t have everything you want to say on the slide, how will you remember it? That’s where cue cards or speaking notes come in handy. It is perfectly OK with most teachers if you use 3 x 5 cards or notes written on paper to remind you of what you want to say. Don’t write out everything you are going to say, because reading a script sounds boring. Just write down the important words or phrases that remind you of what you need to say about each slide.

5. Rehearse at home and it will be fun
The only way to get comfortable presenting in front of your class is to rehearse doing it at home. Stand up like you would in class, use your notes as a guide for what you want to say, and use the computer or a printout of your slides to simulate what it will be like in class. If you want to feel what it is like having people watch you present, gather some family members or use some stuffed animals to get comfortable being in front of a group. Presentations can be fun when you have rehearsed and are comfortable with what you are going to say.

If you are a parent or teacher, feel free to forward this to other parents, teachers and educators for them to share with their kids or classes. Instead of making our kids fearful of presenting, let’s help them be comfortable by explaining how they can be successful in class. They will carry these skills for the rest of their lives if they learn them when they are young.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover - Presenting Test or Measurement Procedures

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. Presenting tests or measurements usually includes talking about how often the testing is done and what tests were performed. Don't use bullet filled slides, use the ideas in this makeover to organize the information visually so it is clear for your audience.

This slide was submitted by one of the participants in a workshop - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.

To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.



To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

PowerPoint Tip: Top Ideas from PowerPoint Live

I’m back from PowerPoint Live and today’s tip is about the top ideas I learned while at the conference. First off, the conference is changing its name. It is now known as The Presentation Summit, reflecting the evolution of the content beyond just software features to many other techniques and ideas that presentation professionals need to know about. The next conference is Oct 17-20, 2010 in San Diego.

I went to an excellent session by Echo Swinford on creating templates in PowerPoint 2007. She gave a clear workflow to follow and explained how we can create a theme in PowerPoint that can carry colors and fonts over to Word and Excel for even greater consistency in our communications. I see so many problems with templates designed by professional designers who don’t know the secrets Echo shared. Echo is going to create a series of video programs that every marketing, design and presentation professional should watch to save themselves and their colleagues hours of frustration in working with templates. I’ll let you know when the videos are available.

Dr. Carmen Taran gave a session on using dramatic photos to capture attention. The session was so popular that she was asked to deliver it again at the end of the conference. The great idea I got from her session was to keep a lightbox on istockphoto of photos that you may need in the future. A lightbox is a folder where you can keep items you like but aren't ready to purchase yet. Then, purchase the photos only when you need to use them. This is a great way to capture those interesting photos you see and save money until you need to spend it.

Conference attendees were also given a sneak peak at PowerPoint 2010. I heard nothing but positive comments about it. Some of the new features include true embedding of video files, the ability to create a video of your presentation from within PowerPoint and more. A public beta version will be available before the end of the year and it has virtually the same user interface, so the upgrade learning curve won’t be as steep as between version 2003 and 2007.

If you want to get a sense of the commentary that Twitter users filed during the conference, search for hashtag #pptlive on Twitter. Thanks to everyone who stopped me in the hall or came up to me during the day and said that they enjoy my work. It means a lot to know that my ideas are making a difference for you. I look forward to seeing many more of you next year in San Diego!