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Text-heavy slides. Presenters that read slides verbatim. Slides where the only visual is the template design. Presentations with fact after fact after fact, no narrative, no metaphors, no analogies, no audience engagement. Nothing to help the audience understand and contextualize what they’re supposed to be learning.
“Death By PowerPoint is the standard way of presenting that we all hate, yet we just can’t seem to escape.”
Dr. Echo Rivera works with speakers to stop the spread of presentations that are boring, overwhelming, and confusing. As Dr. Rivera says, poorly presented slides and speeches “decrease the likelihood that your audience is going to pay attention to you, understand what you say, remember what you say, and use your information”.
Dr. Rivera of EchoRivera.com has a PhD in community psychology and over 14 years’ experience in research and evaluation in this field. More importantly, she has over a decade helping academics, evaluators and scientists learn techniques for planning and designing and delivering effective presentations.
She began back in 2016, working as an evaluator at a non-profit research center. She was passionate about her work, helping academics and researchers and evaluators communicate their work in more creative and visual ways.
“During my weekends and my evenings, I just started blogging. I just started writing different blog posts, and drawing some comics for the blog posts, and creating resources, and just whatever I could think of to help academics and researchers create better presentations.”
Soon after she began blogging, Dr. Rivera launched her first online course, called ‘Blast Off To Stellar Slides’.
Video and presentations are here to stay.
Dr. Rivera acknowledges that poor presentations and the dread that we may experience in giving presentations is near universal. Whether in the audience or on stage, we’ve all seen people checking phones or falling asleep, tuned out instead of paying attention to the presentation.
Presentations can be a valuable tool for communication and learning. When done effectively, a great presentation will:
- help the audience to pay attention to the speaker and subject,
- better understand and remember the material, and
- use the information provided.
Rather than focusing on templates, designs, or platforms (though Dr. Rivera does recommend PowerPoint), Dr. Rivera built out a pyramid framework to demonstrate the optimal creation process for presentations.
“No amount of slide design can make up for bad content.”
At the bottom of the pyramid is content. When you’re thinking about the story you want to tell with your presentation, content should be broken down to key points. Ensure you aren’t trying to cram too much content and information into your slides and presentation.
Dr. Rivera says that once you have a good content or storyboard, only then can you look to the design and format. Good slides are clear and uncluttered, with easy-to-read text and illustrative graphics.
Once you’ve established storyboard and design, then Dr. Rivera says you move up to the top of the pyramid with data visualization and animations that connect everything together. “Really cool graphs look really cool, but yet, if you ignore all those other layers, by the time you get to your beautiful graph, people are gone. They are not paying attention, they’re confused, they’re bored, they’re overwhelmed; your data isn’t connecting with them.”
Dr. Rivera recommends engaging with your audience at least every three to seven minutes.
Once created, Dr. Rivera recommends auditing your first draft for engagement. Review how often you are using touchpoints such as polling the audience, asking open ended questions or for a show of hands. Audience participation helps bring attention back to the material.
“Maybe you create a handout and they have to fill out a sheet. There are definitely more elaborate activities that you could do, but you know, sometimes the simple ones, they’re just the most practical, they’re sustainable, they’re easy, and they’re quick, and they work really well. So, go back to the ones you’ve done before. The simple and practical ones really do work.”
Practice makes your presentation perfect.
Dr. Rivera advocates a four-type practice:
- Speak your notes out loud as you type them.
Saying the words aloud helps with flow and clarity, and ensures your script will sound more like verbal speech rather than something meant for a manuscript. - Start practicing in chunks.
Look at a few slides at a time, ensuring flow and time as well as making sure your animations and videos work together. - Time yourself.
Review your presentation, again section by section, seeing how long each takes and how the presentation comes together. - Have a full dress rehearsal.
Only once you’ve done the first three can you do the full dress rehearsal effectively.
If you’re interested in improving your presentations and perhaps saving your own audiences from death by PowerPoint, Dr. Rivera offers comprehensive assistance via her company, Creative Research Communications. In addition to infographics, comics, and data visualizations, they also run the Center for Stellar Slides with online courses with training for presenters.
“Everything is part of a series, and I just want to make it clear to people that, no matter which program you take from me, you will create stellar slides.”
Dr. Echo Rivera, PhD, can be reached on Twitter @EchoEchoR or on LinkedIn. You can also find more resources on this topic on her YouTube channel:
Script & practice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j8JiJqbxCQ
Workflow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBscvrbtmQA&t=8s
Powerpoint vs Prezi, Canva, Keynote, Google Slides
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0gydDBj7Dk
Do you have a fantastic presentation tip to offer? Or a question on how to keep your audience awake? Share it in the comments below!
