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Subject:RE: Animated PowerPoint Presentation From:Dan Hall <Dan -at- cooper -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 14 Dec 2000 07:13:02 -0800
Sylvia:
I'm regularly involved in collaboratively creating PowerPoint presentations
- about three per month in the last four months. It's part of my job
description. In my case, the presentations are given to clients to explain
and showcase our work, and to communicate the ideas behind our designs.
Here are a few guidelines that I use:
1. Know your audience. (As in all communication efforts) Do all you can to
find out the make-up of the audience, and tailor the presentation to them,
just as you'd tailor your writing.
2. Keep it simple. Especially as a first-time user, avoid cluttering up the
slides. Communicate with the audience, don't distract them with
unnecessary/gratuitous clip art and sounds. Choose a style/template and
background (ask around, perhaps one already exists at your place of
employment) and stick with it for every slide.
3. Avoid (or at least limit) animations. (see 2) Most people in business are
familiar with these presentations and don't care if every slide, graphic,
and piece of text slides, zooms, flashes, or whatever. Again, the goal is
communication, not creating a cartoon. If you must animate, choose "appear"
or at least use the same animation throughout
4. Limit the text per slide. This keeps it large enough to be legible in the
farthest corners of the room, and provides white space (see 2). No one (that
I know) comes to a presentation to read slides - they're there to hear the
speaker.
5. When presenting, don't read your slides. In fact, it is a frequent
complaint of audiences that they feel insulted when the slides are read to
them word-for word. They could have saved time by reading the same
information in the handouts or as an e-mail. Put the main outline points,
and fill in the rest verbally. If this means you only have 10 - 12 slides,
so be it.
HTH
Dan Hall
dan -at- cooper -dot- com
All opinions in this e-mail are solely mine, and
Cooper Interaction Design disavows all knowledge
of and responsibility for them.
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