PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Designing Science Presentations: Conversation with Matt Carter

Matt Carter received his Ph.D. in neuroscience from Stanford University and his B.A. in biology from Whitman College. His research focuses on how the brain regulates innate, homeostatic behaviors including sleep and food intake. Dr. Carter has received numerous awards for his scientific teaching and poster presentations, including the Walter Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching from Stanford. In 2011 he won the Young Investigator Award from the Sleep Research Society. In addition to publishing primary research articles and reviews, he is also the coauthor of Guide to Research Techniques in Neuroscience.

In this conversation, Matt discusses his new book, Designing Science Presentations.

Geetesh: Tell us more about your book, Designing Science Presentations — and what motivated you to create a book on this topic.

Matt: Designing Science Presentations encourages scientists (or anyone hoping to share scientific concepts) to approach making and delivering slide shows by thinking more like designers. Thinking like a designer doesn’t mean getting a degree in graphic arts or making slides look pretty-it means to care about your audience, to anticipate their needs, and to convey a message as simply as possible.

Well-designed products are easy-to-use, free from complexity, and help the end-user in what he or she wants to do. Likewise, well-designed slides help scientific audiences learn and appreciate a scientific message in the easiest, simplest way possible. Scientists who make and deliver excellent presentations distill complex subject matter into a narrative that seem simple and easy-to-digest. The purpose of this book is to show scientists that it is possible to convey complex messages using very simple design techniques to increase the impact on audiences.

In writing this book, I knew that my own audience wouldn’t want to read a complex book, so I tried to make this book as simple as possible to read-each page features a single concept, description, and practical examples. I hope the design principles I argue for in this book speak for themselves!

Geetesh: You do mention within the book how scientist spend so much time doing their research, and then put too little effort in presenting it well — can you share your thoughts on this subject — and how your book will help them create better slides.

Matt: It has always amazed me that many scientists spend many months-usually years-performing their experiments, but then only hours preparing to share their results with others. There is a prevailing feeling in science that “the data speak for themselves.” However, every scientist knows from experience that this is not true-so many exciting results are ignored or misunderstood by audiences because they are not designed with the audience in mind.

I hope that this book helps scientists to learn tricks to convey information in ways that are more accessible to others. For example…. Most scientists use slide titles in a way that is unhelpful to audiences. Often, the slide title is something vague like “Results” or “Imaging Data.” Instead of making a title, I suggest making a point. Every slide title should be a conclusion of the graph/chart displayed on the slide. It is surprising how many scientists could benefit from this seemingly-obvious tip.

Another practical tip I wish more scientists would do…. It turns out that the slide that audience members see for the longest amount of time is the last slide in a slide show. This slide is usually displayed when the presenter answers questions from the audience. However, most scientists usually waste this slide by showing acknowledgements or by exiting their presentations altogether during the Q&A. Why not use this final slide as an opportunity to show a summary of what was addressed, or a diagram reminding the audience of the content of the talk? Not only does such a slide help audiences remember the talk, it helps them ask better questions during the Q&A session.

I hope that my book is filled with tangible, practical suggestions like these that will immediately help scientists communicate better with audiences.

The views and opinions expressed in this blog post or content are those of the authors or the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Books, Interviews, Medicine, PowerPoint

Indezine News: April 2, 2013

In this issue, we complete our Organic Series collection and also bring you an amazing combo offer with an e-book. There is an exclusive conversation with Jim Endicott who discusses the 2013 Presentation Impact Survey results. Any Zimmerman from SlideShark talks about the new broadcasting ability for presentations – right from an iPad! Claudyne Wilder explains how you can create a story from your own life to hold your audience’s attention. There are tutorials on using fills for text in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac – and how you can reset pictures in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows. And learn about the new Slides pane in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows.

Read all this and more in Indezine News.

Filed Under: Ezine
Tagged as: Ezine, Indezine, News, PowerPoint

Gradient Outline for Text in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac

Text outline, the border that spans the perimeter of the font characters, is mainly used to make the slide titles or other text appear prominent. Taking this concept little further, you can make these outlines look fancier by using an attribute that’s rarely associated with text outlines but can provide a surprisingly different look, especially when applied to the text with thicker outlines. This is the Gradient Outline, and is not accessible from within the Text Outline gallery, but has been included within the Format Text Effects dialog box that we will explore later in this page.

Learn how to apply Gradient Outline for text in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2011
Tagged as: Office for Mac, PowerPoint 2011, Text, Tutorials

Learn PowerPoint 2013 for Windows: Slide Area

Many new changes have happened within PowerPoints 2013 — but the tri-paned interface has still not changed a lot for the last 20 years and successive PowerPoint versions! So why is the interface called tri-paned — are there three distinct regions within the PowerPoint 2013 interface? Yes — the Slide area is one of three principal regions in PowerPoints 2013 — the other two are the Slides pane and the Notes pane. The Slide area is where you work the most — typically though adding and editing slide objects.

Learn about the Slide Area in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2013
Tagged as: PowerPoint 2013, Tutorials

MagPointer: The Indezine Review

Many times, we create slides with content of several types. For example, you might create a chart on the left part of your slide and then add some supporting data for the same chart as a table on the right side. While showing this particular slide, you may want to alternatively highlight both these content types so that you can help focus your audience’s attention to the topic you are discussing. This sort of highlighting is possible if you design your graphics or slide content that way — and are prepared to use a fair amount of animation. Fortunately, we are reviewing an add-in for PowerPoint that achieves predictable results without graphic jugglery or added animations. MagPointer automatically detects slide objects and enables you to interact with those objects in real time.

MagPointer is a PowerPoint add-in that helps you keep your audience’s attention focused on where you want.

Filed Under: Reviews
Tagged as: Add-in, PowerPoint