38 Digital Presentation Tips (e.g., PowerPoint, Google Slides)

Digital presentations can be a useful communication tool to enhance your lectures. Unfortunately, if they are poorly designed they can distract students and make it difficult to understand the content.

Dr. John Medina, researcher and author, describes twelve “brain rules” for learning. Rule #4 is: “We don’t pay attention to boring things.” He goes on to point out that “the brain is not capable of multi-tasking. We can talk and breathe, but when it comes to the higher level tasks, we just can’t do it.”

Here are ten general guidelines to make your presentations more effective:

1 Present One Idea per Slide

The key to creating effective slides is to concentrate on one idea per slide, breaking down complex concepts into smaller parts and gradually building them up using several slides. This approach, which involves revealing information progressively using presentation software, helps the audience understand the larger concept more easily.

2 Spend around 1 Minute on Each Slide when Presenting

For effective presentations, each slide should be discussed in a minute or less, keeping the audience engaged with new information. If a slide takes longer, it’s a sign to simplify the content, focusing on a single, clear message.

3 Use Effective Slide Headings

In presentations, the heading section on each slide should convey a single message in a short, simple title. The content of the slide should support this heading, allowing the audience to follow along and arrive at the same conclusion in the heading.

4 Include only Essential Points

During presentations, you audience members’ eyes will look around your slide which could be distracting if there are extraneous images or details. Clear and concise design is key; ensure every element on your slide is related, essential, and discussed.

5 Provide Citations

In presentations, consistently provide citations and credits, adding them immediately to avoid forgetting sources. Citations not only clarify who did the work but also connect the audience with the contributors. End slides can be used to provide a bibliography of all of the references cited in the presentation.

6 Provide Related Images

In presentations, build your slides around good, related visualizations as they are more impactful than just text. However, avoid cluttering the slide with unrelated images or complex graphics; for instance, you could break down multipaneled figures into simpler elements, dedicating one panel per slide for clarity.

7 Reduce Cognitive Overload

The design and presentation of slide elements significantly impact audience comprehension and retention. Avoid full sentences and limit elements to six or fewer to prevent cognitive overload, using short text fragments and visuals to enhance understanding. Additionally, consider simplifying color choices, font types, and sizes, and use white space effectively to further ease cognitive processing.

Remember to make your content accessible to everyone. Remember these important tips:

• Opt for high contrast colors and simple, low- or no-color backgrounds for accessibility.
• Use large, sans serif fonts, bold for emphasis, and avoid italics, underlining, and all caps.
• Choose color palettes that are friendly to those with color-blindness.
• Practice talks with closed captioning to enhance speech clarity and pace for all, especially the hearing impaired.

8 Design with Distracted Audiences in Mind

In presentations, it’s crucial to ensure each slide conveys its key concept even without verbal explanation, considering audience members could be distracted. Evaluate if the slide’s information is at the right level of abstraction, avoiding excessive details that may obscure the main conclusion, and reserve additional details for a question and answer section of the presentation.

9 Practice Delivering the Presentation

Well-designed slides and adhering to key rules will aid you in delivering your intended message within the planned time. Regular practice is crucial to ensure you hit the important points consistently and maintain a smooth transition between slides. Practicing in front of an audience, like your lab or peers, provides fresh perspectives to improve slide content, design, and overall flow of your presentation.

10 Plan for Technical Difficulties

Presentations often deviate from plans due to unforeseen circumstances, such as technical issues or time constraints. Therefore, it’s crucial to design slides that are resilient to technical disruptions and to prepare alternative strategies.

These tips can help you avoid typical problems associated with technical issues:

• Save your presentation as a PDF that you can display in the event that you have trouble presenting with the software like PowerPoint or Google Slides.
• If you plan to show a video, create backup slides with key screenshots from the video or a summary of the main points.
• Avoid animations as they can distract the audience and cause technical issues.

Naegle K. M. (2021). Ten simple rules for effective presentation slides. PLoS computational biology, 17(12), e1009554. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009554