Now, a problem with presentation slides is that they are often forced to serve purposes that they were not designed for. So, people would use them as their manuscripts or speech notes. And then maybe on the other side, people will use their slide decks as sort of a light form of publishing. And I would say neither one of those purposes achieves what slides do best. Slides are very good at augmenting an oral presentation. Emphasizing key ideas, guiding note taking, adding a powerful visual element. These are the things that slides do very well. So let's go ahead and talk about each one of those problems and it's solution in turn. So first don't use your slides as your notes or at least not primarily. So no doubt you've seen the speaker who just simply read their slides at the audience, right. There's tons of information on each slide. It's basically the speaker's manuscript broken up into like, 30 poorly constructed slides. These don't work. People read at different rates. They have to struggle to read what's on the screen. No. The slide calls for economy. Choosing a few key words or ideas but the speaker hasn't made those decisions with that slide. So your slides should be seen as illustrations, right, more as points where you identify a key idea. Now if you need comprehensive notes, you should have printed them out. You can always use the note display feature in PowerPoint which shows your slide notes on your monitor but not on the audiences Screen, but, I'm really not a big fan of this. Because it requires you to look at your screen instead of looking at the audience, right? Your slide should be for that audience, so if you think, no, I've got lots of text on the screen to remind myself what I'm going to say. No, no you don't, you need notes man. We shouldn't have to endure all your notes, that's your job. Now, I occasionally get to use my notes as a way of reminding myself where i'm going but, at the level of design the decision should focus on what the audience needs to see. Now what I need for my notes so, that's one issue. Second, don't confuse your slides as a form of publishing. So since slides are sort of the digital memory of the speech, people want them, right. So they'll be like I saw a good talk but couldn't write anything down, can you send me a copy of your slides. Okay, that's become a common thing. The slides, these visual things that are supposed to support an oral presentation, have taken on a life of their own. And that separate purpose so to creeps into the design, right? I've worked with plenty researchers and scientists who design their slides purely for distribution, right. The slides are the thing that they're going to post on their website and send around to their colleagues, and that's fine so far as it goes. But if the slides are communicating independently, they need way more information, right. Information that you as a speaker are providing in that speech. So people are building their slide decks for comprehensive communication education coverage, comprehensive information coverage as a slightly more of graphic form of an article or an updates. So stop it don't do that, remember the medium is the message so stick to what the medium does well. Now I've seen tons of people build their slides from an article or research project. And these slides include every possible bit of information. And that's okay because the reader's going to engage that slide privately If they're sending it around as a distribution. The problem emerges when the speakers use these overstuffed slides for that live audience. Well, no wonder the slides have too much information. They weren't designed for the speech or for that live audience. Is the presentation boring? Of course it is. The slides are deigned from the very outset to replace the speaker not to support him. So if you want to send something around after the presentation, that's fine that makes sense that's not a bad idea. Just distinguish it from your presentation deck, so maybe you draft up a one pager or simple summary of your talk maybe an abstract. And if you want to stay with slides as what you sent around afterwards that's totally fine but have a presentation deck and a distribution deck, right? The presentation deck strips out all the information that you, as the speaker, will say. The presentation deck is built with a live audience in mind. It's simple and it's clean. You want a distribution deck? That's fine, include all that information, lots of text, whatever you feel is necessary. But just don't confuse the two. Don't write an essay in slide form, and then force the audience to view it with your background narration. Because, ultimately, think about what slides do well. They provide support for what you say in a live presentation. If they're being used on a live presentation that they should do different things, but when they're used in a live presentation they should be kept in their proper support row. And that means limited text and graphics, you're the store not the slides. [MUSIC]
