Understanding Presentations by Design
Death after Powerpoint video
There are a lot of tips and guidelines on designing and delivering an effective presentation. As a follow up to an earlier post on the techthink blog, I have managed to find some good resources that can help students understand what makes a good presentation. There seem to be 2 general sets of guidelines for designing effective presentations and many resources tend to focus on them in some form or another.
The Rule of Six
No more than 6 bullets/lines on a slide and no more than 6 words or numbers in a bullet/line.
Fatal Five
Avoiding The Fatal Five – As far as I can tell, the fatal five originated from the book “Why bad presentations happen to good people“. They were summed up at this site and I have listed them below.
- Reading the Slides
- Too long, Too much information
- Lack of interaction
- Lifeless Presenters
- Room/Technical Problems
Here are some great sites that go into more depth about designing your presentations and some examples of these ideas in practice.
Pecha Kucha is a neat approach to presenting. “Each presenter is allowed 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds each – giving 6 minutes 40 seconds of fame before the next presenter is up.” The author of the Wired article on Pecha Kucha tried following the guidelines for his presentation below:
Seth Godin posted helpful lists of dos and don’ts on his blog as well as a more conservative version of the rule of six.
This site has a great presentation that discusses good design by demonstrating what not to do.
Garry Reynolds is an author and marketing professor. His blog, Presentation Zen offers several examples of great presentations. More tips can be found here. I would also recommend Garry’s post that compares the presentation styles of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
If you have some resources or websites, please share them in the comment sections.
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I think that the guy who used a humorous approach was much more effective. The way he connected with the audience was good and it helped get his point across. I think that the Fatal Five and the Rule of Six were good “lists” and it really helps us to avoid and use them
This videos are really helpful in getting the point across because although we have already discussed the mechanics on how to make a good powerpoint presentation, this is a more visual aid on what to do and not to do. It is much more interesting that listening to somebody talking.
Those presentations about good presentations influenced the change in my presentation. I was trying to put a lot of informations in the powerpoint, however, after watching the videos, I realized that the less the better. Thus, I am going to take out un-necessary informations from my slides and try to make it concise as possible.
When the man was giving his presentation, he explaind it well, but he had lots of distractions, and his slides were all messed up. I think that this is a good thing because he is explaining all about bad powerpoint presentations.
I think that when this guy did the presentation, he did it pretty well, but he was sort of losing time towards the end because the pictures were faster than his talking. I think that it is really hard to do a presentation with only 20 seconds for each slide.
I think this video can help about the presentation we’re going to have…
In the first video, the presenter showed ‘how to avoid boring presentation’ quite effectively. And this helped a lot with understanding the main keypoints for successful ppt. From the second video(petcha kucha), I learned that it is really hard to present 20pictures in limited time….
I think this video is very helpful for our projects to be done. It was very influenced. Especially the video where a man breaks the rules for presentations explaining that we shouldn’t break the rules of presenatitons. I mean we could actually break the rules but i don’t think it is being responsible and respectful for the audience. I also got to know how hard it is explaining the presentations about the topic and how hard you need to put your effort for thep presentations. It was so influenced to me and my group that we somehow got the idea of presenting which may be helpful to the upcoming presentations about Did You Know project.
The pacha-kucha video was effective, but not as effective as the video with the comedian. I think that this video was not as effective because the speaker was monotonous. I also think that he wasnt always in sync with his slides. At times, it seemed like he spoke too long, and he lacked slides. Though, it was better than a slide with a lot of words, and not a lot of talking.
i think the visual demonstration of the fatal five and how bad it will make a powerpoint look was very helpfull. And Pecha-Kucha is a good example of making sure you get right to the point and don’t get off topic.
He broke every rule but he did it on purpose to make his presentation very affective.
I thought it was clever because it didn’t look boring but he use comedy to make it very affective with th mood of the presentation. It is a great video because he use the mood and give out a simple point on his presentaion. We can use some kind of mood to make our presentation very affective and just give out a simple saying on our main point.
i think this video can healp us with our presentation. It tells us that we need to know our presention ver well and not just read it from the screen. It is more affective to have little text on the power point. Only listing the main points. I told me that we also have to be fast and accurate
when the powerpoint showed i was shocked that there was no words on the slides but just pictures. i liked it how he wasw talking the whole time and each picture represeted what he had said right after the slide had showed. he explained pecha-kucha really well. this will help us with our presentations because now we know that even if you break the rules you can still make a great presentation. and that you dont need to have so many words on the slide.
I think the video will greatly influence my powerpoint by showing how pakutcha(not sure on the spelling) and how that its 20 seconds a slide and only 20 slides is fairly challenging and the presenter showed how to avoid boring presentation.
I believe that these presentations have been very influencial to our power point. For one thing, we would have to shorten the number of words on some of our slides, and second to change the ‘Did you know…’ questions as they were not relevant to the question ‘So what?’. These videos were really helpful, along with being interesting and funny too.
I think this video was very effective because of all the jokes the guy made and with it made it really fun to lean. It was good that he focused on the main points instead of going to the little details. I also learned that you shouldnt put a whole amount of informaition to your power point, it will look bad and conusing and you wont have anything to say anymore.
This video can help us by organizing our presentations and making it better. The guy who broke all of the rules was able to show us that it was truthfully bad to do those stuff. The Pecha-Kucha helps us by the ammount of time we use in our presentation and the length.
I think that the first video, the one with the comedian, was a better and stronger presentation to us right now. The comedian really put it straight, “This is what NOT to do.” In the Pecha Kucha video was also got the point across, but it focused more on the time constraints, and how much was too much.
I think our presentation at the moment, is up to par with the first video. The Pecha Kucha method, however, will require us to add more relevant pictures so we don’t stay on one slide too much.
The man’s presentation related to the audience because he shows how everyone can break the rules (fatal five) of an effective powerpoint. His presentation was interesting and unforgetable because it was delivered with great enthusiasm and humor. The man showed examples of bad presentations. After watching the video, I realized how effects aren’t always for the better. I learned how some visuals can be very distracting and somewhat annoying for the audience. Even if you are a great speaker, your visuals can affect your presentation greatly and can make the audience lose their focus on you.
I think that the most effective parts of these presentations were the parts where the presenters engaged the audience in the topic. Many of these parts were closer to humor, but i think that this helped keep the interest of the audience and the listeners. As an example of engaging the audience, i think it was really helpful the way the comedian talked about certain problems with presentations, then contradictorily had all those problems on his power point. i thought that was the most effective because it really related to the audience. I think that this will help us in our presentations because the speakers and their presentations were good things that we would be able to model our presentations around.
…=]……
I learned alot about good and bad presentations through the mans presentation because it was both good and bad. Before watching it, i’d thought that the more effects you had the better, but that proved to be wrong.
The videos that we watched were very factual and educational. Although they were very educating they were also quite humorous and entertaining. Watching these video showed me great ways to make my presentations much more lively and FUN! These videos were a great experience because thay taught me alot and I will surely use the tips. O_O -_-
I think that showing the videos to the class as examples helped me much more thatn if we just discussed the topics. It showed me a clear example of what was expected in this project and gave me a clear founddation to start the presentation. It also gave creative ideas and got us to laugh. I think that the comedian’s presentation was very effective because the audience by his humor. It also showed us the importance of choosing an interesting topic. And if your topic is’t intresting, come up with a creative way to make it engaging.
I think the comedian projected the ideas of a bad powerpoint very well, in a funny way. Making his presentation comedic helped to keep the audiences attention. The Pecha-Kucha was also a good example of a quick and concise presentation.
I liked the video for two reasons:
1. The video taught us ways to avoid doing a bad powerpoint and how to make your powerpoint a success.
2. The presenter also made fun of powerpoint like in the part when he saisd that does who use times new roman as a font are lazy and dumb.
After viewing both videos I realized that complicated doesn’t always mean better. In fact, simple is sometimes better for presentations. After I learned about tips like the rule of six I have applied them to my presentations. I now know how to make a stronger, more concise presentation.
the videos we watched were funny, especially the one with the comedian. i learned a lot about good presentation and bd presentations.
i think that the videos helped me with my presentation. they taught me a lot like how to create an effective power point presentation and how to engage the audience with it as well. additionally from the videos i learnt about the fatal five and the rule of six. my favorite video however was the one with the comedian because it taught us a lot while making us laugh. it kept the audience interested while showing people what not to do.
Wow! I think both of the videos and the links to other sites are great resources for anyone planning to create PowerPoint presentations. While I was aware of some ideas about how to make effective PPT presentations, I learned many new ideas here and got some great reminders as well. I think every teacher or presenter should check out this information before creating their own presentations. Everyone, regardless of age, wants to get value out of a presentation, and following these suggestions can make the difference between a valuable presentation and a boring or difficult to follow lecture.