New evidence that bullet-points don’t work

At last, we have some scientifically rigorous evidence to show that slides full of bullet-points don’t work.

The research is the work of Chris Atherton, a cognitive psychologist. Chris recently delivered a presentation at the Technical Communication UK Conference and has put up her slides on slideshare. There’s been a tremendous amount of interest in them, but as they were designed to complement Chris’s talk – they only tell half the story.

In this post I’ll explain the findings of Chris’s research. I’ve written the post based on Chris’s slides and asked Chris to comment on various aspects. Chris has also reviewed this post to make sure I’ve got all the science right.

The research

[Read more]

Here’s a quick way to make over a bullet-point slide

It’s called the Assertion-Evidence Format and it was developed by Professor Michael Alley (I’ve mentioned it previously but somehow never devoted a whole post to it).

BTW, if you’ve downloaded and read my Presentation Planning Guide, you’ll see that this slide format dovetails nicely with the planning system I describe in the Guide.

First let’s look at the Assertion part of the format. [Read more]

How to create a “new” presentation from pre-existing slides

In a perfect world, every new presentation would be prepared from scratch, tailored exactly to the specific audience. But in reality, you sometimes have to cobble together a “new presentation” from pre-existing material.

How can you create an effective presentation in the shortest possible time using pre-existing slides from different sources?

There are two phases to this. First, organizing the content of the presentation and second, creating slides to go with it. [Read more]

PowerPoint Design in 2009: Most promising new technology

This is the fourth post in the series guiding you through the 40 contributions to “PowerPoint Design in 2009?  The first three posts are:

PowerPoint Design in 2009: Does Design Matter?
PowerPoint Design in 2009: Develop visual thinking skills
PowerPoint Design in 2009: Six most recommended tips

Here are the links to all the contributions to the PowerPoint Design in 2009 project:

1. A list of all the blogposts  with a one or two sentence summary of each post.
2. A list of all the blogposts with quotes from each post.
3. The e-mail contributions that I received quoted in full. These are from Cliff Atkinson, Guy Kawasaki, Julie Terberg, Michael Alley, Nancy Duarte, Richard Mayer and Seth Godin.

[Read more]

PowerPoint Design in 2009: Six most recommended tips

This is the third post in the series guiding you through the 40 contributions to “PowerPoint Design in 2009″.  The first two posts are:

PowerPoint Design in 2009: Does Design Matter?
PowerPoint Design in 2009: Develop visual thinking skills

Here are the links to all the contributions to the  PowerPoint Design in 2009 project:

1. A list of all the blogposts  with a one or two sentence summary of each post.
2. A list of all the blogposts with quotes from each post.
3. The e-mail contributions that I received quoted in full. These are from Cliff Atkinson, Guy Kawasaki, Julie Terberg, Michael Alley, Nancy Duarte, Richard Mayer and Seth Godin.

[Read more]

PowerPoint Design in 2009: Develop visual thinking skills

This is the second post in the series guiding you through the 40 contributions to “PowerPoint Design in 2009″.  In the first post I explored the issue  “Does Design Matter?”.

And here are the links to the PowerPoint Design in 2009 resources:

1. A list of all the blogposts  with a one or two sentence summary of each post.
2. A list of all the blogposts with quotes from each post.
3. The e-mail contributions that I received quoted in full. These are from Cliff Atkinson, Guy Kawasaki, Julie Terberg, Michael Alley, Nancy Duarte, Richard Mayer and Seth Godin.

[Read more]

PowerPoint Design in 2009: Does Design Matter?

There’s been a fantastic response to my invitation to write about PowerPoint Design in 2009.

40 contributions. That’s a wealth of material to guide you in making presentations in 2009. They include strong opinions, the odd rant, and many perceptive “hit the nail” comments.

I’ve created three pages where you can follow links and read the e-mail contributions:

1. A list of all the blogposts  with a one or two sentence summary of each post.
2. A list of all the blogposts with quotes from each post.
3. The e-mail contributions that I received quoted in full. These are from Cliff Atkinson, Guy Kawasaki, Julie Terberg, Michael Alley, Nancy Duarte, Richard Mayer and Seth Godin.

[Read more]

3 reasons to use less stock photos in your presentations

Here’s what I would like to see in PowerPoint slide design in 2009 – less stock photos of people.

I’m guilty too. Last year I loved istockphoto. It saved me so much time. I loved recommending it to our course participants and showing them how quickly they could find the photo they wanted.

My New Year’s resolution is to use istockphoto less.

Why use less stock photos of people in your presentations?

[Read more]

The Top 7 PowerPoint slide designs

The PowerPoint revolution has sparked the evolution of different styles of PowerPoint design.  I’ve identified seven different styles to inspire you  – do add others in the comments.

If you’re just getting started with creating non-bullet point slides, I recommend the assertion-evidence or PresentationZen style. Then start mixing and matching between styles to provide variety for your audience.

The assertion-evidence slide

[Read more]

15 ways to improve your presentations in 2009

This is a big meaty post with 15 ways to improve your presentations.  These ideas are designed to challenge you to stretch yourself. With each idea I’ve pointed you to further resources from fellow presentation bloggers or from my own archives.

Choose one or two to work on at a time. Bookmark this post, so that once you’ve implemented those, you can come back and work on some more during the year.

1. Customise your presentations for each audience

[Read more]

Next Page »