5 Pro Tips for Designing Better Presentations (Plus a Bonus Tip)

Podcamp Nashville is coming soon, and to celebrate, I wanted to spend a few minutes talking about how to design better presentations. If you’re speaking at PodCamp, I hope these tips will help you to craft a presentations that’s compelling, effective and entertaining (yes…entertaining).

1. Tell a Story

You’ve likely heard this before, but only because it’s so effective. Stories speak to people in ways that straight facts simply can’t. If you’re looking to make a point, find a way to wrap a story around it. Remember that effective stories are dramatic. Don’t simply say “We did this for X client”. Instead, weave dramatic moments in, pulling the audience through your experience, and intentionally injecting emotion into the story. Create moments of tension and release, driving the story toward a big climax where the payoff is. Create suspense.

2. Keep it to Three (or so) Points

Don’t beat up your audience with 32 different things they should remember. Instead, try to distill your talk down into three main takeaways. I learned this from Scott Schwertly of Ethos3, and it’s incredibly helpful. Make sure that a 10 year old could repeat back your main ideas. Writing these down early in your planning process will help you organize your thoughts and drive your presentation design.

For example, last year at PodCamp, I gave a talk entitled “A User Experience Story”, that ended up being quite popular. The entire talk was a story (see above), with three main points about how to approach the design of technology products: make it simple, make it obvious and make it polite. 3 points, easy to remember, and very impactful.

Sketching a presentation for BarCamp '10

3. Sketch First!

Don’t jump into PowerPoint and immediately start putting your presentation together from scratch. Just as you wouldn’t design anything without first sketching through ideas, neither should you put together a presentation without an intentional period of exploration. After you’ve organized your presentation into three main points, begin sketching how the slides should look, and how the slides should tell the story visually. Use the storyboard method to chain together slides on paper before committing them to the computer. As you’re doing this, you’ll discover holes in the presentation and opportunities for exciting anecdotes and segues. Try sketching the whole presentation as thumbnails before even opening your presentation software…I promise it’ll make a huge difference.

4. Rehearse!

Walking on stage without rehearsing your presentation is a sure-fire way to deliver a fumbling mess of a talk. After you’ve sketched your presentation, begin rehearsing it at home to get the timing down and to make sure the talk flows smoothly. Treat this as any performance artist would treat the rehearsal before a show: rehearse everything, exactly as you plan on giving it. Rehearse the “off-the-cuff” jokes and anecdotes, rehearse the silence between statements (this helps create that drama, per point #1), rehearse the moments that you anticipate applause or other reactions. Rehearse everything. Also, don’t do this sitting in a chair at a desk. You give a presentation standing up, so rehearse it that way. Hook your computer up to a TV at home to simulate the projector and screen, and run through it 5-10 times before you give it live.

5. Perform

Presentations are 90% about performance. Sure, you’ve got some interesting data and insights to share, but the biggest part of speaking is performing. Giving a talk isn’t about just delivering facts – you can do that via a whitepaper, blog post, or other method. Speaking is about performing, and the great speakers of the world treat it as such. Study how musicians, comedians and other performers create drama and excitement in their shows. Bring that drama and excitement to your talk. Look at your speaking engagement as a show and you’ll deliver a far more impactful and interesting presentation. This is probably the single biggest difference between amateur and professional speakers: pros know they’re performing, and they design the entire experience around it.

Bonus Tip

Buy a remote for your computer. Being anchored to a podium is a great way to assure you deliver a flat and lifeless presentation. Remotes are cheap – around $20 for basic ones (this is the one I have) – and will allow you to leave the podium and use the entire stage for your presentation performance. Remember tip #5 – you’re putting on a show. Hard to do that when you’re stuck behind a big block of wood.

I hope these tips are helpful. Giving presentations can be a rewarding and exciting addition to your career, and can impact audiences in hugely meaningful ways. If you have additional tips, I’d love to hear them in the comments below!