In this week’s presentation tip, we’re going to look at actual scientific PPT presentation slides. What we’re going to do is review the slides, offer our opinions, then give tips on how to improve the slides. We think this will be really helpful when you’re preparing a presentation because you’ll know what not to do.
We also want to mention that we don’t the person who made the slides we reviewed. We just happened to find them online for downloading from some conference. But what we want to make clear is that we’re not criticizing the person who made the slides or who gave the presentation. Our intention is to just use your slides to teach others how to improve their PowerPoint presentation slides.
Anyway, check out the video and let us know what you think.
Thanks!
Hi Liam & Carl,
Interesting recommendations on ways Dr. Jensen might improve his presentation.
I was surprised that the slide template allocated 50% of the vertical space to the areas with the gray background for the title and logo. That could be part of the reason he created a custom flowchart at an angle with an “explosion†graphic for the start. Personally, I prefer to use standard flowchart symbols for flowcharts (which would have been easier to do with more vertical space) as people understand immediately what they’re looking at, even if it’s a little boring. It’s up to the presenter to make the flowchart interesting.
Regarding the green font, which doesn’t provide enough contrast to be WCAG 2 AAA Compliant, I generally stay away from green and red fonts, as the approximate 8% of men who are colorblind have difficulty seeing reds and greens, so using those colors for information is just asking for trouble. Blacks and blues are generally safe.
Rich D.
Hi Rich,
Great comments! Thanks for sharing. Really like what you said about the colorblindness. From a design perspective, green can be a nice color to use, but I never thought of it from that angle.
You’re right, it’s totally up to the presenter. That’s why I’m all for simplicity and letting the presenter present.
Thanks again and good to see you here!
Carl