A flourishing scientific career is strengthened by a sustained flow of oral presentations. And this is where most scientists may wish that, like bees, they were equipped with a social gene enabling them to dance uninhibited in front of an audience avid for new sources of ideas. Fortunately (at least so far) nobody has identified a presentation gene in our DNA. Presentation skills, even though they appear native in those who flourish, are not found in the human genome. They are learned and, in this blog, they are shared.
This blog invites you to comment on the challenges faced by the scientist who presents. It points to many resources for presenters, including books, other blogs, URLs, and it contains original videos with PowerPoint or Keynote techniques (http://www.scivee.tv/user/7043/ )and podcasts (http://scientific-presentations.com/?feed=podcast ).
Contact_Me: whenthescientistpresents (before the “at”) and the common gmail dot com after the “at”.
January 6th, 2010 in
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Take it from me, as a presenter, if you don’t sync, you do not exist. Have you ever wondered why the audience does not pay attention to you, but only has eyes for the beloved PowerPoint slide? Feel like a jealous lover? It’s apple of the eye for PowerPoint and tin ear for you!
When that happens, it is simply because you are not keeping what the audience sees in sync with your speech, in other words, the audience is suffering from a chronic case of divided attention. We, human folks, are not very good at doing two things at once when our senses are pulling us in different directions.
The cure to the presentation problem is actually straightforward – and it’s not “Present now and drink later to drown your sorrow!”
1) Guide the eyes to what you describe.
Discourage forward reading and re-reading.
Point, circle, color what you describe, remove highlights after description.
Move the pointing object, or ask the audience to track an object moving through the static slide .
2) Take the attention away from the screen when the screen does not support your talk.
Blank the screen (B-Key or black slide).
And finally, move away from your position, change your intonation, stop talking.
Our brain is actively engaged in determining what changes from one moment to another. It pays attention to what changes. Motion of the presenter is perceived at the same level as any change on the screen. Therefore, move from your base position, use gestures. A new voice pitch or added intonation is also perceived as change by the ear. Silence is perceived as change just as effectively.
Image source: Flickr,Author photo 1: ”pedestrian photography”; photo 2: “Colin Purrington”
To turn a host into a ghost, just add the letter G. And to turn the presenter host into a presenter ghost, just add a computer and PowerPoint. When you invite other scientists to come and listen to you via the proxy of conference programs, you become a host, and the scientists who turn up for your talk are your guests. Yet, unbeknownst to you, you are sharing the limelight with a formidable co-host whose dream is to turn you into a ghost, a shadow of your own self. This co-host is the computer connected to the towering bright screen overhanging your lilliputian silhouette, a screen that plunges your face into semi darkness as effectively as the sun creates a moon shadow.
As host, you have to keep your giant co-host in its proper place: that of a servant, discreet and supportive. And for that, you have to be seen.
1) Keep the room lights full on, turning them down ONLY when a slide requires darkness for readability (fluorescent marker in protein tags for example). But for that, you will need to lose the dark slide background and go for the classic white background on which black letters stand out better even when the stage is lit. Keeping the lights on reduces the contrast between the screen and you, thus enabling you to stand out more.
2) Everything that moves on the screen attracts attention away from you. Therefore, remove these gratuitous animated gif files that constantly move on the screen, or the loop in looping video clips that mesmerize the audience and remove you from the apple of their eyes.
3) Everything that moves on the stage attracts attention away from the screen. Therefore, do not turn into a pillar of salt. Move, use gestures.
4) Disable your co-host out for at least twenty seconds, with a black slide or a B-Key; and enjoy the renewed eye-contact with the audience while your co-host is blindfolded and muted.
5) Keep constant eye-contact with the audience, but for that you will need to be so well prepared that you know without looking at the screen what appears on it as you click the advance button on your presentation remote. The people in the audience do not look at a host who does not look at them.
6) Vary your voice intonation and volume, they act as audio gestures, re-centering on you the attention of the audience.
7) Reduce the amount of information on each slide. When people have read a slide, having nothing else to read, they have no choice but lay their eyes back on you!
8 ) And for Pete’s sake, do not let the computer thank the audience and announce the Q&A. You are the host, aren’t you!!!
9) Do not stand behind the lectern. You want your whole body to be seen, not just a truncated version of you. Wear a wireless mike and use a presentation remote to be able to move away from your computer.
10) Be pleasant to look at 
, not an disheveled eye sore.
Image source: Flickr. R Motti. XXVII
The best ice breaker that I know of is not “a” smile, but “THE” smile.
Not the cheshire cat grin, but the HAPPY smile born out of the sincere happiness of being able to communicate something of value to your audience
Not the smile constantly deformed by words attempting to make their way through horizontally stretched lips, but the SILENT smile unencumbered by words
Not the smile that doesn’t even bring a sparkle in your eyes, but the GLOWING smile that radiates from your lips and touches your eyes
Not the stressed smile you put on by necessity, but the RELAXED smile from a relaxed face.
Such a smile touches your audience; it moves people’s attitude towards you from neutral to positive.
If you find it hard to smile, if audience pressure depresses your levator and zygomaticus muscles, take heart. Look at that smiling face in the audience and let it warm you and vaporise your anxiety. The great scientist and philosopher Pascal found that out. And never mind the number of muscles required to smile (13**), because what matters is the source of the signal used to trigger your smile: Your heart, a heart who cares about the people in the audience, a heart filled with gladness because the people in the room have accepted your invitation to come and listen to you. They are your guests, you are their host. SMILE 
Imager Flickr; Author Didier-lq
Dr Rao Machiraju, in the final part of the interview, suggests a provocative way to prepare a scientific talk…. the augmented speech. Be ready for Rao’s final one liner which is so good, it should be carved in stone, or at least printed on a T-Shirt!
Image Flickr; Author Smilla4
Here is a passage of Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography, where he gives advice on how to handle people who contradict you. This is particularly applicable to situations you may encounter during your Q&A, or even in scientific discussions with other scientists. Brilliant advice, as you will discover! You may be unfamiliar with the word “Junto“: It represents a political group or faction. Notice how closely Franklin’s argument mirrors Pascal’s argument. It may well be that Benjamin Franklin was familiar with Pascal’s writings. He was living in Paris while writing this part of his autobiography. Pascal does not say what he observed as the consequence of following his own recommendations; fortunately for us, Benjamin Franklin does!
I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradiction to the sentiments of others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbid myself, agreeably to the old laws of our Junto, the use of every word or expression in the language that imported a fix’d opinion, such as certainly, undoubtedly, etc., and I adopted, instead of them, I conceive, I apprehend, or I imagine a thing to be so or so; or it so appears to me at present. When another asserted something that I thought an error, I deny’d myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing immediately some absurdity in his proposition; and in answering I began by observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present case there appear’d or seem’d to me some difference, etc. I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I engag’d in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I propos’d my opinions procur’d them a readier reception and less contradiction; I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily prevail’d with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I happened to be in the right.
Image Flickr; Author Wallyq
In this podcast (part two of the interview) Dr Rao Machiraju, CEO of REQALL and past colleague from the Apple days when we both worked in Apple’s Advanced Technology Group (ATG), shares with us his wisdom on how to deal with troublesome situations in Q&As, such as comments that could be perceived as aggressive, or downright hostile at times. This is a must listen-to for those who have not been there… yet!
Image Source Flickr; Author Zcopley
“It seems that perfection is reached, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
(Terre Des Hommes, Chapter 4)
This is so applicable to scientific presentations. The starting point of a presentation is usually the scientific paper. Selection of the contents of the presentation is, for most, a subtractive process, the result of chiseling out and polishing of material until it looks deceptively natural, having “the elemental purity of the contours of a shoulder or a breast”, writes St Exupery.
The presenter knows that naturalness has come to a slide when side details that clothe the basic idea have been removed; when diagrams, transmuted from high density lead to light density aluminum, still conduct information to our resistive brains; when the eye and the ear, in total harmony, never divorce or separate because the visual life of any projected objet, as it makes its way to our brain, never extends beyond its spoken life. Once the visual’s verbal amplification comes to an end, the clarity of the visual content is such that lingering on the visual is not required unless the presenter encourages further contemplation to give nascent ideas time to germinate.
What gives an outline that natural shape? It is the title of your talk. Let its invisible hand guide your chisel.
Source Flickr. Author bmhkim
I are delighted to feature a new guest on our podcast: Dr Rao Machiraju. Rao and I belonged to Apple’s Advanced Technology Lab in Cupertino California. He now heads his own company, REQALL, working on a fascinating product: memory recall enhancement tools. Rao is a master in the art of presenting. Today, he reveals his favorite ways to handle questions during the Q&A that follows a talk. They depart from the conventional ways, as you will soon hear.
Photo Flickr. Author Scion Cho.
Doomsday!
Your phone rings. The receptionist tells you the Japanese visitors have arrived. You take the elevator down five floors to the ground floor where the two meeting rooms are. Many people use them, and the furniture frequently gets changed to fit the requirements. You asked for a simple U-Shape table arrangement to accommodate 8 Japanese visitors in the “Small 1″ meeting room. As you welcome the visitors, you are given a handwritten note from Suzan, the facilities manager, informing you that the room has been changed due to unforeseen circumstances and that you are now presenting in the “Big 1″ – the tables have been arranged in U-Shape as requested.
The only problem is that the “Big 1″ is a room for fifty people. The visitors come in and fill in half of the left side of the U-Shape – the side exactly facing the lectern… but perpendicularly. All heads turn right to face you, twisting necks; People bend their torso or move chairs back and forth to get a better view of you. Furthermore, last night you downloaded your presentation in the computer of the “Small 1″ meeting room -and your USB drive containing your presentation is five floors up.
The “Small 1″ room has a simple audio out cable that fits into the presentation computer and is always on. The “Big 1″ has an audio mixer with multiple BNCs,mini stereo Din, XLRs and Mike jacks. The mixer is turned off, you need computer audio out, and the labels on the mixer are totally cryptic. On top of the lectern hiding the presentation computer, is a brief note that suddenly explains why the “Small 1″ is taken and why the mixer is turned off: the room’s computer has been removed for repair.You then realize that you had assumed that each room would have a working computer and therefore failed to tell Suzan that you needed one.
As you are wondering what to do, the maintenance man appears with a tall ladder with the intent to change a broken light bulb. He had been told the day before that the room was not occupied since the computer was down. All the Japanese heads turn towards him, then back to you… You’ve reached bottom, or so you think.
A drop of water falls on your head. You look up. All Japanese heads look up, and everybody discovers at the same time the fresh water stain probably caused by a leak in the lavatories upstairs. You return your eyes down to your guests, you raise your hand to apologize, and in the process knock down an empty stainless steel jug from which a large cockroach escapes, flying out and landing on the chair occupied by the head of the Japanese delegation. You swear. They hear you. Now, you have really reached rock bottom.
OK, so maybe I overdid it, but a presentation room is a dangerous place, full of potential unsuspected problems. Can the presenter prevent them all? No, but the presenter can be prepared for them all. What went wrong?
1) Never assume anything when it comes to the presentation room.
2) Always have a copy of your presentation with you, on you.
3) Rehearse in the presentation room the day of the event.
3) Be ready to do an impromptu presentation that does not rely on the computer (a flip chart will do).
4) Never put the blame on anyone because something goes wrong. You will be regarded as an incompetent person trying to discharge his/her responsibilities on others.
5) Keep control of your mouth and avoid foul language – whatever the circumstances.
This said, you don’t need to walk around with a large can of insecticide deforming your bulging trouser pocket… just in case. And when the man with the ladder comes, don’t ignore him. Recognize his presence, and ask him if he would not mind getting an umbrella, and holding it upside down above the leak while on the ladder, to avoid you being wet during your talk. By that I mean, think on your feet, and weave the circumstances in the tapestry of your talk.
Photo source: Flickr, Author Mek22.
Try and find out what is wrong with the five situations described below.
1) Sylvia is in the University library facing the screen of her laptop. She came here to have a chance to be quiet and rehearse an important upcoming presentation. She methodically looks at each slide, and silently (she does not want to disturb her neighbors) rehearses what she will say.
One does not rehearse silently. You need to activate the pathway between your brain and your speaking apparatus, open wide a channel between your inaudible thoughts and your audible voice. For that, you need to rehearse at full volume, using the full range of expressive capabilities offered by your vocal chords. A library is not the best place to do that. Finally sitting is not the ideal position for rehearsing. Standing is.
2) Prasad is using the notes section of his PowerPoint presentation and writes down the talk he intends to give. To make sure he will not spend too much time speaking, he sets himself a target of a maximum note length for each slide. Then, sitting in front of his computer, he rehearses by reading the notes aloud, memorizing as much as he can in the process.
Only radio and TV professionals know how to write for the ear. Unless you are trained in the arts of oral communications, memorizing such written notes will make your speech sound unnatural. The audience knows that people don’t speak like that. Your words will be too complex, your sentences too long, etc. Finally, what dictates the time one spends on a slide is not defined by the size of the note section, but by the amount of information displayed on the slide. And remember point 1: stand up to rehearse.
3) Xiao Hong is standing a few meters away from her computer screen looking straight at it. She has entered the slide show mode and starting with the title slide, rehearses aloud keeping eye contact with the screen, moving from one slide to the next using her favorite presentation remote.
This looks like the perfect picture. What could possibly wrong with it? You should not rehearse while looking at the screen but looking away from the screen as if facing the audience. Rehearsing this way forces you to remember what is on the projection screen without having to depend on it. Each time you click, you must know WITHOUT LOOKING what will be on the screen at that time. If you constantly look at the screen, you will become dependent on it , and your transitions from one slide to another will be the unpolished “And here”, ”Next”, “On this slide”, “so, moving on…”, “And now”.
4) Tomi has rehearsed his presentation six times, from start to finish. He wishes he could rehearse a few more times but he has no more time. He is now convinced that whatever happens, he could not possibly do a better job. He hopes the Q&A won’t be too tough because that’s one thing, unfortunately, one cannot rehearse!
Similarly, you may think this is also ideal. But actually, you can deliver an even better presentation by rehearsing some parts of your presentation more than others, like singers do. It is not necessary to rehearse the middle of your presentation as often as a) its beginning, b) its end, and c) the places when you transition from one slide to the next. Furthermore, a Q&A requires rehearsal, just as much as the presentation requires it. For that you need an mock audience to come up with unpredictable questions. As to the predictable questions, you need only look at each slide and ask yourself, what could they possibly ask me based on what they see here. Check everything: the sources of the data or of the visual (if it is not yours), the graphs, their axis, the boundary values, etc.
5) Kim is as ready as can be: many rehearsals, aloud, standing up and facing a mirror, perfect mastery of the presentation remote, perfect knowledge of which slide comes next even before it appears on the screen, perfect transitions. And all this without having to bother anyone!
You should bother more than one person and conduct at least one or two mock rehearsals in front of a small audience of people who are not familiar with the topic of your talk. That way, you can practice your warming smile without having to fake one. But more importantly, you can receive the feedback regarding the parts that people did not understand, and the parts that felt too long – AND modify your speech or/and your slides based on the feedback. Remember to also include a Q&A as part of the rehearsal.
“And here, you see…” These are the famous words that ring hollow to the blind. But the lack of knowledge leaves us just as blind – a temporary type of blindness, assuredly, but blindness nevertheless. For knowledge only lights up the world of the expert rambling along, finger pointing to familiar shapes on the laptop screen, and occasionally on the projector screen (the one everybody sees) whilst most of us in the audience, eyes stretched in front of us, grope in the dark and clutch at shadows.
The trap is common: the presenter expects all of us in the audience to be experts. We feel like the little Marys and Johnnys in primary school reading the story of the house cat. “The cat ate a mouse”, the story goes. “The rodent was fat.” At this precise moment, we all got the idea that the cat was a rodent – after all, it just ate a mouse! The world has not changed that much for the scientist since primary school; the story just got a little more complex. “The felis catus ate a murine commensal. The mus musculus’s BMI exceeded that of a standard murinae.” At least scientists won’t mistake the mus musculus for a felis catus… or will they?
My advice to you is to look at the contents of ALL your slides from the point of view of ALL the people the title of your talk attracted. Who are they? What do they want from you? The answer is not a simple “they want to know about my contribution.” To know what they want, look at your title. Each search keyword in your title acts as a magnet attracting the expert AND the non-expert. For each keyword, the audience expects you to give new information AND background information. Redo and simplify your slides to remove the knowledge gap between you and the non-experts. And move your tough expert slides after your conclusion slide, ready to answer the experts’ questions during your Q&A.
Image flickr; Author Dnudson
If you are like most scientists, chances are that you will place the acknowledgment slide at the end of your presentation. But if you watch one of the Hollywood award events, or attend a Nobel laureate award presentation, chances are you will hear the acknowledgments at the very beginning of the acceptance speech. Why? Because the people you recognize as being part of your success are in the room, and if you fail to mention them as in “and others too many to mention”, chances are that the ones who are in the “too many” category will be miffed or downright offended.
In a scientific talk, the presenter acknowledges 1) the corporations which funded the research (they may have a representative in the room) and 2) the individuals who had a large part to play in the success of the research (their friends may be in the room). But where should the acknowledgments be? At the beginning or at the end of the presentation? On the title slide or on their own acknowledgment slide? And how long is the list of people/organizations recognized?
Let’s start with the first question: Where does one put the acknowledgment slide?
If you were to place it at the end, as in the scrolling credits of any movie, chances are the audience will have switched off or left the room by the time the credits roll; Or chances are you will go over time in your presentation and will have to skip the acknowledgment slide. Whichever way you look at it, the perspective is bleak. Take a clue from Hollywood. The great actors demand that their names be displayed AT THE BEGINNING of the movie for a duration and a font size that match their most excellent performance (and acting fee). Fortunately, your faceless research sponsors do not demand such status. And they will be quite happy to let you mention them through the use of a Logo – so you don’t have to remember their last name. Your collaborators, however, or those who helped you hit the mark, have a name, and a face. So you have a choice: use one or the other – but not both – and don’t add an aureole around your bosses’ heads, or add glow around their names. Acknowledgments are not an ego building or a sanctification thing. They serve two functions: 1) recognize and honor the work of your collaborators, and 2) establish credibility in you and your work. Think of it this way: why should prestigious donors partake of their money or the taxpayers’ money to fund you and your work if both you and your work are not worth it!
But how long is the list?
If you are like me, you love yet you hate these song request radio programs where popular songs are played only after a long list of thanks to the caring husband, the faultless children, the exquisite grandparents, the perfect neighbors, the pet parakeet, and the fire department and rescue squad – notwithstanding the radio host in the studio, the audio technician in the soundproof room, and the janitor who cleans up the ashtrays and turns off the lights. Therefore, be brief and instead of mentioning individual names, use collective names to mention “many people” as in “our team”, or “our department”. A photo of the team flashed briefly does wonders to establish you as a team player, and an honest and fair scientist. Those mentioned by name in writing on the title slide are the co-authors of the paper you are presenting – and only them.
So where exactly do you place the acknowledgments?
Either with Logos and Names on the title slide, which tends to stay on the screen for a while at the beginning of the talk, or briefly and using photos, on the slide that follows the title slide.
Oh, and by the way… The BIG THANK YOU slide… Get rid of it! Don’t let the computer take over. You are the presenter.
Photos: Flickr. Authors: image on top- Mangee -image at the bottom -Patrick Hoesly.
They were certain that their expertise would be seen through the high density of information on their slides. They were certain that removing an ounce of proof would be like losing a pound of flesh – a tragedy of Shakespearian dimension. They were certain that confidence displayed would translate into expertise perceived. But their certainties were rational myths.
Slides never proved expertise. 1) Slides prepared by an expert may be presented by a non-expert. 2) Junior scientists not yet familiar with a field of research tend to densely pack facts and points on slides so as not to forget (mentioning) them. The more a presentation looks like a condensed version of a paper (for example by keeping the reference to figures used, or by packing on one slide all the visuals illustrating a point), the more the presenter may reveal lack of expertise. Why? An expert’s understanding of a problem is such that, what is principal claim, what is central proof, and what is key impact, are easily identified. An expert can easily unpack a slide; A non-expert can’t.
Confidence never proved expertise. 1) Multiple rehearsals give most presenters a higher level of confidence which leads to a smoother delivery – regardless on their level of expertise in the presented topic. 2) Over-confidence often marks ignorance. You only know that you don’t know when you know enough. Superficial knowledge may give you undue confidence. 3) Lack of scientific expertise cannot be inferred from the nervousness of a presenter.
Correct answers to unprepared questions prove personal expertise. It is through the Q&A following a slide presentation that the presenter reveals the extent of his or her expertise. The unpredictability of questions and the presence of other experts in attendance guarantee it – for indeed, it takes an expert to identify an expert.
In conclusion, do not try to establish your expertise through packed slides. Let it shine during the Q&A session. But for that, you need to make sure that you have time left to answer questions! Indeed, finish slightly early so that you have more Q&A time. And when one asks a question, do not answer at length, thus wasting the opportunity to be asked more expertise-revealing questions, and to identify other scientists interested in your work.
Oh, and one last thing… An expert never answers a question with “I think”. An experts knows.
I Think, Therefore I Am…. Not an Expert (non-existentialist ending to the famous René Descartes quote)
Image source: Flickr; Author :Tintin44
Do you feel that speaking English is like driving your car on the left side of the road when you are used to driving it on the right? Is your spoken English bad because you are slowed down by researchers from your own country who insist you speak to them in your own language? Do you want to slow down the aging process that is taking you downhill so that you can master English before your very own neurons tell you it’s too late? Does the road towards fluent spoken English seem endless and tortuous without a native English teacher by your side?Are you slowed down by the online dictionaries that speak one word when you want a full sentence? Can text-to-speech effectively replace a real English (or French) voice?
The ESL scientist who presents will definitely enjoy this podcast as it reveals the secrets of the incredible progress made in the naturalness in computer speech, as explained by one of its long time researcher and developer, Dr Kim Silverman of Apple Computer. But it does not stop there. Dr Silverman also explains how to use speech synthesis to improve the quality of your oral presentation. Don’t miss this podcast if you are an ESL scientist!
Flickr Image. Author: fatboyke (Luc)
While reading the great little book “Advice for a young investigator” by Santiago Ramon y Cajol, Nobel laureate 1906, I stumbled upon a quote the author attributed to another Spaniard, Perez de Ayala: “Look at things as if for the first time”. Somehow, this quote sent me back in thought inside the conference room where the scientist presents. There sits an audience looking at a slide for the first time. The presenter, however, may have been looking at it more than ten times, during its creation, revision, rehearsal, and presentation. Nothing is new. It is simply a slide to explain – in its broad lines.
The audience is puzzled. Why does figure A not quite overlap figure B? The title claims both findings agree… Is the presenter making things look better than they are to force conviction? Naturally, the presenter knows that the reason for the slight discrepancy is noise in the data; therefore, the conclusions stated in the slide title stand firm. But the audience is not told. Had the presenter looked at things as if for the first time while rehearsing, had the presenter probed every inch of the slide for all the possible questions the visuals could raise among the non-experts in the audience, such discrepancies would have been highlighted and explained during the talk. Naturally, that requires time, and less can be presented. But less is more. What the presenter buys in exchange for the loss of slides is credibility and authority.
My advice to the scientist who presents is to look at each slide as if for the first time while rehearsing, and let that rehearsal time be the presentation time. I would trade off time for clarity and authority, any time, at all times
Image Flickr. Author Jeep Novak!
Rarely do we think about speech synthesis (written text spoken by a computer voice) when it comes to presentations. After all, the presenter is the host. But what if the host had a soar throat, or had an English accent to pronounced that the audience is likely to give up and leave the room shortly after the start of the presentation… The applications of text-to-speech do not stop there. Many presenters actually write their whole speech ahead of time in the note section of their PowerPoint or Keynote slides. Having the computer voice speak out these notes allows you to discover that certain sentences read fine as printed text, but no longer sound fine when spoken. It’s time to make these sentences a little less formal. And while you are at it, see how long the computer voice takes to read your speech – and check that you do not exceed the allotted time! We interview, Dr Kim Silverman, the Apple scientist who is responsible for one of the best American voices in computer speech today, Alex. The MAC user will be able to watch an interesting program showing how to have Mac’s voice present for you. The other site where the self-presenting presentation is mentioned is here.
Image source Flickr / Author: Yandle
People like formulas. They are expedient rules of thumb that guard against dangerous extremes. “Plan for one minute and a half per slide”, some say, “and never put more than 5 bullets point and more than 5 words per bullet point”. Under these rules lie hidden assumptions about people’s attention span, prior knowledge of the presented topic, text readability, number of clicks needed to go through the material on the slide, audience interactivity, and more! Presenters could be fooled into thinking that as long as these rules of thumb are followed, their presentation will be fine.
Rule of thumb #1: “Plan for one and a half minute per slide” is about as silly as telling a writer “Plan for chapters with 20 pages”. What is the purpose of this rule? It prevents presenters from putting so much information on one slide that to cover it would take more than 90 seconds. It also prevents boredom: people don’t generally like to stare at the same information for a long time. They get bored because they can read faster than the presenter can speak. Spending three minutes explaining each bullet point is as effective as administering a sleeping pill. What is important here is visual interest, not screen-time. A 30 second slide that gathers interest is fine. A two minute slide that exploits a particularly fruitful visual is fine so long as interest is maintained (let the audience be the judge of that through their questions). A slide that dynamically reveals and removes information through the use of layers can last a very long time, and it’s perfectly fine.
Rule of thumb #2: “Use not more than 5 lines and 5 words per line” (some say six lines, some say four; some say six words per line…). This is silly too, particularly in scientific presentations where long compound nouns abound. So what is the purpose of this rule? 1) to decrease the amount of text on a slide, so that the slide remains readable; 2) to prevent long lists that remove the need to try and select what is important and leave out what is less important; 3) to force the presenter to be concise as opposed to verbose; and 4) to allow the slide to be presented in less than 90 seconds; and thus maintain visual interest by not keeping the same slide on the screen too long – a point already covered above. What is important here is, again, the “Less-is-more” principle: the need to be selective to be legible, AND to be intelligible (clear), and finally, the need to keep visual interest with something other than words.
There is however one rule of thumb I like… but then again, because it works for me does not mean it works for you. This rule of thumb is based on your arm length and your palm size. It determines whether the text on your slide will be readable once projected on the large screen in front of your audience. Readability of text is not to be decided on the grounds that you can read everything on your PowerPoint slide, while sitting one foot away from your computer screen. High screen resolution and brightness will even allow font size 7 to be readable! So if your arm is long enough and your hand is not super tiny, and most of all, if you do not look like a chimp, this rule of thumb might work for you.
Start your slideshow. Stretch out your arm and turn your hand horizontally, fingers pointing to your left if you are right handed, and vice versa. Move away from your computer screen until your stretched hand hides the screen. Remove your hand (but do keep it at the end of your forearm) away from the screen. If you can read everything on the screen from that distance, chances are your audience will be able to read it too, once that slide is projected. Oh, by the way, if you really want to be sure, turn down the brightness of your screen to 50% and move back one half meter more
Photo Flickr – by Lintmachine
The Assertion – Evidence paradigm, promoted by Michael Alley, does indeed force the presenter to limit the information on each slide (and less is mostly more, even in scientific presentations - see limitations). But does Assertion follow Evidence, or Evidence follow Assertion as in the traditional scientific order? To determine which order is more effective, I seeked the opinion of the scientists in the audience during my communication skills seminars. Some do not care about the order. But some prefer to see the evidence before an assertion is made – particularly if a question is raised prior to showing the enlightening visual evidence. When asked to probe this visual evidence for answers, their mind leaves the passive show-me mode to enter the active let-me-see mode. They are more involved and interested. When they discover the yet-to-appear assertion by themselves, under the friendly guidance of the presenter, they are more likely to be convinced by it and more likely to remember it when it is revealed.
Food for discussion.
Here is an example:
Question
Hypothesis:
Observation:
Assertion:
The Apple flag gives you a hint. Our next guest is from Apple, in Cupertino California. His name is Ken Eddings – and he is the man behind Apple’s DNS. But it is not the IT guru I are interviewing, it is the Ken Eddings who frequently attends TED conferences worldwide… reason is, he provides technical support for its organizers. To those of you not familiar with TED, I recommend you go to their website: www.ted.com; TED advertizes itself with the slogan: “Riveting Talks by Remarkable People”. So it was interesting to get Ken’s perspective on what is a good TED presenter, and on the type of technical issues he had to face while supporting TED talks.
February 21st, 2010 in
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Most people who browse websites covering presentation skills stumble on the maxim “Less is more“. Usually, this principle applies to the content of PowerPoint slides. Less slide (text) content to be read by the audience is seen as more beneficial to the speaker. As scientists, we should question everything, right?
Those of you who are LinkedIn members will find an excellent discussion on this principle in the “Presentation Gurus!” discussion started by Matt Gambino entitled “Ways to convince co-workers that “less is more” in PowerPoint”.
Generally, I agree with the “less is more” principle and promote it in my courses. Why? The more there is on a slide, the more that slide has separate areas of focus. The problem then becomes one of synchronicity between the oral comment of the speaker and the visual focus of the audience on the part of the slide that visually matches the oral comment. Perfect synchronicity is impossible in practice. Either we linger on points for which we have insufficient prior knowledge while the expert speaker moves on to other points. Or we disagree with the point made and stop following the other points, constantly returning our eyes to the point of contention. Or the speaker fails to verbally or visually identify on the slide the target where our attention should be focused, imagining that we are able to use our knowledge or his speech to figure it out by ourselves. Most of us, non-experts, can’t. To reduce such synchronicity problems, presenters use layers, laser pointers, they introduce one bullet at a time, or they make each bullet become one slide. The problems are reduced, but not to the point they disappear!
So… Let’s start questioning the assertion “Less is more”, as scientists.
1) Is there a lower boundary to less under which less is less?
Clearly, one cannot push the limit past a certain lower boundary beyond which, slide support is no longer effective. The sketchy or vague information on each slide may become so cryptic that the oral comment is bound to go beyond the slide content, thus creating an attention divide between slide content and oral content. Research shows that, in such situations, memory is less effective and brain activity is lesser than under full undivided attention (encoding slows down in the”hypoccampus, temporal and prefrontal cortex of the left hemisphere*”).
The lower boundary is also defined by the interdependencies within the points made on a slide. When a slide makes multiple inter-related pojnts, these points must remain on the same slide for the audience to see the interdependencies. In this case, less, would force the presenter to divide the slide into multiple slides, and that in turn would force the audience to remember the contents of the previous slides to be able to see the interdependencies. In reality, we don’t remember. Working on making slides independent of each other is a move in the right direction.
The lower boundary is also influenced by the gap between the prior knowledge level of the audience and the knowledge level expected by the speaker. If that gap is large, less “just in time” background information, results in less understanding.
2) Are there situations where, clearly, less is not more, but more is more?
I can think of at least four situations where this would apply:
If providing less contents does not fulfil the expectations your slide title raised in the audience (even the title of your talk), more is more as the speaker needs to meet the expectations that any slide title raises.
For the second situation, imagine a scientist with an accent so thick that the audience understands less than a quarter of the words pronounced. In this situation, the scientist could say less, and possibly read more or display more while giving ample time to the audience to read along and to figure out what the graphics contain since graphics are usually understood regardless of language for the most part. They are vital when it comes to understanding and essential when it comes to convincing. In this case, the audio track is not essential as long as the video track is self-explanatory. More (legible) text on a slide would bring better understanding. Since the memory required to associate the sounds heard from the speaker with the written words on the slide is far too large, the audience rapidly gives up and reads.
A third situation arises when we consider that, since the lack of synchronicity is one of the causes for the “less is more” principle, the speaker can increase synchronicity by slowing down the pace, but also by adding arrows, circles, and other attention-calling methods such as callout boxes, colour /size change, animation, etc. In this case, more is more.
Lastly, my fourth example is inspired by an earlier comment of Ed Skarbek: more is more if you have access to more than one screen to visualize your information, and facilitate comparisons – assumed here is that the extra screens carry visuals, not just text.
I hope this provides a more balanced perspective to the “Less is More” maxim.
Image Flickr. Cesar Rincon. “There is no spoon”
“The Effect of Divided Attention on Encoding and Retrieval in Episodic Memory Revealed by Positron Emission Tomography”. Tetsuya Lidaka & Al,*Journal of cognitive neuroscience archive. vol.12. issue 2. March 2000,p267-280
