Oral Presentations: Using Slides Effectively

Top

00:00:13.21 Hi. I’m Boyd Branch,
00:00:15.11 and I’m a theater artist and digital media designer.
00:00:18.27 Today, I’m going to be talking to you briefly about
00:00:23.23 designing with slides.
00:00:25.16 As a scientist or an engineer working in biology,
00:00:30.09 it’s inevitable that you’re going to be speaking to the public about your work,
00:00:34.24 and you’re going to be wanting to use visuals to help tell that story.
00:00:38.09 Now, visuals play an important role in communication.
00:00:43.15 And to understand that role,
00:00:45.23 we need to think really specifically about the purpose of every single choice
00:00:48.25 that we’re making when we’re designing.
00:00:51.07 Just like you have to think very thoroughly
00:00:53.29 when you’re constructing tests to understand
00:00:57.06 the particular phenomenon in biology
00:01:00.22 — when you’re setting up your experiment, you have very deliberate and specific things
00:01:04.16 that you’re going to test and test against —
00:01:07.29 when you’re designing your slides,
00:01:10.27 you want to have just as much forethought about what the impact is.
00:01:13.24 Because when we’re speaking, we’re speaking with a purpose.
00:01:16.26 We want people to receive particular information.
00:01:19.20 We want them to understand a particular idea.
00:01:23.02 And as visual creatures,
00:01:25.23 the visual world will play a big role
00:01:30.18 in how people receive what we’re saying,
00:01:33.11 and not just the content.
00:01:35.26 Designing with purpose means thinking about
00:01:38.28 all of the aesthetic choices that one can take
00:01:42.21 and one can make
00:01:45.01 when putting graphics on a screen.
00:01:47.01 A subtle shift in color can slightly increase emphasis.
00:01:51.09 It can distinguish between what is important
00:01:55.05 and what is mildly important.
00:01:58.23 It can give your presentation a feeling of professionalism,
00:02:02.05 and it can also give it a feeling of being rushed together
00:02:04.23 and being put together without a lot of forethought.
00:02:09.28 And so, when you’re designing, you have to think about a lot of different factors
00:02:13.26 beyond just, does this chart or does this graphic
00:02:18.06 represent something that I would actually use
00:02:20.26 to describe the phenomenon that I am presenting on?
00:02:24.00 Good design is about creating relationships.
00:02:27.05 You want to have your slides dialogue with you.
00:02:31.03 If your presentation is dominated by imagery,
00:02:35.16 then there’s a likelihood that your audience
00:02:38.14 will disengage from what you’re saying
00:02:40.22 and focus more on what they’re looking at.
00:02:44.28 In thinking about relationships,
00:02:47.06 you want to think about how things compare to each other.
00:02:49.14 Here we see that the ACME recycling facility
00:02:51.17 represents 2.3 million dollars in its current state.
00:02:57.00 If I want to make a distinction between that
00:03:00.12 and the significant changes that will happen in five years,
00:03:08.12 the text stays the same,
00:03:11.14 but by increasing the scale and shifting the color,
00:03:13.22 we can immediately clue the audience in
00:03:16.23 to the parameter that we want them to focus on.
00:03:19.21 The words themselves convey so much information,
00:03:23.07 but shape and scale and color
00:03:27.03 communicate a whole lot more to us.
00:03:32.02 When we’re designing slides,
00:03:34.04 we’re guiding the viewer in where they’re supposed to look,
00:03:38.11 and how you place your text,
00:03:40.04 where you place it,
00:03:42.03 is going to determine what they look at.
00:03:44.13 We want to think about guiding the viewer’s eye.
00:03:46.11 Here, we’ve got some text,
00:03:48.26 and if you take a second just to look at it… and as you’re looking at it,
00:03:57.23 I want you to think about it and follow,
00:04:01.15 where does your eye want to go?
00:04:03.10 What path does it follow?
00:04:05.12 So, for many people,
00:04:07.11 the way that this slide is particularly designed,
00:04:09.00 it’s going to lead you from…
00:04:11.21 from this corner, over into this corner,
00:04:15.10 down into this, back over into the red.
00:04:21.05 And the way this…
00:04:23.07 the reason why this works is because I’ve placed a line subtly,
00:04:26.00 which is something the eyes look for.
00:04:27.23 We’re looking for a difference;
00:04:30.07 we’re looking for a distinction in topography and terrain.
00:04:32.22 It’s something that we’ve developed through evolution as we’re…
00:04:35.11 as we were hunters and gatherer.
00:04:37.15 And determining shapes and what makes one thing different from another
00:04:41.02 is crucial to whether we eat that day or not.
00:04:42.24 And so, when we’re designing,
00:04:46.17 we’re actually leveraging these sorts of ancient capacities
00:04:49.04 to distinguish between geometry and shape to tell a story.
00:04:52.02 So, here, the story is…
00:04:54.22 although the text… the content is the same…
00:04:57.14 but it’s leading the eye in a direction.
00:04:59.20 If I change this up a little bit,
00:05:02.04 we see that where our eye is going to look
00:05:05.00 is going to dramatically change.
00:05:06.28 So, take a second and look at this slide.
00:05:11.04 Does your eye go from top to bottom?
00:05:14.02 Does it go from right to left?
00:05:15.22 Where is it guided?
00:05:18.02 When you’re designing your slides, you want to think about,
00:05:20.07 what’s the most important information
00:05:22.14 that you’re trying to communicate to your audience?
00:05:24.02 What takeaway do you want them to have?
00:05:25.19 One of the mistakes that we make when we’re designing
00:05:27.14 is thinking we want to just make sure we cover all of our bases.
00:05:30.06 But the live presentation format
00:05:32.18 is not one in which we are exhaustively demonstrating data
00:05:37.00 and presenting it.
00:05:38.22 If you want your audience to really understand the nuances of a particular graph,
00:05:42.00 you’re gonna have to invite them to read your paper later
00:05:44.27 or look at your poster.
00:05:46.14 But in this setting, we want to create a relationship
00:05:48.13 that helps them understand the significant thing that you’re saying.
00:05:50.27 As the eye is directed, we can use that to great advantage.
00:05:57.14 In this case, we’re…
00:05:59.27 we’re bringing the eye following that arrow.
00:06:01.18 The red, which should… in…
00:06:04.09 at least in a lot of Western cultures represents
00:06:07.24 something exciting or fire, something that can, like,
00:06:10.29 be dangerous or repel us…
00:06:13.22 has a certain kind of energy to it.
00:06:15.27 It’s the only… the hue itself is something that the eye
00:06:20.15 is gonna want to go to,
00:06:22.21 but the difference between that hue and the hues of the other text
00:06:27.12 are going to create a relationship that bounces our eye around this frame.
00:06:31.26 So, let’s look at some practi…
00:06:33.18 a practical example of how some of these
00:06:36.09 decisions about color and shape can be applied.
00:06:38.08 Here’s a slide from a student of mine
00:06:41.17 who was presenting about life cycles.
00:06:45.19 And she was talking about…
00:06:47.05 she was doing a life cycle assessment of a power plant
00:06:52.13 and looking at this…
00:06:55.23 from what she describes as this cradle-to-grave use of materials.
00:06:59.00 And so, she has this slide with all of her information,
00:07:01.10 and we’ve got lots of colors here.
00:07:03.17 We’ve got some big fonts
00:07:06.04 and we’ve got some fonts covering up each oth… other fonts.
00:07:08.28 We’ve got some… we’ve got this black background.
00:07:13.10 And what happens is we have this overstimulation of visual information.
00:07:18.03 We don’t know what we’re supposed to look at.
00:07:21.21 Are we supposed… what are we supposed to be comparing?
00:07:23.27 Are we comparing the colors between the lines?
00:07:26.18 Is something good? Is something bad?
00:07:29.11 What is the meaning here?
00:07:31.22 Here we have data and information,
00:07:33.09 but we don’t have an easy way to understand what…
00:07:35.08 how we’re supposed to move through this.
00:07:36.29 We’ve got arrows that are driving us to go in this direction,
00:07:41.04 but we really have these other arrows…
00:07:43.12 we have a red arrow pointing up and a green arrow pointing down.
00:07:46.03 It’s hard to know what that means and why it’s placed there.
00:07:50.14 So, when you have a set of information like this…
00:07:54.11 this may be useful and meaningful for you in the context of your paper.
00:07:58.10 You want to think about,
00:08:00.04 well, how can you quickly communicate what’s important to your audience?
00:08:02.02 In this case, it was really important to her
00:08:04.18 to describe and to make people understand
00:08:07.05 that this is a process that happens from a beginning to an end process,
00:08:10.18 and you have to think about the entire cycle.
00:08:14.10 So, we changed the slide around to try to represent
00:08:16.17 more of what she wanted to get across.
00:08:19.00 By getting rid of as much of that color as possible
00:08:22.06 and organizing material,
00:08:24.00 this slide now real…
00:08:26.12 real quickly, clues us into a particular relationship.
00:08:29.02 We know that there’s a linear relationship that we want to follow.
00:08:31.16 This arrow is letting us know
00:08:34.15 that we’re going from one side to the next,
00:08:37.18 that there’s a particular way to read it.
00:08:40.10 The text is extrapolated from the particular graphics
00:08:44.00 that we’re looking at.
00:08:46.03 The graphics are of a kind of a size and scale
00:08:48.06 that they make sense in relationship to each other.
00:08:51.04 And the colors are simplified as much as possible.
00:08:53.07 We still do have a fair amount of color in these slides,
00:08:55.27 but the amount of blue allows us
00:08:59.13 to focus on the content inside of these pictures
00:09:03.20 to see what the relationship is.
00:09:06.06 We’re going from raw materials, to processing,
00:09:09.02 and into the disposal.
00:09:10.27 And so, by simplifying, using color strategically,
00:09:13.14 bringing our graphics into a readable format…
00:09:16.20 can do great wonders for helping the audience
00:09:19.11 clue in on the significant point that you’re trying to make.
00:09:23.15 Color is frankly a dangerous thing to play with.
00:09:29.04 When working with color, we need to be mindful of a lot of different things.
00:09:33.13 You know, not everyone sees color the same way,
00:09:36.01 and many of us are colorblind.
00:09:37.24 And so, when you’re thinking about using color,
00:09:39.16 you want to think about, well, do you really need it?
00:09:42.13 And if so, why?
00:09:45.02 One of the worst mistakes one can make
00:09:51.21 is using colors in a way that makes it hard to read your text.
00:09:53.23 Green and orange are colors
00:09:57.26 that hurt many of our eyes.
00:09:59.29 I look at that… I’m…
00:10:02.13 I’m suffering right now as I’m seeing this slide as you’re seeing it,
00:10:05.19 and I immediately want to shift it because it causes a kind of
00:10:09.21 — well, to be perfectly frank —
00:10:11.26 a nauseated feeling.
00:10:13.27 As we look at it… and it may even be hard for you to read.
00:10:16.09 It says, don’t let colors distract from your message.
00:10:18.17 And the word “colors” has a unique, special, unicorn color for each letter,
00:10:21.21 which in the process of making may feel really exciting and good,
00:10:26.15 may speak to a particular aesthetic that you enjoy.
00:10:30.10 But when you’re thinking about your audience,
00:10:32.15 you want to clue them in to the message and the story that you’re telling,
00:10:35.18 not your particular interest in rainbows.
00:10:42.20 Instead, we want to think about using color
00:10:44.22 as a way to specifically communicate meaning.
00:10:48.18 Keeping all of your text and all of your material
00:10:51.17 in a monochromatic environment
00:10:54.27 allows you to draw emphasis on what’s important.
00:10:57.02 In this slide, here we say,
00:11:00.00 instead, we want to use it to communicate.
00:11:02.01 The emphasis, of course, is on the word “communicate”.
00:11:03.29 And by using a subtle color here, of red,
00:11:05.17 we’re able to draw attention to that.
00:11:10.07 We’ve all seen this slide,
00:11:12.07 this bar chart with lots of different colors.
00:11:14.26 We look at it, and what are we supposed to glean from this?
00:11:18.16 In this particular slide, the color is overwhelming the data.
00:11:22.27 What’s meaningful about the data
00:11:25.01 is getting lost in the colorful array.
00:11:26.27 We don’t know what green means from blue.
00:11:29.00 And even if you put a legend on your slide,
00:11:32.13 your audience isn’t gonna be able to read it.
00:11:34.26 Instead, you want to think about
00:11:37.12 using slides in a way that your information,
00:11:42.03 and the data that’s significant,
00:11:43.18 pops out.
00:11:45.02 Limiting your color palette allows you to focus
00:11:48.03 on the particular area of information
00:11:50.06 that’s important to you.
00:11:53.25 Let’s talk a little bit about text.
00:11:56.11 Decisions about the fonts you choose
00:12:00.24 really do have a giant impact.
00:12:03.03 If you look at this, what do you read?
00:12:04.20 What’s easy to read? What’s hard to read?
00:12:09.01 Of course, the top line… it’s on the top.
00:12:13.05 It’s visually dominant and in big bold letters. It’s easy to read.
00:12:15.26 Decisions about text matter, with an exclamation point!
00:12:20.19 How that comes across is different than not being in caps and italicizing.
00:12:28.12 And is… it’s not about whether one is a correct way
00:12:32.09 to present or an incorrect way.
00:12:33.27 It’s about what gets the point across.
00:12:37.04 As we move into more text and bullet points,
00:12:39.27 the legibility of your…
00:12:42.25 of your text is gonna become harder and harder to follow.
00:12:44.29 In a presentation,
00:12:47.10 we really want to be connecting more directly with our audience
00:12:51.06 through our voice and through the stories that we’re telling,
00:12:53.16 so we want to minimize and limit text
00:12:55.20 so that it really only is communicating
00:12:58.03 the most essential aspect of our message.
00:13:00.19 Typography is a way that we communicate what’s important.
00:13:05.02 It’s a way that we communicate
00:13:08.01 our value system.
00:13:10.11 Think about a line as a representation of things that are important to you.
00:13:14.18 Clean, direct lines represent
00:13:17.09 a clean, direct presentation.
00:13:19.25 Curvy text that doesn’t line up in perfect symmetry
00:13:25.00 can communicate something about chaos
00:13:28.14 or about being in a relaxed or comfortable state.
00:13:33.08 And context is really what distinguishes
00:13:36.20 whether Comic Sans is appropriate or whether it’s distracting.
00:13:43.29 We want to think specifically
00:13:46.21 about the language of our slides.
00:13:49.01 Here, I cleverly say you want to steer clear of verbosity
00:13:53.06 and attempting to articulate the importance of the idea
00:13:56.28 that you usually use jargon for.
00:14:00.00 We could just be concise.
00:14:02.06 And that’s really our purpose is… just to let the slide — the visual information —
00:14:05.27 support the information that we’re saying.
00:14:09.08 Next, we want to look about…
00:14:12.10 well, how do you select the images?
00:14:14.12 When looking at our images for projection,
00:14:17.06 in particular we want to be mindful of the resolution
00:14:20.09 of the projector that we’re working with.
00:14:22.17 You want to design your visual elements
00:14:24.11 to match the resolution of
00:14:27.19 whatever final output you’re going to.
00:14:29.25 When you’re looking for images,
00:14:32.15 on Google Images for instance,
00:14:34.16 you have an op… you have the option of choosing
00:14:37.00 different sizes of images.
00:14:40.25 You want to make sure that your content
00:14:43.29 is a proper size.
00:14:45.29 These jagged edges that demonstrate low resolution
00:14:48.24 do speak to less attention to your design.
00:14:52.10 If your content has watermarks, that means you’re probably not licensed to use it,
00:14:57.01 and I want to talk a little bit about copyright
00:14:59.08 in the next slide.
00:15:01.08 But we want to avoid it at all costs text or images
00:15:04.02 that we’re not allowed to use.
00:15:06.04 We want to avoid clipart.
00:15:07.28 And really, just think about using images
00:15:10.19 that directly speak to what we’re talking about.
00:15:14.03 Oftentimes we’ll take an image and we want to…
00:15:16.17 and it’s too big or too small for our format,
00:15:19.00 and so we think, oh, we’ll just squish it down.
00:15:21.10 Well, rather than squishing, we want to think about cropping.
00:15:24.24 Select what’s important from your image
00:15:27.19 and crop it to what’s important.
00:15:29.28 The larger information about the ladybug is irrelevant.
00:15:35.15 It’s really that we want to look at the specific insect.
00:15:40.10 We want to think about a rule of thirds.
00:15:43.00 This is a conventional rule in design and art
00:15:45.22 where the eye naturally falls
00:15:48.13 into these different planes of an image.
00:15:50.17 Place the most important content that you have
00:15:53.20 on vertices that intersect.
00:15:55.25 This is naturally where the eye wants to go.
00:15:57.28 When we look at an image that’s fullscreen,
00:16:00.07 the top third of the frame
00:16:02.28 is typically where we associate eye height with.
00:16:05.16 And so, think about where you’re placing your content
00:16:08.07 so that the eye can naturally follow where it wants to.
00:16:12.17 Let’s talk about copyright.
00:16:15.25 We have a wonderland of content available to us
00:16:20.07 through the internet,
00:16:22.04 but not all of it is actually available to us to use in our presentations.
00:16:25.10 So, how do you know what you can use
00:16:27.16 and what you can’t?
00:16:29.10 Well, there’s a pop… there’s a…
00:16:31.03 there’s an organization that makes it really easy for us,
00:16:33.00 and that is the Creative Commons.
00:16:35.20 The Commons creates a licensing system
00:16:40.16 where we can find out
00:16:45.07 what images are licensed to be used for,
00:16:47.20 and we can also license our images to be used by others.
00:16:52.03 So, we’re gonna look at he different kinds of licenses that an image has…
00:16:56.20 and today, it’s pretty easy to find out
00:16:59.09 whether an image is licensed for reuse or not.
00:17:01.25 If you can’t find the license, you’re probably not able to use it.
00:17:05.01 So, do your due diligence.
00:17:07.04 If it asks for an attribution,
00:17:09.03 make sure that you’re putting that person, that artist’s name,
00:17:11.09 who took that photo or created that image.
00:17:13.20 If it’s saying, “no derivatives”,
00:17:15.16 then you need to honor that and find a different kind of image.
00:17:18.28 If it’s shareable, then you’ll follow those rules.
00:17:23.06 And be careful of the distinction
00:17:26.24 between if you’re making money off of the use of the images or not.
00:17:30.00 Here’s a list of some popular places
00:17:32.07 that you can look to to find images
00:17:35.14 that you’re licensed to use.
00:17:37.10 In the Google advanced search image page,
00:17:41.14 you can actually filter specifically for images
00:17:43.23 that are licensed for your type of use.
00:17:46.01 Archive.org is a fantastic resource
00:17:48.08 that has access to a lot of images
00:17:50.21 that are out in the public domain that you’re free to use.
00:17:53.26 Biology Image Library, the Library of Congress…
00:17:58.12 all of these are great resources that you take advantage of.
00:18:02.06 Finally, when in doubt, you want to KISS it.
00:18:05.13 Keep it simple.
00:18:08.14 If you don’t need that slide, if you don’t need that text,
00:18:11.26 cut it.
00:18:14.09 Thank you.
00:18:16.06 My name is Boyd Branch,
00:18:18.03 and this has been a presentation on how to present with slides.

This Talk

Speaker: Boyd Branch

Audience:

Educators of H. School / Intro Undergrad
Student
Educators of Adv. Undergrad / Grad
Researcher
Educators

Recorded: June 2017

Talk Overview

Scientists inevitably have to give oral presentations about their work. In this video, communications and digital media expert Boyd Branch offers practical strategies for the effective design of oral presentations using slides. He discusses how to use text, color and images to create compelling and clear oral presentations.

Speaker Bio

Boyd Branch

Boyd Branch is a digital arts and performance specialist who creates dialogue around subjects of science in public spaces through improvisation, technology and theatre. A former Fulbright fellow, Branch’s critically acclaimed art, designs, lectures, and workshops have been produced off-off-Broadway and in major cities in the U.S., England, Colombia, the Netherlands, and Pakistan (sponsored by… Continue Reading