
Presentation Rules - ojilles
http://www.jilles.net/perma/2020/06/05/presentation-rules.html
======
loughnane
One piece of advice I’ve got a lot of mileage out of is that the title of a
graph should be the conclusion.

So instead of “tire wear vs miles driven” it should say “tire wear increases
with miles driven”

It saves people, especially non-technical ones, from having to read axes, look
at the lines, and come to a conclusion while listening to you talk.

~~~
ojilles
Going to add that to the article; been struggling with this one. I have been
seeing multiple different approaches for titles that seem to work.

~~~
loughnane
It really fels like a cheat code. Once you start to notice it you'll see it
everywhere in newspapers, etc.

------
grawprog
That's all pretty solid advice. One thing that was always repeated to us over
and over again was:

'Tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you
told them'

As in, make sure you give a clear summary at both the beginning and the end of
the presentation. Most people have short attention spans and tend to best
remember the beginning and end of things.

Make sure you've repeated the main points of your presentation at both the
beginning and end to ensure maximum retention.

~~~
Bjartr
Nice work following your own advice.

~~~
grawprog
I always try to lead through example.

------
colmmacc
Don't use slide presentations for business meetings. Ever. Write a document or
a memo instead. Every time.

Slides are ok as a backdrop for a talk, as long as that talk works as its own
cohesive narrative. Slides are also ok as a last resort if it is what the
audience demands. A sales meeting with people who expect slides. Or a pitch
with investors too ignorant or lazy to demand the precision of a document
instead.

But in general; a document will be much much better. This guide references
Tufte's, whose own advice is to write docs.

~~~
F_J_H
I see this differently. If I go to a "business meeting" and someone has not
taken the time to summarize their message in a succinct presentation, and
instead hands me a document, I'd "nope" out of there.

"...too ignorant or lazy to demand the precision of a document instead" Wow.
What a statement. How about time constrained?

"I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one
instead" -Mark Twain

~~~
kqr
The problem is that presentations are not just short documents. I think GP
would be fine with a short document.

A presentation is a sequence of slides, along with which comes many issues
that prevent critical thought, such as the lack of random access, the lowered
bar of evidence, and so on. You can convince anyone of anything as long as you
craft your slide deck deviously to hide the lack of evidence and internal
inconsistencies.

That is much harder with a document, even if it is short.

------
jfim
> One way that works well in most situations is to divide the story arc up in
> Situation, Complication and Solution. [...] I believe the structure was
> first created, or popularized by McKinsey, who depending on your views, have
> a core business of turning slides into billion dollar revenue streams.

It's actually the Hegelian dialectic triad (thesis-antithesis-synthesis) from
the late 1700s [0].

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thesis,_antithesis,_synthesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thesis,_antithesis,_synthesis)

~~~
ojilles
TIL! Awesome, going to read up on that.

I’ve found the “situation” part to be really powerful in my experience.
Starting off with an important/relevant ground truth is highly effective.

------
nzealand
A few random thoughts

\- Always ask for a copy of a good presentation. You can reuse any visually
compelling elements.

\- Start with a personal story or an interactive set of questions.

\- Think about who your audience is, and why they care. What is in this
presentation for them?

\- If critical stakeholders are going to review your slides offline, as
painful as it is, consider putting all your talking points in the slide and
just reading from the deck.

\- Smile. Make eye contact. Be excited by what you have to say. Pause... for
dramatic effect. Use your hands. Use your hands more.

~~~
kqr
> Always ask for a copy of a good presentation. You can reuse any visually
> compelling elements.

Highly unlikely. Unless you also ask for a licence to use them in the specific
ways you desire.

------
Spearchucker
Advice I was given years ago is 7 plus or minus 2. The average person is
purportedly able to grok 7 things simultaneously. Some only 5, others 9 hence
the plus or minus 2.

And so I build my deck with that rule in mind - Never more than 7 slides.
Never more than 7 bullets per slide. Never more than 7 words per bullet.

Also, if appropriate, I like putting only a single number onto a slide. No
title, no explanatory text. An example might be an interest rate.

That allows the audience to listen to what I have to say about that data
point. Because we either read a slide, or we listen to the presenter - we
cannot do both simultaneously.

------
gorgoiler
Providing the deck as a memo is so refreshing.

Lockdown meetings have taught me to compress presentation to 25 minutes total
per week, across my group’s three regular meetings.

It’s fantastic because it obviously helps focus the presentation, but also
because it’s nudged me into providing the presentation as a PDF at the start
of each netting, Amazon style, with a five minute period in which to read the
document.

(This in itself is a nice way of gathering attendees. “Here’s the PDF for the
meeting” is much less aggressive than ”friendly reminder we have a meeting
rn.”)

My only wish would be that AsciiDoctor / PrawnPDF handled PNGs and Pygments
faster. 5s is too slow to build a 3 page memo with graphics!

------
protomyth
Don't use sayings, cute phrases, or non-industry jargon. Plain, simple
business text works better and you don't run into a possible offensive phrase.
Unless you know every phrase that might be offensive, then don't risk it. If
you cannot be a compelling writer with just basic language then get help.
That's how you learn.

On that note, some organizations (e.g. The US Government) have cycles where
words go from good, clued in meanings to bad, evil, outsider meanings. I
realize this sounds like some high school clique stuff, but its so damn true.
Its actually worse because there are many, many departments, and I'm sure many
organizations have their own things. I had an aunt who was a grant writer and
kept up with these things by volunteering to be a reader every so often. It
kept her in touch with the trends. Now, you can follow other companies /
governments social media accounts, request for proposals, and press releases
for the phrasing you should use when presenting to them.

These days, unless it is organization photos, I really try to not have any
people in my slides. I just don't think its worth it because you will offend
someone. It might seem paranoid, but I really believe social media makes a lot
of people from all sides overanalyze everything.

~~~
tekdude
> On that note, some organizations (e.g. The US Government) have cycles where
> words go from good, clued in meanings to bad, evil, outsider meanings.

Quick anecdote: I remember the day when "Information Assurance" was out and
"Cybersecurity" was in. Took a few years for it to fully propogate in policies
and org names... but it did.

They don't even really have the same meaning, but nevertheless... we all had
to Find-and-Replace.

~~~
ojilles
I have seen this in the corporate environment just as much. It becomes
somewhat clear after senior leadership changes: after a few months you will
hear others use words that were previously only used by the new incoming
leader.

It's not necessarily linked to what is "hot" right now. For example, I have
observed German colleagues copy Italian phrasing in english.

~~~
Silhouette
_It becomes somewhat clear after senior leadership changes: after a few months
you will hear others use words that were previously only used by the new
incoming leader._

Although this isn't always a good thing.

After a UK company I worked for was taken over by a US company, we started to
get these nauseating "all hands" propaganda calls, hosted by the senior
executives. The rank and file staff were indeed later using words previously
used only by the incoming leader: they were the butt of just about every
office joke for weeks, and demonstrated the raw contempt that the people doing
the real work had for the empty rhetoric the executives delighted in making us
all sit through.

Maybe it was some 4D chess thing intended to boost morale after the takeover.
Yes, I'm sure that was it. :-)

------
gav
The only two rules that I think matter are:

1) make the presentation interesting to sit through

2) have something that you are convincing the audience to do, you should be
telling them to "do X" not just tell them "about X".

Whether you have page numbers (I don't) or builds (I do) or executive
summaries (I don't) is not going to meaningfully add to the chances of your
presentation landing.

Structure is key. The "Tell ’em what you’re going to tell ’em; then tell ’em;
then tell ’em what you told ’em"[1] method works well.

The Duarte Method's[2] "Big Idea"[3] is a good approach:

> A big idea is that one key message you want to communicate. It contains the
> impetus that compels the audience to set a new course with a new compass
> heading.

Presentations without a key message are just somebody standing there and
talking at you.

[1] [https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/08/15/tell-
em/](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/08/15/tell-em/)

[2]
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470632011](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470632011)

[3] [https://www.duarte.com/presentation-
ideas/](https://www.duarte.com/presentation-ideas/)

~~~
moreati
What is a build? Another word for an animation? Web searches just throw up
guides to making a presentation.

Edit: Found it. A build is a type of animation that builds up a slide in
multiple steps, e.g. revealing steps of a flow in sequence
[https://www.techrepublic.com/article/creating-animated-
build...](https://www.techrepublic.com/article/creating-animated-build-slides-
in-powerpoint-2002/)

~~~
gav
Builds are ways of trying to avoid the audience reading ahead and getting to
the conclusion before you've told the story yourself.

For example, if you were explaining your business plan that had three steps:

    
    
        Phase 1: Collect underpants
        Phase 2: ?
        Phase 3: Profit
    

Your audience isn't going to be giving you their full attention while you walk
them through Phase 1, because they've trying to understand the whole process
think through it themselves.

Instead a build would use animations or duplicated slides to present this
flow:

    
    
        Phase 1: Collect underpants. (click)
        Phase 2: ?                   (click)
        Phase 3: Profit              
    

Now you are controlling the visibility of each step. It's very quick to
author: create one slide, duplicate it twice, delete content off those two
slides.

The slides should be there to reinforce your point. You shouldn't be showing a
slide and then reading over the content.

It's one reason that some of my decks have a lot of slides, some may only be
shown for 5-15 seconds.

------
pstuart
Nice! Bookmarking.

2 typos: Rule 10 ("it's" s/b "its") and 14 ("marke" s/b "mark").

Brings back memories of this: [https://guykawasaki.com/the-only-10-slides-you-
need-in-your-...](https://guykawasaki.com/the-only-10-slides-you-need-in-your-
pitch/)

~~~
ojilles
Thanks for the feedback -- I really should've edited before publishing at 1am!

~~~
pstuart
No worries here.

------
triggercut
Working in consulting, I have a similar list of lessons learned from where I
could feel I had lost control of the meeting, or the clients attention, or
both.

The biggest one I have fits around 9 and 10. No numbers until the end. As in
don't show data, tables, (a group of) numbers, graphs etc. until you are ready
to cede the floor.

As soon as numbers appear, people's brains start analyzing and trying to make
sense of what they are seeing, naturally this can/will lead to an inordinate
amount of time discussing provenance, methodology and other associated
aspects, or silent thinking i.e. not listening to your analysis.

Of course this doesn't apply to every type of meeting, but I always ensure I
get everything else in up front first. Leave the detail in the back, don't
bury the lead.

~~~
SomewhatLikely
I suppose for a meeting where you want to foster discussion this rule tells
you to start with a bunch of numbers.

------
Mouse47
First sentence: "Invariably my work requires to create and consume various
presentations of differing nature."

Does anyone else find this style of writing unbearably pompous?

~~~
jedwards1211
It sounds like a non-native speaker to me, I wouldn't even be surprised if
this is Google translate output

~~~
hliyan
I'm a non-native speak and I too find myself writing like this on occasion.
Would love to know what about it rubs readers the wrong way.

~~~
rubatuga
“Invariably” is an uncommon word to be honest. Also “nature” in this context
is uncommon as well. Kind of archaic. It’s pompous because it uses a whole
bunch of words to say nothing. Use of the active voice instead of passive
voice would have helped as well. Add in unnecessary words such as ”ergo”, a
frilly web font, and people assume the author just wants to show off.

~~~
cfqycwz
Yeah--compare an alternate phrasing here, like "I watch and give a lot of
presentations at work."

~~~
ojilles
Thanks!
[https://github.com/ojilles/jilles.net/commit/fe6010fb208905e...](https://github.com/ojilles/jilles.net/commit/fe6010fb208905eac1e0656e18bf8b8c7945566b)

(I do hope I can clear the Google Translate bar of quality. Should have edited
before publishing! And taken more of my own advice.)

------
jkingsbery
Most important communication at the company I work for is done through written
documents instead of presentations. It's worth giving a try.

~~~
ojilles
I wish this would happen more often, indeed.

------
cromulent
This is really practical advice.

The classic Really Bad Powerpoint by Seth Godin has some conflicting points
but is still worth a read if you've never come across it.

[http://www.wendelberger.com/downloads/ReallyBadPowerpoint.pd...](http://www.wendelberger.com/downloads/ReallyBadPowerpoint.pdf)

------
nojito
If you find yourself making presentations, buy this book and you will wow
everyone.

[https://www.amazon.com/slide-ology-Science-Creating-
Presenta...](https://www.amazon.com/slide-ology-Science-Creating-
Presentations/dp/0596522347)

------
hliyan
I've another one, especially when dealing with managers who say "can you put
this into no more than X slides?" when the subject matter is complex:

If you're trying to diagrammatically convey something complex on your slide,
make the order of reading obvious. When the information is 2-dimensional,
readers will zig-zag across the slide trying to make sense and then give up
until you walk them through it. If there is a linear order (numbering,
arrows), they'll follow it.

------
ekianjo
> Use fewer words.

I'd go even more drastic here, don't use words or only use nothing more than a
few words in very very big font. The rest should be just data, visuals helping
you to get to your point.

And don't make presentations to be hands-out. You can't serve both purposes at
the same time.

------
F_J_H
Animations and transitions are very easy to abuse for sure, yet I've also seen
them used very effectively in delivering a message. (Just was in a data
presentation today where, without the animation, would have been very hard to
grasp.)

So, careful of extremes.

------
petejames
Demos work best for most things software. Avoid business presentations where
possible.

~~~
swsieber
Pre-recorded demos are the best.

------
Havoc
Very good. All of that makes sense to me. Well almost

Can't make heads or tails out of point 12 though. Who's including homework
(??) in slides and making some assumption about it? Very "failed to
communicate" meta.

~~~
ResearchAtPlay
I believe point 12 advises to avoid slides that try to impress by obscure
complexity.

An offending example might be a slide showing complicated equations that
remain unexplained by the presenter. I've observed many presentations where
such slides are introduced as "this is the equation used to derive value X
from earlier, but I am just going to move on to the next slide..."

edit: format

------
apricot
I would add "do not use fancy ligatures or loud typography". I just read the
web page and you know what stuck in my mind the most? The fancy R's and K's.
Also I kept waiting for a Q.

~~~
ojilles
Wanted to change the typography myself as well, but didn’t want that to be an
excuse for not writing. Thanks, the next version of the blog will be simpler!

------
nemetroid
> Minimum font size 14pt or 25px.

Is this a typo? Most guides will suggest 24 pt as a baseline, and maybe 20 pt
as minimum. 14 pt is _really_ small for a presentation.

~~~
ojilles
Fixed, thank you!

------
opdahl
I find it ironic that a post teaching people how to present information
properly is filled with typos, which is the number one sin in presentations.

~~~
macintux
I was annoyed by this as well, but the author appears to not be a native
English speaker, so I withdrew my objections. Much better job than I’d do in
German, which is the only other language I know to any degree.

~~~
ojilles
Author here: late night writing, wanted to push it out. Was expecting it to be
ignored completely on the internet. Editing today — real good feedback here.
Thanks!

------
jzwinck
The first image, of people having a meeting, is stolen. It has a link saying
"Image Attribution" (which should really say the name of the attributee) which
goes to the Flickr account of some random portrait photographer who doesn't
seem to specialize in anodyne stock photos at all.

Here's the BBC attributing the very same image in 2015:
[https://www.bbc.com/news/business-34666150](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-34666150)

Here's what Getty charges for this image ($55 and up):
[https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/successful-
business...](https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/successful-business-
meeting-royalty-free-image/78806323)

There is even a comment from three years ago on the Flickr page saying the
file has Corbis copyright embedded and asking if it's original.

How do I know these things? TinEye:
[https://tineye.com/search/ce7668fe2986a90a93d5fda4d1c90c8ee6...](https://tineye.com/search/ce7668fe2986a90a93d5fda4d1c90c8ee6617585?page=1&sort=score&order=desc)

It's very frustrating for hard working stock photographers who already only
get 20% of the sale price to see Flickr enabling copyright violations by
displaying images as Creative Commons when an algorithmic search of the two
most popular stock photo sites shows it is not original.

~~~
ojilles
Ah did not realize this, will be corrected ASAP. Quite sympathetic to the
situation of photographers, actually.

~~~
ojilles
Removed the image.

~~~
jzwinck
Thank you. I would suggest changing your "Image Attribution" text to actually
say the name of the person or organization you're attributing to. Right now
it's just a link which is less valuable to photographers than having their
name written out (yet takes about the same space), and is subject to link rot
as seen on another one of your posts:
[http://www.jilles.net/perma/2014/10/03/introducing-
graphite-...](http://www.jilles.net/perma/2014/10/03/introducing-graphite-
news.html)

~~~
ojilles
Yeah was thinking the same after reflecting on your message. Have to tweak the
system for that a bit, but it's worthwhile.

For a while I was thinking of setting myself the rule of only using my own
images to circumvent this.

------
jletts
Great post!

