
When you watch a PowerPoint presentation, what do you hate - Balanceinfinity
I&#x27;m not looking for citations to how to make a great presentation, I&#x27;m asking for something more focused: when you watch someone in your field do a presentation, what specific things either about the slide or the talk irk you?
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muzani
Slides should never be read off. Slides are good as a note to remind you on
what to talk about. They're good for presenting data or diagrams that make a
topic clearer.

When I was teaching computer science, I'd have slides that basically just gave
a photo of a transistor, or one example of converting binary to hex. The rest
would be explained in person or on a whiteboard.

A good presenter should be interactive in some form. The slides are a hook,
but not the story.

------
uberman
I hate when the presenter reads back to me what is on the slide. The slides is
context that the presenter should elaborate on. We can all read what is on the
slide.

~~~
ksaj
When I used to teach at IBM, one of my favourite bits of recurring feedback
was that I only use slides as a guide. It is the presenter's job to give
context, which allows you to read the audience and go on anecdotal excursions
when you know they're receptive to it, and it'll help them retain any new bits
of knowledge. Some audiences are already familiar with bits of the material,
so why batter them over the head with it just because you decided to spell it
out verbatim in the visual material? Besides, reading the screen to the
audience means you aren't paying enough attention to them to even know what
parts they may be struggling with.

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pesfandiar
When I was working at Amazon a few years ago, PowerPoint was banned for most
employees (at least for engineers and their immediate management). It was
refreshing to see that the presenters had to be prepared to communicate a well
thought-out topic, instead of relying on the slides (or worse, reading out the
slides verbatim). Any dense form of communication had to be done in writing
beforehand.

In my opinion, slides should only be used to visualize information; charts,
digrams, illustrations, etc. They should also, sparingly, demonstrate the
structure of the presentation; think of it as a serialized version of your
mind map. Any more information should come from the presenter otherwise.

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ksaj
"This slide says..."

When people start off every (let alone _any_ ) slide this way, I'm left to
believe the presenter doesn't know the material and has resorted to teaching
me how to read.

This is related to what uberman said, with the blatant habit of telling the
audience over and over again that they are reading the screen verbatim for
them. Imagine if newscasters announced every time the teleprompter scrolled.

Even worse is when presenters say "This slide speaks to..." No it doesn't
speak. The audience can only wish it would speak so they wouldn't have to
listen to the pinhead up front of the room speaking down to them like they
were school children.

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death-by-ppt
Too many words on a slide and too small a font (contrast Lawrence Lessig's
slides [0] or Dick Hardt's [1]). Looping animated gifs (especially when
they're overused). Bad fonts, colors, layout. Monotonous delivery (e.g. saying
”I'm excited” without excitement in your voice).

NOTE, I just sat through 2 days of slides, so I'm a little cranky.

[0] [https://youtu.be/rHTBQCpNm5o](https://youtu.be/rHTBQCpNm5o)

[1] [https://youtu.be/RrpajcAgR1E](https://youtu.be/RrpajcAgR1E)

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quickthrower2
Probably going too fast through the material. Of course it might be that I’m
not their target audience.

And star wars pictures or similar crap to “make me laugh”. I haven’t watched
Star Wars and even if I have I probably would rather you made the talk
naturally interesting. Than insert a ba boom cha.

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a3n
That I'm in a meeting.

~~~
quickthrower2
And therefore at work!

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pinewurst
Animations - any animations

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41ice
When the presenter uses .pptx to launch presentation instead of .ppsx #smh

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Spooky23
Dramatic reading of slides and 10-12 point typefaces in slides.

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Jemaclus
Couple of things:

1\. Don't read the slides. We can all read. Give us additional context that
the slide doesn't have. But...

2\. If the slide communicates clearly and concisely what you need to say,
don't keep talking for the sake of talking. Stick to what you need to get your
point across. And...

3\. As with all presentation and public speaking skills, figure out what your
story is. What narrative are you trying to tell? For example, if your
presentation is on the efficacy of an experiment, tell us a story about it.
How did we start this journey, what happened along the way, and where are we
going? Why should _I_ give a crap about your presentation? And how can you get
me personally invested in your success?

Some more context on the last point, which I actually think is the most
important one. Tell a story and make me care!

Here's an example. I was at a meeting where the ad tech team was giving a
presentation on their progress toward quarterly goals. The slides were
essentially numbers, and the presentation went more or less like this:

"About 1.5% of all users clicked on ads in our app. This quarter our goal was
to increase ad conversions by 25%, and we actually increased it by 32% for an
additional $X hundred thousand dollars in revenue. Next slide, please."

Zzzzzzzzzzz... BORING! Who gives a shit? Nobody but the CFO cares. We all get
paid our salary, not some percentage of the profits. A few hundred grand in
revenue means bupkis for me and my team.

Make me care! That's all I really want. I want to care about what you're
talking about.

So... here's the real story. You put up a slide with only one number on it:
1.5%. Then you say:

"Only about 1.5% of our 600,000 active monthly users clicked on ads this
quarter. We made $X million dollars this quarter based on ads alone -- and
that's just the start! With only 1.5% of users engaging with ads, there's
nowhere to go but up! With a little more investment into our ad tech roadmap,
we believe we can increase that to 5% within one quarter, and 10% by the end
of the year. That represents a 10,000% increase in investment! Our ad sales
team will be thrilled, the ad partners will be chomping at the bit to give us
even more ad revenue, and our bottom line will skyrocket! One-point-five
percent! Can we get to 10% in a year? I say yes. Yes, we can. Let's do it.
Next slide, please."

This tells a story. It grabs you by the cojones and says, Hey! This is
exciting! We have a HUGE opportunity in front of us! Not just incremental
gains of 25% to 32%, but an enormous opportunity to not just double or triple
but potentially 10x our product. That means more budget, more projects, more
engineers, more hires, and more more more! You -- __yes YOU! __\-- can be part
of this incredible journey. "

And that's a way better story to tell.

