1 Building a Good Presentation Prof. Greg Steffan Electrical & Computer Engineering University of Toronto

2 Presentations are Important A good presentation will: –Convince people to read your paper –Increase the influence of your research –Make you excited and happy to present!

3 This Presentation Contained within: –Rules/guidelines for building a good presentation –Examples and counter-examples –My personal opinions Ignore if you disagree, unless I’m your advisor Not contained: –How to decide the content –How to deliver a presentation Legend: –  means this is a counter-example – means this is a good example

4 Building A Good Slide Master

Dragon Fly Avoid overly-busy background art 

6 Master Slide Style Avoid dark backgrounds –Those are meant for dark presentation rooms –Academic presentations are rarely in the dark Keep any art/background minimal –Footer: consider your name, university, talk title White background with no art is fine! –Audience can instead focus on your content

7 Page Numbers Each slide should have a page number –people with questions may refer to a past slide

8 Fonts Never use fonts with serifs! –Meant for books/papers, not presentations Use sans-serif fonts –Eg., Arial, Calibri, Comic Sans 

9 Bullet Colour Bullets are hard to digest if all one colour –Sub-bullets blend in with top bullets Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah –Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah –Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah 

10 Bullet Colour Top level bullets should be a dark colour –Sub-bullets should probably be black Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah –Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah –Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

11 Organizing Your Talk

12 Never Start With an Outline (Boring!) Introduction Background Implementation Methodology Results Conclusion  Consider avoiding an outline slide entirely! Any outline should be very specific to talk content

13 Introductions A good introduction will: –Ideally be more picture(s) than text –Tell the audience what you will tell them Consider memorizing your first few sentences!

14 Segregate Sections of Your Talk Using Simple Separator Slides Like This One

15 Optimizing Text Slides

16 Wall-of-Text Nobody likes a wall-of-text, because it is difficult to digest, and the audience spends all of their time reading your slides rather than listening to what you are saying, and you have important things to say. –Instead you should try to condense your main ideas into a breakdown of points that each fit on a single line, ideally without wrapping around –Even better would be to use pictures and even fewer or no words at all 

17 Wall-of-Text →Points Avoid “wall of text” –Difficult to digest –Audience reads rather than listening Condense your ideas: –Single-line points –Rule-of-thumb: avoid lines that wrap-around Even better: –Use pictures –Eliminate words(?)

18 Wall-of-Text→Points→Pictures Wall-of-Text Nobody likes a wall-of-text, because it is difficult to digest, and the audience spends all of their time reading your slides rather than listening to what you are saying, and you have important things to say. –Instead you should try to condense your main ideas into a breakdown of points that each fit on a single line, ideally without wrapping around –Even better would be to use pictures and even fewer or no words at all Wall-of-Text -> Points Avoid “wall of text” difficult to digest audience reads rather than listening Condense your ideas: Single-line points avoid wrapping-around Even better: use pictures no words(?)  Wall-of-text->Points -> Pictures Pictures are easiest to digest –Audience can focus on what you say But don’t eliminate all descriptive text –Slides end up online too –So they should stand-alone to some extent Pictures are easiest to digest –Audience can focus on what you say But don’t eliminate all descriptive text –Slides end up online too –So they should stand-alone to some extent

19 Repeating Your Title Repeating your title –Does your first bullet match your title? –Then you’re doing it wrong! 

20 With Wrap-Around Avoiding lines that wrap around can be done with a little-reorganization –Presentations that do so are more readable Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah –Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah –Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah 

21 Avoiding Wrap-Around Avoid lines that wrap around –Doable with a little-reorganization –Presentation becomes more readable Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah –Blah blah blah blah blah blah –blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah –blah blah blah blah blah –Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

22 Punchline Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah –Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah –Blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah –Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah –Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah –blah blah blah blah Most slides should have punchline(s) The key thing(s) to know, at the bottom, in colour

23 Optimizing Result Slides

24 This is a Bad Result Slide 

25 Show One Graph at a Time

26 Label Axes Readably This is the X Axis (units) This is the Y Axis (units)

27 (Maybe) Which Way is Better? This is the X Axis (units) This is the Y Axis (units) Better

28 Where Should We Look? This is the X Axis (units) This is the Y Axis (units) Better Please Look Here Now Look Here

29 Punchline This is the X Axis (units) This is the Y Axis (units) Better Please Look Here Now Look Here Don’t forget the punchline!!

30 Summary Presentations are important –These guidelines lead to a clean/followable talk Start with a good slide master –fonts, colours, minimal background Organize your talk –smooth, picture-filled intro –Good sectioning/navigation Optimize your slides –Single line points, use pictures, have punchlines –Well-labeled graphs, animated focal points Note: slides are increasingly published online too! Good presentations are worth it!