Tips for making effective presentations

MICHAEL A. PAYNE, ExxonMobil, Houston, USA

KEN LARNER, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, USA

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resenting analysis and results is

essential to any technological project, whether internal to your
company or to the professional
Presentations: Key points to remember
community, such as in professional
society meetings, workshops, and
Rehearse your talk with colleagues who can offer a detailed,
consortium meetings. To be effecconstructive critique
tive, the presentation must be
The purpose of a presentation is to convey ideas, concepts, and results,
convincing, straightforward, articnot how a project was conducted
ulate, and supported with clear,
Explain complex ideas in simple terms
easy-to-digest slides that convey
Make sure your audience understands the key points
the results credibly.
Communicate directly with your audience. Make eye contact with at
The crucial objective is to
least one listener to gauge response and promote interaction
ensure that your audience under For each slide, first describe what you are showing, then make
stands your message clearly and
observations and draw conclusions
completely. Accomplishing this,

Speak at an appropriate pacenot too fast, not too slow

however, is not easy. Studies have
Clearly list the assumptions and limitations of new technology and
shown repeatedly that an audithe costs of applying it
ence generally understands and

End your talk with definitive conclusions

remembers 2530% of what they
Finish your talk within the allotted time and allow time for a
hear, but 6075% of what they see.
question-and-answer period. Use this opportunity to clarify your
Noted exploration geophysicist
message
Carl Savit often remarked that a
presentation is successful if 20%
of the audience gets 20% of your
message. His words emphasize what you are up against when that your talk is not a
delivering presentations. In an SEG presentation, you only travelogue, but a presenhave about 20 minutes to summarize a year or more of research tation of scientific analysis
or study in a way that your audience can absorb. This is a with interesting results that
daunting task unless you take great care in preparing and con- have implications for beneficial
applications (e.g., finding oil and gas
veying your message.
Key to this effort is putting yourself in the shoes of your to provide energy for society, methods
audience, who are hearing your story for the first time. for hazardous waste remediation,
Empathy for the audience is essential whether you are con- identification and warning of natural
veying your information in a written paper or in an oral pre- events to prevent disasters, etc.) Its
sentation. Here, we offer suggestions to aid the clarity and helpful to imagine that you are shareffectiveness of oral presentations. We focus on two aspects: ing with a colleague, who is a friend,
tips for the presentation style itself and tips on the quality and what you have learned in your
project.
form of slides.
Always rehearse your
Start smart. First, avoid the tendency to tell every last neat talk so that you know
thing you did in your project. Successful talks are usually those exactly how long it will take
that convey not just results, but also ideas, concepts, and and can deliver it clearly and coninsights. Be concise. Focus on the main points, and empha- cisely. Rehearsing also helps you
size that the details of the project are in the written paper, polish your delivery. Ask a trusted colleague or two to watch
expanded abstract, or project report. Professional success often your rehearsal and offer constructive criticism. It helps if your
relies on your ability to stress the important points of pre- rehearsal audience is made up of individuals who are familsentations in the allotted time. When an audience assimilates iar with the material as well as those for whom the message
your message, you gain credibility and respect. If you present is new.
Avoid using expressions such as we next see,
your talk so that those who are not experts in the topic area
can understand it, then not only will the non-experts appre- we see here that, next, Ill show you, then, I did. They
ciate and understand the talk, you will find that those with lack warmth and separate you from your audience. It is more
effective to use straightforward, declarative sentences that
expertise will appreciate it as well.
Anxiety before a presentationparticularly if you are new invite your audience into the presentation. Ideally, you want
to the processis common. Relax: the audience is not judg- your audience to think that they themselves have virtually
ing you. They are there because they truly want to hear what come up with (or could come up with) the ideas you are conveying. This is not as strange as it might seem. Astute memyou have to say and are interested in your message.
Its all right to be excited and enthusiasticin fact, its bers of your audience who really get the thread of what you
preferable! Some of the least interesting presentations are are presenting are also thinking ahead and drawing conclugiven by individuals who have been in front of an audience sions. That is when you have succeeded in capturing the attenso often that they come across as disinterested. Keep in mind tion of the audience.
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As you give your presentation, communicate directly with

your audience. Its helpful to make repeated eye contact with
at least one member of the audience; choose someone who
seems particularly interested in your talk. You can use his or
her responses to your words as a means of interacting with
the audience.
Speak directly to your audience, not to the screen. Glance
at your slides only enough to ensure that you are aware of
what is being projected; then turn to the audience so that they
can hear you and you can maintain that all-important eye contact with them. Make sure you keep your presentation as a
talk rather than allowing it to degenerate into an explanation
of the slides. Starting with the introduction, invite your audience with gestures and your tone of voice to participate in the
presentation with you. Draw them into your presentation, and
they will be focused with fascination on your every word.
Speak at an appropriate pace during your talk. Most people do not hear and absorb as fast as a rapid speaker talks,
particularly now when the geoscience community is global
and many members have different first languages. Relax, slow
down, speak clearly, and communicate. On the other hand,
do not speak so slowly that the audience gets bored and tunes
out. Use your voice for emphasis, varying the volume and the
speed of your delivery. For the essential points, raise your
voice, slow down, and pause afterward to let the message sink
in.
Its a story. Think of your talk as a story, complete with chapters. Imagine your story as a mountain range, associating the
importance of the key points with the height of the mountains. Make sure your audience really understands the single
highest peak, i.e., the main point. Then, make sure they get
each of the other key points in turn. In Colorado, Mt. Elbert
would be first, then the two or three next highest
fourteeners (mountains with 14 000+ ft elevation) and so on, without getting down to the
13 000-ft peaks.
All presenters accidentally leave something
out that they intended to say in a talk. By focusing on the high peaks, you ensure your audience will get the essential pointsthose that you
really want them to grasp. As long as the audience
understands these, it wont matter that other items
were left unsaid.
Remember, youre telling a storynot writing
one. Therefore, avoid using intricate, carefully crafted sentences
as in written text. Recognize that in friendly speech, we do
not typically speak in sentences, but in short phrases that convey the message concisely.
Slidesgeneral guidelines. In recent years, PowerPoint and
similar tools have revolutionized presentations, and it is easy
to assume that the quality of slides and presentations has
greatly improved. To the contrary, the general quality of both
has suffered, perhaps in large part because of the ready availability of these tools. It is so quick and easy to enter lots of
words and pictures into slides that the message is buried. Slides
with too much detail overwhelm the listener and confuse the
main point. It bears repeating: show only those slides that most
effectively communicate your points (Figure 1No and Figure
1Yes.)
However, the medium is not the message. Visual aids should
help, not dominate, the presentation. Consider two extremes for
slide presentationsa presentation with no slides and one with
so many slides that the speaker could never realistically get
through them all.

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Figure 1No. Complete and lengthy sentences include unnecessary

details and force the use of too-small fonts.

Figure 1Yes. The conclusions are shown with succinctly worded bullets.

Slides:
Slides are your prompt about what to say
to the audience
Keep slides simple
Communicate one idea per slide
Keep content sparse, and never use the word
the on a slide
A dark background with light-colored text
or drawings works best visually
Use a bulleted format for outline slides
Repeat the outline slide at key points
throughout the talk to remind the audience
of where you are in the talk
Graphic slides should contain only enough
information to convey the message, with
arrows, boxes, etc., that direct the
audiences attention to key points

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Figure 2Yes. A succinctly worded outline listing major portions of a

talk.

Figure 3No, never. This exaggerated slide clearly overdoes the logo
and reduces the data to an unreadable size.

The best approach is to aim for just enough slides to support your message. Show only those slides that most effectively communicate your points and no more. Slides are visual
aids that augment the talkthey are not the full report. Use
them to communicate the main ideas of the presentation and
to help you, the speaker, flow smoothly through the talk by
prompting you for what needs to be communicated (Figure
2).
Slide presentations often contain the logo of the presenters organization on every slide. We consider the logo to be
space-consuming noninformation. After all, the speakers
organization was listed in the program and given by the session chairman. A prime example of how not to compose the
content of a slide is given in Figure 3. This classic tongue-incheek slide (courtesy of Les Hatton) from a couple of decades
ago takes the all-too-frequent practice of showing logos to an
extreme, minimizing the area available for the content on the
slide. Certainly, if you must use a logo on every slide, make
sure that it is small and not ostentatious.
Most often, the message in a geophysical presentation is
best conveyed by showing data. Figure 4-No is an example
of how not to present data in a slide. The photo inserted in
the upper left gives a graphic example of an earthquake victim that can elicit pathos in the audience. In a geophysical presentation, however, pathos isnt the point. This graphic is a
diversion from the message contained in the data and will

likely draw the audience, even if momentarily, away from the

data and dilute the message.
Additionally, it is not possible to read the information contained in the curve and bar graph, even for those at the front.
The data figure in the slide is just too tiny. Figure 4-Yes shows
all that needs to be conveyed. Note that just the bar graph
completely fills the screen. The curve shown in Figure 4-No
(whatever it shows since we cannot read it) is immaterial. Note
also that the title in Figure 4-Yes is not only briefer than that
in Figure 4-No, it is much more to the point. Since the word
casualties by definition includes those injured, it is an inappropriate title for the bar graph, which specifically lists only
loss of life in a number of devastating earthquakes.
Compare the information contained in the simple
presentation in Figure 4-Yes with that in the highly
graphic Figure 4-No, with its picturesque, but
content-free background.
Ensure that similar data shown on different
slides are displayed with the same scale so that the
audience immediately grasps the significance of
variations in the data shown or compared in different slides.
Figure 5-No takes the insertion of gratuitous,
entertaining, and distracting pictures to an extreme,
in addition to offering a title that says little about what
the numbers mean. How cute that a chimpanzee can be taught
to smoke! Any contemplation of that fact will detract the audiences attention away from the message.
Then, there is the diagram depicting the progress of
influenza in a bodys system. This is fascinating material in a
talk about influenza, but distracting for a presentation on
earthquake hazards. Also, the font is much too small. With
the unnecessary photographs removed, Figure 5-Yes shows
all the pertinent data, in large lettering and in descending order
of relative risk. The title of the slide indicates explicitly what
the numbers mean. The figure, moreover, allows sufficient
room to show in a readable form the source of the data. On
another note about this slide, the risk factors might be more
effectively shown as a bar or line graph. The relative risks
would then jump off the page visually for the audience.
Figure 6 compares two slidesone with too much detail
(Figure 6-No) and one (Figure 6-Yes) that contains enough
information to engage the audience rather than diverting their
attention to determining what the slide means. Both slides contain the essential information. The title informs the audience
at a glance what the data represent. They see it and hear you
say it, and remember it. We took Figure 6No and improved
it for simplicity, clarity, and interpretability. Note the following differences between the two figures:
1) An informative slide title has been introduced to tell the
audience at a glance what the slide is conveying
2) The velocity plot has been removed
3) The distance annotation, which is too small, has been
removed and replaced by a more readable scale bar, and
4) Critically helpful annotations (Plan View, Profile,
Monitor Well, and Clearwater Reservoir Sand) and
the key point of the slide (yields tighter clusters) have
been inserted with acceptable font sizes.
5) The velocity plot, which represents an independent idea,
has been moved from this slide (Figure 6-No) to a later
one (not shown here) as a standalone idea. In doing so, it
can be enlarged sufficiently so that the audience can see
the differences in the two velocity curves.
These enhancements result in two simple slides rather
than one complicated one. As a result, the data in Figure 6MARCH 2008

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Yes actually occupy more real estate than in Figure 6-No,

allowing the speaker to convey the message more effectively.
The annotations identify key points that the speaker needs to
cover and greatly aid understanding at a glance. Now, the
speaker has no need for a laser pointer. There is even room
for the key conclusion (the new event relocation technique
yields tighter clusters).
Text slides. Word slides should be used no more than necessary. Use them to help the audience follow where you are
in the talk. They also are good for prompting, which helps
you to stay relaxed and emphasize the key points.
Moreover, the content of a word slide should be sparse
(i.e., just a few key words in bullet points, as in the conclusion slide shown in Figure 1-Yes). Wordy slides, such as that
in Figure 1-No, only encourage the audience into a reading
exercise, diverting its attention away from where it should be
addressed-listening to you.
Except when you are displaying data and concepts in
graphics, your audience should be focused on you, listening
to your words and registering the added emphasis conveyed
through your facial and body language. Surprisingly, even in
a large auditorium, audiences can see and benefit from gestures, which can be a useful visual aid for explaining ideas.
The audience is there to hear what you have to say; they also
benefit from how you say it. If the audience is forced to read
wordy text while you are speaking, it divides their attention to the extent that they will miss the entire message.
Word slides should have a common font and size, although
its preferable to use a slightly larger font for the title. The font
size should be large enough for those in the back of the audience to read with ease. This holds independent of the size and
shape of the room. Do not count on font size
xx always being right for your slide.
Because letter size in a slide scales with
the size of screen, we recommend setting the font size as a given fraction of
the height of the slide. In our experience,
a good rule is to make the height of lowercase letters (such as the letter a) 1/25
the height of the slide. (As we have aged

You probably can

Figure 4No. Gratuitous photo with distracting pathos and illegible

data.

Figure 4Yes. All the data needed.

read the words on Figure 4-Yes with no trouble, but that is

because you are reading it close-up on a printed page. However, the lettering in even this highquality slide is far too tiny for an audience to read. Weve made recommendations for font size,
but also comment here on how a slide such as Figure 4, with its small lettering, can be presented
acceptably during a presentation. This figure was taken from a published paper, and the speaker
has two choices for presenting the material. One is to show the figure as published (in which the
speaker should acknowledge the source, preferably on the figure, but at least verbally). In this
case, the speaker should also acknowledge that the audience may have difficulty reading the content of the slide and then help the audience by explaining the data verbally. For example, for this
slide the speaker could mention that the abscissa ranges from years 1890 through 1990 and the
ordinate is logarithmic, going from 100 deaths at the bottom to 100,000 toward the top. The speaker
might also help the audience by pointing out the relatively small loss of life for the San Francisco
earthquake of 1906 relative to the huge loss in the Tangshang, China, earthquake of 1977.
The second choice for presentation is to redraft the slide so that it shows just a subset of the
number of earthquakes, with bolder lines and larger lettering. Your audience will appreciate not
having eye-strain by the end of your presentation. Think of the listeners at the back of the room.
Aim for this group to be able to read your figures with ease, which will ensure that those closer
to the front will have the pleasure of clearly readable figures.
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Your bulleted slides should consist of key eye-catching

words. A good start at simplifying them is to remove most, if
not all, of the articles (a, the) and most of the verbs. We
suggest never using the word the on a slide, and almost
never the words a or an.

Figure 5 No. Photos divert the attention of the audience from the
message, as do the meaningless title and minuscule font size with
unitless numbers.

Figure 5Yes. The words in larger font succinctly encompass the

message in a slide with an informative title.

and our eyesight has degraded, that 1/25 rule has changed
to 1/20 and is heading toward 1/15.) Use bold-face fonts, as
appropriate, so that letters are easy to read.
Talks can sometimes benefit from the use of an outline slide.
An outline slide tells the audience what you are going to say,
what you are saying, and then what you have said. By observing where your talk is heading, the audience will be better
able to follow the presentation. Figure 2 illustrates an outline
slide.
Too often, the first item in an outline slide is Introduction
and the last one is Conclusions. These words are uninformative. Instead, the first point in the outline could be more
explicitly stated, for example, Motivation and Assumptions
or Theory or Summary of Previous Studies. The last item
might be Summary and Way Ahead, for example. The outline should list what is unique to your presentation. Avoid
including too many entries and making the font size too small.
It can be helpful to repeat the outline slide at appropriate
places in the talk, highlighting the specific topic that you will
cover next. This can help focus the audience on where you
are taking them with your presentation. This is also a good
place to pause in your story and allow the audience to digest
your message. Explain what is coming next before springing
the next slide on them.

PowerPoint etiquette and delivery. To date, PowerPoint presentations are most often single-screen, so, for example, the
benefit of doing before-and-after comparisons across two
screens is unavailable. The electronic presentation, however,
offers the opportunity for easily toggling back and forth
between figures. Occasionally, you might wish to return to a
figure presented several figures back. For this,
it is best not to click backward through the
figures, but rather to repeat that figure at
another place in the arrangement of figures
so that you continually advance forward
through the slides.
If, in the future, PowerPoint presentations
can be conveniently done with two screens, do
some orchestrating of slides on the left and right
screens. It is less confusing for the speaker and
makes for a smoother presentation when both
screens are advanced at the same time. If you
wish to hold a figure on one screen while advancing the one
on the other screen, repeat that slide in your arrangement.
Blank slides can aid the presentation when nothing needs to
be shown at a given point while you are speaking. Leaving a
slide up after describing it diverts the attention of the listener.
For before and after comparisons, put the before slide
on the left screen and the after slide on the right screen. You
can also take advantage of the extra real estate by using the
left screen to capture the key points in a few words and the
right screen to show the graphics.
Keep it simple. A slide should not overwhelm the audience
with detail. Slides are there to augment your talk so that the
audience follows and remembers more of what you say. If you
must illustrate all of the points contained in such a slide, then
break it up, putting the content into several simple slides. Not
only are simple messages in slides individually beneficial to
the audience, they help to simplify the entire story embodied
by the presentation. This helps you to move smoothly through
the storyline.
In particular, communicate just one key idea per slide. This
helps your audience to follow your message. The use of sufficiently large lettering is especially helpful toward this end
because it inherently minimizes the quantity of material that
can be squeezed into a slide. The simpler the slides, the clearer,
easier, and more straightforward is the talk. The clearer the
talk, the greater the chance that a higher percentage of the audience will receive and understand the message. If the audience
has to strain to see and interpret the message in your slides,
it will be distracted from hearing the one coming from your
lips.
Using a dark background with light-colored text or lines
is easy on the viewers eyes. Dark lettering on a light or white
background sometimes might appear clearer, but use only as
much light space as necessary on the slide for the graphics to
fit. Never use graphics or dark-colored fonts against a dark
background (e.g., red text with blue background). The material will be unreadable. Not only does this strain your audiences eyes, it also dilutes the message. Light blue lettering
and lines on a dark blue background also are unacceptable.
We have seen presentations in which the speaker, while squinting to read his own slide, says some of you might have trouble reading this slide.
For both graphics slides and word slides, give thought to
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aesthetics in the arrangement of the material, in particular margins and spacing of the content. Margins be should neither
too small nor too large. Besides compromising the aesthetics,
margins that are too large reduce the area available for the
content.
Being a story, your presentation will naturally consist of
parts that can be considered as chapters. Just as an extra blank
page is often inserted prior to the start of each chapter in a
book, it can aid your presentation if you add a slight pause
prior to continuing on to the next chapter.
When you display a slide, first describe what you are
showing before discussing the interpretation. Since
your talk is a story, it is more effective to say a
few words about what is coming in that slide
rather than bringing up the new slide before
starting to talk about it. You want to ensure the
audience understands the slide before you start
making observations and drawing conclusions.
Explain the axes of cross-plots and histograms,
including scales and units. Tell the audience the
coordinate system and scales for maps and cross
sections. Also, it is good to point out links between
associated plots, for example a profile line A-A
drawn on a map that depicts a cross section that will
follow in the next slide.
Laser pointers: An unnecessary evil. Leave your laser pointer
at home. Ideally, you shouldnt need one. On graphics slides,
use of highlighting (e.g., arrows, ovals, boxes) on a slide best
illustrates the exact locations of interest in the figure.
Thoughtful highlighting reduces or even eliminates the need
for a laser pointer, particularly the recent bright green ones
that wash out much of the screen and are harsh on the audiences eyes. Laser pointers are needless for word slides.
Audience are perfectly capable of reading an appropriately
constructed word slide without having to follow the bouncing ball.
Finally, ensure that your slides are free of grammatical and
typographical errors. Ask those who attend your rehearsals
to help spot such errors.
Final analysis. When your topic involves new technology,
always clearly list the assumptions that you used in your
research and the limitations imposed by those assumptions
(i.e., over what range for the key parameters the technology
is applicable). Also, let the audience know how the cost of
applying this new technology compares with alternatives. In
addition to providing all of the advantages of this great new
methodology, also talk about the disadvantages, unresolved
issues, and other sticking points to its application. The scientific method that we all have been taught relies on testing various hypotheses. Some of these hypotheses are valid and
generate reasonable results. Most will have limitations and
cause the methodology to break under certain circumstances.
In your research, try to break your great new idea, and tell
your audience about shortcomings that you have discovered.
They will appreciate this and value your thoroughness and
candor as well.
Strong presentations will have definitive, carefully thought
out conclusions, whether they are offered verbally or in a conclusions slide. Asimple and concise conclusion will follow naturally; support it with well-presented, convincing arguments
and data from your talk. This holds whether you have successfully reached an end of the project, or your paper is part
of an ongoing study and has reached a plateau, and holds
whether the findings are positive or not.
Always allot time at the end of your presentation for questions and answers. This time is often the most lively and valu428

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Figure 6No. This slide has the essential information, but thats it.
Theres not enough identifying information and the audience may not
be able to connect the visual presentation with the verbal one.

Figure 6Yes. The addition of a title and appropriate annotations and

labels help the speaker convey the message clearly.

able part of the talk because it is the most interactive. The Q&A
period provides time for you to clarify your points and ensure
that the audience gets your message. It also gives you the
chance to receive valuable feedback for your work. You have
an opportunity to learn something from the audience that you
could potentially use to solve a sticky problem.
Presentations that effectively convey the results from a scientific project require a clear, concise, well-articulated talk
supported by crisp, clear, easy-to-digest slides. Above all,
empathize with your audience, and take care to help them
grasp your message fully. We hope the guidance offered here
can be of significant help toward this goal. Not only will the
audience benefit from your ability to convey complex ideas
in simple terms, your reputation for conveying ideas will be
enhanced. As a result, your peers will be inspired to seek you
out to share their ideas with you. Good luck with your talks!
TLE
Acknowledgments: Roel Snieder kindly provided Figures 45 from a spoof
presentation Earthquake Hazard: A Political Problem? to students at the
Colorado School of Mines that demonstrates how not to give a presentation
and offers a better alternative for the presentation. We thank Les Hatton for
allowing us to use his wacky Wombat figure, and Yaping Zhu for his
Conclusions slide. Members of the ExxonMobil staff are already using
some of these tips to yield improvements in their presentations.
Corresponding author: [email protected]