Advanced Presentations by Design: Creating Communication That Drives Action

Advanced Presentations by Design: Creating Communication That Drives Action

Released September 2008
Publisher(s): Pfeiffer
ISBN: 9780787996598

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Book description

Advanced Presentations by Design overturns much of the conventional wisdom and practice for creating presentations. Based on over 200 research studies from the fields of communication, marketing, psychology, multimedia, and law, it provides fact-based answers to critical questions about presentation design, including how to adapt your presentation to different audience personality preferences, what role your data should play and how much of it you need, how to turn your data into a story, and how to design persuasive yet comprehensible visual layouts.

Table of contents

  1. More Praise for Advanced Presentations by Design
  2. Copyright
  3. FOREWORD
  4. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  5. INTRODUCTION
    1. Why Do We Need to Reinvent the Way We Design Presentations?
      1. The Presentation Challenge Is Greater Than Ever
      2. Current Presentation Standards—Space Age, or Sophomoric?
      3. Bad Advice
      4. Bad Examples
      5. The Problem of Presenter-Focus and the Seven Deadly Mistakes of Presentation Design
      6. Good Advice, Not Applied
    2. How to Reinvent Your Presentation: The Extreme Presentation™ Method
      1. Ten Steps for Developing an Extreme Presentation
      2. The Importance of Iteration
      3. The Main Insights in This Book, on One Page
    3. Where to Start ...
      1. If You Have an Important Presentation Due Soon (e.g., Tomorrow Morning)
      2. If You Have More Time
    4. How This Book Is Different from All Other Presentation Books
    5. What This Book Is—and Is Not—About
    6. The Structure of This Book
  6. I. POLITICS AND METRICS
    1. 1. Understanding What Types of Communication Will Be Most Effective for Your Audience
      1. 1.1. Step 1: Identify the Communication Preferences of the Different Personality Types in Your Audience
      2. 1.2. How to Estimate Your Audience's Personality Types
      3. 1.3. How to Match Your Presentation Design to Different Personality Types in the Same Audience
        1. 1.3.1. Introverts vs. Extraverts
        2. 1.3.2. Sensors vs. Intuitors
        3. 1.3.3. Thinkers vs. Feelers
        4. 1.3.4. Judgers vs. Perceivers
      4. 1.4. Additional Information About Your Audience
    2. 2. Setting a Measurable Objective for Your Presentation
      1. 2.1. Step 2: Set Specific Objectives for What You Want Your Audience to Think and Do Differently After Your Presentation
      2. 2.2. The Typical—and Wrong—Way to Set Presentation Objectives
      3. 2.3. Developing Effective Presentation Objectives
      4. 2.4. The Curse of the "Update" Presentation
      5. 2.5. How Do You Know Whether You Have Set the Right Objectives?
  7. II. LOGIC
    1. 3. Articulating the Audience's Business Problem and Your Proposed Solution to It
      1. 3.1. Step 3: Identify a Problem Your Audience Has That Your Presentation Will Contribute to Solving
      2. 3.2. Why Discuss Problem Solving in a Book About Presentation Design?
      3. 3.3. Choosing the Right Problem
        1. 3.3.1. How to Find the Right Problem—The Five Why's
        2. 3.3.2. How Do I Find the Right Level of Analysis?
        3. 3.3.3. What If the Problem Is So Big That I Cannot Help Them Solve It?
        4. 3.3.4. What If All I Can Come Up With Are a Bunch of Small Problems Rather Than One Big One?
        5. 3.3.5. What If I'm Just Presenting Information or Providing an Update?
        6. 3.3.6. What If I Am Creating a Training Presentation?
        7. 3.3.7. What If There Is Clearly a Problem, But the Audience I Am Trying to Engage Just Does Not Seem to Want to Hear About It?
        8. 3.3.8. Isn't Focusing on "Problems" Rather Negative?
      4. 3.4. Crafting Your Solution
        1. 3.4.1. What If I Only Have a Solution to Part of the Problem?
        2. 3.4.2. How Do I Know Whether I Have Chosen the Right Solution?
        3. 3.4.3. Should I Include Rival Solutions to the One I'm Offering?
        4. 3.4.4. How Do I Handle Really Controversial Solutions?
        5. 3.4.5. What If I Just Can't Get My Thoughts Straight? Using the One-Page Memo
        6. 3.4.6. What Do I Do If There Really Isn't a Clear Solution to the Problem?
        7. 3.4.7. The Importance of Being Audience-Focused
    2. 4. Marshalling Your Evidence
      1. 4.1. Step 4: List All the Information That You Think You May Need to Include in Your Presentation
      2. 4.2. What Kinds of Evidence Should You Include?
        1. 4.2.1. Use Real and Specific Data
        2. 4.2.2. Include a Variety of Different Types of Evidence
        3. 4.2.3. New and Different Information
      3. 4.3. Is There Any Kind of Evidence That You Should Exclude?
      4. 4.4. Where Do You Find All This Evidence?
  8. III. RHETORIC
    1. 5. Assembling the Anecdotes That Will Illustrate Your Evidence
      1. 5.1. Step 5: Identify Brief Anecdotes That Highlight Your Most Important Points
      2. 5.2. What Kinds of Stories Should You Use in Your Presentation?
      3. 5.3. How to Tell a Story Using the Seven Basic Plots
      4. 5.4. Where to Find Useful Stories
    2. 6. Sequencing Your Evidence
      1. 6.1. Step 6: Sequence Your Information So That It Tells a Compelling Story
      2. 6.2. The Structure of All Effective Stories
      3. 6.3. Using the S.Co.R.E.™ Method to Sequence Your Evidence
        1. 6.3.1. How Exactly to Use the S.Co.R.E. Method
        2. 6.3.2. Testing Your S.Co.R.E. Cards
        3. 6.3.3. Don't Fork Your Presentation
      4. 6.4. What to Do with What Doesn't Fit into Your Storyline—The Role of the Appendix
  9. IV. GRAPHICS
    1. 7. Visual Presentation Elements: Graphics, Charts, Color, Animation, and Fonts
      1. 7.1. Step 7: Identify the Most Effective Graphical Elements to Use in Your Presentation
      2. 7.2. What Kinds of Graphics Should You Use?
      3. 7.3. How Do You Decide Which Type of Chart Will Best Communicate Your Data?
        1. 7.3.1. Displaying Relationships Within Data
        2. 7.3.2. Displaying Data Distribution
        3. 7.3.3. Displaying Comparisons
        4. 7.3.4. Composition of Data
      4. 7.4. Which Type Fonts and Sizes Should You Use?
      5. 7.5. Should You Use Bullet Points, Color, Animation, Transitions, or Animation?
        1. 7.5.1. Should You Use Bullet Points?
        2. 7.5.2. Should You Use Color?
        3. 7.5.3. Should You Use Transitions or Animation?
    2. 8. Laying Out All the Elements on Each Page
      1. 8.1. Step 8: Create Slides That Communicate Your Information Concisely and Effectively
      2. 8.2. How to Make Sure That Your Slide Layout Reinforces the Main Message of the Slide
      3. 8.3. How to Design Effective Ballroom Style Presentations
      4. 8.4. How to Design Effective Conference Room Style Presentations
        1. 8.4.1. Conference Room Style and the Problem of Control
        2. 8.4.2. How Many Slides Should a Conference Room Style Presentation Have?
        3. 8.4.3. What Is the Ideal Length of a Conference Room Style Presentation?
      5. 8.5. When to Use Multiple Presentation Idioms in the Same Presentation
      6. 8.6. How Much Detail to Put on Each Slide
      7. 8.7. How to Avoid Bad Detail ("Chartjunk")
      8. 8.8. How Much Text to Put on Each Slide
      9. 8.9. Whether to Combine Graphics and Text on the Same Slide
      10. 8.10. How Exactly to Decide What Goes on Each Slide
        1. 8.10.1. Preparing to Draw Your Slides
        2. 8.10.2. The Importance of "Roadmapping"
        3. 8.10.3. Final Details
  10. V. POLITICS AND METRICS AGAIN
    1. 9. Satisfying Your Stakeholders and Measuring Success
      1. 9.1. Step 9: Identify Any Potential Roadblocks to Achieving Your Objectives, and Make a Plan to Deal with Each
      2. 9.2. Step 10: Decide How You Will Measure the Success of Your Presentation
    2. 10. Conclusion
      1. 10.1. The Scalability of the Extreme Presentation Method
      2. 10.2. A Language and a Framework for Providing Effective Feedback
      3. 10.3. Contradicting Other Approaches to Presentation Design
  11. A. Worksheets
  12. B. Extreme Presentation Makeover
  13. C. Thirty-Six Layouts That Pass the Squint Test
  14. D. Further Reading
    1. D.1.
      1. D.1.1. Logic
      2. D.1.2. Rhetoric/Storytelling
      3. D.1.3. Graphics
      4. D.1.4. General
  15. E. 1,000 Good Books
  16. References
  17. About the Author

Product information

  • Title: Advanced Presentations by Design: Creating Communication That Drives Action
  • Author(s):
  • Release date: September 2008
  • Publisher(s): Pfeiffer
  • ISBN: 9780787996598