Once you prepare to deliver your next PowerPoint presentation, your audience ought to be initial on your list of considerations. Unfortunately, too several presenters annoy their audiences. An online survey of 688 individuals who regularly see PowerPoint presentations revealed the subsequent high annoyances (item and what proportion of the respondents cited that item in concert of their high 3 annoyances):
The speaker browse the slides to us 62.zero%
Text so small I couldn't read it 46.9%
Slides onerous to determine as a result of of color selection 42.vi%
Full sentences rather than bullet points 39.1%
Moving/flying text or graphics 24.eight%
Overly complex diagrams or charts 22.two%
The top four annoying mistakes are the same as a similar survey exhausted 2003, suggesting that presenters don't seem to be obtaining a lot of better at presenting clear information in an appealing manner.
The survey additionally asked for written comments in addition to the ranking and 415 folks wrote in with extra ideas. The comments covered a wide selection, but most typical were three areas:
1. Delivery of PowerPoint Shows
Many audience members wrote to touch upon how the delivery of the PowerPoint presentation was a huge problem. The areas of greatest concern were:
a) The use of PowerPoint when another communication method would have been better. Too several times it seems that PowerPoint is that the default communication methodology and individuals have forgotten that a straightforward memo or one-on-one conversation would be much better.
b) The presenter is not familiar with a way to deliver the presentation using the equipment. Comments cited the dearth of data of many presenters on how to smoothly begin a presentation and keep the flow going throughout the presentation when using PowerPoint.
c) The presenter is not ready to feature to what the slides say. This appears to be caused by the presenter not knowing the topic well enough, or the mistaken use of PowerPoint as a teleprompter where the speech is browse to the audience (echoing the top annoyance in the ranking).
2. Poor Slide Style
Even when the presenter is ready and knowledgeable, poor design of the slides causes confusion among audience members. They centered on these areas as the ones of most concern:
a) Poor selection of colors and fonts make the slides hard to see. Whereas a pc has the power to supply millions of colors and lots of fonts, not they all should be used together. Colours should have enough distinction to be seen and fonts would like to be clear and straightforward in order to be scan when projected. If the audience cannot work out what's being projected, the visuals are of no use.
b) Misuse of the Slide Master and Slide Layout leads to inconsistent appearance of slides throughout the presentation. Audiences are wanting for consistency during the presentation in the planning and basic layout of the slides. This makes it easier to follow the presentation. Too usually they're guessing as to what the subsequent slide will look like and forced to go looking on each slide for the relevant ideas.
c) Backgrounds ought to be clean and not distracting. Audiences find backgrounds that contain various graphics, symbols and text distract from the information that is purported to be central to the slide. They also commented on how stark black on white slides are too bright and want some straightforward color and style to make them appealing.
3. Overuse of PowerPoint's features
Every version of PowerPoint looks to contain a lot of and a lot of features designed to form it easier to feature flashy graphics, animation and multimedia to presentations. And too several presenters suppose that just because the feature is there, they should be using it. Audiences were clear that use of animation to entertain rather than inform or adding multimedia audio or video segments to indicate off the presenters abilities were unnecessary and definitely took far from the message being presented.
Various Dollars Wasted on Annoying Audiences Every Year
The respondents to the survey were conjointly asked how several displays they see and the way prevalent these annoying mistakes were.. Simply over 0.5 of the respondents (54%) see a hundred or more presentations per year, making them well qualified to spot how often these problems occur. And also the news from this group of frequent presentation audience members is not good. One third of this cluster said that additional than 0.5 of the shows they see suffer from these annoying items and another third of this cluster said at least one in four displays have annoying elements. This means that a vital percentage of the estimated thirty million PowerPoint shows done each day fall in to the annoying category. An annoying presentation wastes the time of the individuals attending and causes huge rework as concepts don't seem to be clearly communicated. This wasted time adds up to tens of countless greenbacks each year. And this is often money that may be saved by making and delivering higher PowerPoint presentations.
What Can Be Done?
Presenters would like to focus on 3 things that can help them communicate a lot of clearly when using PowerPoint:
1. Prepare a easy slide style with contrasting colours and clear fonts. Use a similar layout for every slide therefore that the presentation is consistent in look for the audience.
2. Simplify the content of your slides. Use less text, additional graphics and attempt to do less on every slide. Keep the slides focused and therefore the audience can be in a position to follow your message a lot of better.
3. Prepare yourself for the presentation. Find out how to use the equipment and apprehend your subject well enough that you simply presentation becomes a conversation with the audience rather than reciting a speech.
If you retain the audience because the central focus of your presentation, with a goal to obviously communicate with them, you'll greatly improve your PowerPoint presentations.
Author Resource:
Jeff Patterson has been writing articles online for nearly 2 years now. Not only does this author specialize in Presentation, you can also check out his latest website about
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