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READ THIS FIRST!!!

Real life example of WHY all of this is important

https://mcdreeamiemusings.com/blog/2019/4/13/gsux1h6bnt8lqjd7w2t2mtvfg81uhx -- Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people

Creating Strong Presentations (using PowerPoint)

Some of the information on this page came directly from client feedback at presentations! Industry and academia both place value on clear strong presentations!

There are many resources on the web to help you create strong presentations. The writing center may help but sometimes is not as helpful with deeply technical material such as your presentations.

For the mechanics of conference calls with your clients, please see: How to Hold a Conference Call

We have compiled some of our observations and our clients here based on the presentations our students have made.

Typical Meeting Slides

The Design Lab has created a basic template for your status update presentations. It is located with the other Templates_and_Forms.

The above template includes the following typical slides for a progress meeting with your client :
  1. Cover slide with all team member names/graduation month & year/majors plus your Chief and Project Engineer names
  2. Agenda
  3. Opportunity for Client to present materials
    1. Needed at first meeting - let client speak first!
    2. May be needed during the semester. Can be moved elsewhere in the agenda as appropriate
  4. Current overall project status to plan, ex: your deliverables / dates / how you are doing on each one!
  5. Results / evidence of progress
  6. Demonstrations
    1. If applicable / appropriate / available
    2. Live if possible, have video just in case!
  7. Questions / anything needed from your client
    1. Questions
    2. Resource requests
  8. Next steps based on your plan
  9. Schedule the next call if not already done. We recommend that you set the full semester schedule, while avoiding Board of Directors Review, academic break and holidays, as soon as possible.

Guidelines from a Client

The overall presentation of material would benefit from a clear narrative and some key communication elements:
  1. Start with an outline/overview of what is going to be covered
  2. Tell the audience what you’re going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you’ve told them
  3. Provide a clear introduction that defines the problem statement:
    1. Citations or references showing/describing the need / basis for the project will help make a compelling intro
  4. When multiple options are still under consideration (e.g. the controls system), provide a page that summarizes and compares the relative attributes of each. In some cases it is hard to compare on the basis of data … consider a decision matrix that puts weighting factors on various considerations
  5. Individual slides benefit from contextual information. Most slides should be clear enough to convey their message even if the presentation is being reviewed at another time, without narration or verbal explanation.
  6. Presentations are often used to document processes and results in lieu of formal reports/memos, so the information should be structured for archival use as well. Most (if not all) slides should clearly identify:
    1. What information is being conveyed
    2. Detailed diagrams capturing what is being presented:
      1. Overall system layouts and diagrams (label the various components on 2d/3d layouts and photos)
      2. Free body diagrams (for structural systems)
    3. What is the takeaway from the information on the slide
  7. Concluding material:
    1. What are the results/conclusions/findings
    2. What areas require further investigation/study to clarify? What are the next steps?
  8. At the end of the presentation, the audience should feel confident that the presenter(s) are subject matter experts. The data can speak for itself, but oftentimes the presenter needs to make the connections in the audience’s mind and lead them to the desired conclusion in such a way that there is minimal remaining doubt or uncertainty.
  9. At the end of the day your work may be judged not only by the quality of the work (the actual engineering and science), but also by the quality with which it is presented (the marketing, the narrative, the professionalism, the aesthetics).

Checklist for the material

Not necessarily in any special order:

Format

  1. Be sure the cover page has the date of the meeting / conference call.
  2. Number the slides - all of them. Use a font size large enough to be easily seen and a color that provides enough contrast to be readable!
  3. Date the slides - all of them.
  4. Make the font size/color to be readable.
    1. Avoid yellow lines / text / boxes on white backgrounds and other similar low contrast combinations.
    2. Avoid faint colors / light gray for fonts - you need contrast to make the text readable.
  5. Be sure to include the Design Lab logo AND the client's logo on every slide. Branding is important!
  6. Be concise!
  7. Avoid "dear diary" mode! Do not tell your story as time based like you would when recording in a daily journal. Avoid: we did this, then we did that, then we converted X into Y, our first version was A and now we have B... That is not the method for technical presentations .
  8. Label and annotate your figures but watch out for 'craptions'.
  9. Avoid using too many significant figures. Just because your software outputs 10 digits does not mean they are all significant.
  10. Use numbers! Formulas! Diagrams! Show your engineering work!
    1. Use images or tables where appropriate / possible.
    2. Use bullets rather than paragraphs of text.
  11. Generally, avoid colored / image backgrounds as they tend to print poorly.
  12. Don't waste time on fancy slide templates! Concentrate on your technical content not the artistry of the slides!

Content

  1. You probably have too much text
  2. Always have an agenda slide (see below).
    1. Make sure the items on it match the titles on your other slides. Same words, same order.
    2. Consider the agenda slide as the table of contents for your presentation.
    3. Later you can include this and skip over it but it helps everyone remember team members.
  3. Put all content into a single PPT file.
  4. For first call, include the team member names, majors and graduation years.
  5. Include Project and Chief Engineer names.
  6. Make sure each slide has a point! Why is the slide there / what does it add? You may need to add a text box at the bottom to tell the viewer what you want them to 'take away' from the slide.
    1. Do not hide it in the Notes.
    2. Do not plan to "tell" those details.
    3. Other people may get a copy of your slides. They will NOT have heard your presentation - so they will only know what is on the face of the slides. If it's not there, it won't be communicated!
    4. The next student team will be looking at your slides to figure out what you did. If the information is not on the slides, it won't help them.
  7. Don't just embed links to other files / forum posts/ etc. in the slides. Some people print them and that link always fails in that case. Instead, for anything critical to know during the presentation, include a short overview or summary of the materials. Then a link may be OK - but provide the actual URL, not a named hyperlink like "More Info Here".
  8. You probably still have too many words!
  9. Be sure your slides are showing evidence of your use of the Design Process!
  10. Contrary to what you may have been taught so far in terms of presentations, for technical presentations put all the information ON the face of the slide.
  11. BEFORE you start creating slides, identify the purpose of the slides. What do you want to convey? What do you want them to learn? What do you want them to remember? What are the most important of these?
  12. For EACH SLIDE, what is the message? What do you want to convey? What do you want them to learn? What do you want them to remember? What are the most important of these? You may want/need to actually put that ON the slide to make sure it is communicated.
  13. Show your milestones with dates and indicate where you are towards accomplishing those.
  14. Show progress!
    1. Show accomplishments and results. Don't talk about what you are working on - talk about what you learned / got from that.
    2. Be specific! Use numbers where appropriate.
    3. Identify anything that will prevent you from reaching the milestone.

Scheduling

  1. Always ask your Project Engineer to review your slides - at least 3 days before a conference call and always before you send out the slides!
  2. Always send the slides to the client at least 48 hours in advance to give them time to review and prep, especially if there are questions that the client may need to research. It is generally not acceptable nor fair to your client to send slides on the day of the call.

Proofread/Practice

  1. Try reading your material out loud. Things sometimes read differently than they sound and vice versa!
  2. If possible or if the material is 'controversial', have a dry run with your Project Engineer.
  3. Has the whole team reviewed this? Proofed it? Agreed with it's content / completeness?
  4. For each slide, ask yourself, what is the message you want to convey to the reader/audience? What is the purpose of the slide? EACH slide should have a clear purpose and a clear message.

Logistics

  1. Email a LINK to the slides, not the slides. Keep the clients information out of the email system as much as possible. If the client requests an email, fine but all OUR internal work is to be done through the Electronic Design Notebook (EDN).
  2. Use a PowerPoint presentation to guide conference calls and meetings.
    1. Avoid needing to switch between multiple documents / applications / windows / files / etc. Unless you have a demo!
  3. Ensure that the most recent version of the PPT is on EDN. This should be what you sent to the client.
  4. You may have additional material that you want to include but may not actually present on the call. Create a slide titled "Additional Information" and put all that material in the back of your slide set - like an appendix in a report would be handled.
    1. Identify any help you might need from your client. Note - ALWAYS speak to your Project Engineer about this BEFORE you show/tell the client! We might be able to help and not need to ask the client.

Final Design Review

  1. Review the rubric to ensure your presentation addresses all points.
  2. Be sure to have an acknowledgement / thank you slide at the end for your client and all who helped you.

Slides aren't really ready for your Project Engineer to review until the TEAM has gone through the above criteria! We will help with the content but YOU need to make sure the overall presentation is complete as per the above list.

Graphics

  • Approved logos and graphics are available in Templates and Forms to be used for Posters, Presentations, and Reports
    • Design Lab Logos
    • RPI logos and seal graphics

Public Speaking

There are MANY videos on the internet related to public speaking. In addition to those, recall your professional development activities in IED which were meant to prepare you for Capstone and your career!

We offer a small collection of tips here

Things to Avoid

  • Repeating things the previous speaker just said! If the previous speaker already said the things covered on the slide you are about to cover, do NOT repeat everything just so that you can be the one who spoke to 'your' slide! They are all, in fact, TEAM slides and it does not greatly matter WHO speaks to a given slide. In general, we DO care that everyone participates in the presentation but we are not logging "minutes talking" nor "# of slides presented" for each member of the team.

Helpful PowerPoint Features

The following features are especially useful in online PowerPoint presentations.