Overlooked Keys to a Great Presentation
Attention. Retention. Retrieval.
By Patrick Faucher
A better slide deck. A more compelling story. Improved stage presence. A tighter structure. A clearer call to action.
The Internet is littered with advice on how to improve your next presentation. Probably because a quarter of us are terrified of public speaking [Editor’s note: if you’re as creeped-out by clowns as I am, don’t clink that link. Yeeeesh].
In this post, we’ve curated a list of nine particularly useful presentation tips for students and health researchers, and organized them into key concepts we often overlook when building our presentations: attention, retention, and retrieval.
Attention: Let’s make the most of the time we have together.
Ever notice that most presentations are scheduled for exactly sixty minutes?
Hot take: most presentations could be cut by two thirds.
There’s a reason why TED Talks and PechaKucha are so popular — they’re short enough to hold our attention, maxing out at 18 minutes and 6 minutes 40 seconds, respectively.
“It turns out that [the 18 minute max] also works incredibly well online,” explains TED Curator, Chris Anderson. “It’s the length of a coffee break… The 18-minute length also works much like the way Twitter forces people to be disciplined in what they write… It has a clarifying effect. It brings discipline.”
Key Takeaway: Give your audience the gift of time by delivering a more succinct, polished presentation.
Tip #1: Tell a story
Watch this great presentation by Conor Neill on the three best ways to start a speech. Number one? The adult version of “Once upon a time...”
Tip #2: Compare and contrast
If you’re not a natural storyteller, read Nancy Duarte’s take on how to incorporate the most important element of a powerful story — what is, and what could be.
Tip #3: Use empathy
Make sure to meet your audience where they’re at by understanding their needs and motivations, and adapting your content accordingly.
Tip #4: Break it down
If you must go the full hour, break your presentation into 7–10 minute segments by inserting interactive techniques, changing topics, or simply moving to a different position (no, we don’t mean pacing).
Retention: If you remember nothing else, remember that we‘re not very good at remembering how bad we are at remembering things.
Human memory is leaky, at best. Blame it on various factors like:
- Limited memory capacity,
- Interference from previous learning (aka ‘interference theory’),
- The passage of time (aka ‘decay theory’),
- Missing the details (aka ‘ineffective coding’),
- A lack of cues to retrieve a memory (aka ‘retrieval failure’), or even
- A lack of sleep (aka ‘my life as a parent’).
The strength of the science varies, as does the reported amount of information audiences can retain after specific time intervals. Regardless, I think Nick Morgan, Communication Theorist, sums up the literature quite nicely:
“People don’t remember much overall of what they hear and see in a speech, they don’t remember the details well, and they don’t retain stuff, especially, that they disagree with or that conflicts with their worldview.”
Takeaway: Your audience will forget most of what you tell them, so don’t overburden them with info.
Tip #5: Go beyond the graph
Don’t simply show stats. Offer an analysis, as Hans Rosling does here in the best stats you’ve ever seen. This link does a good job of breaking down some of the techniques that make Hans’ presentation so compelling. Give your audience a guided tour of the data, from the axes to the take-home message.
Tip #6: Reduce your word count
Avoid death by bullet point by telling stories using visuals. Click the link in this tip and take a look at the four bullet point slides, and then take a look at the pictures of each family presented in the article. Sometimes, a picture truly is worth a thousand words — and they’re a lot more memorable too!
Tip #7: Amp up the visual appeal
Speaking of visuals, follow these tips from one of our guest bloggers, Joanne Wincentak, about how to make a visually captivating presentation.
A secondary tip: Write out your presentation as a story, then create visual slides to complement your story. At the very least, don’t stand there and read your slides out loud. Ever.
Retrieval: When “I remember” becomes “let me find my notes.”
“In the internet age,” explains Julie Beck, senior editor at The Athletic, “recall memory — the ability to spontaneously call information up in your mind — has become less necessary.”
We prefer to unburden our minds by banking things in external memory — by taking notes we probably won’t look at again unless a specific question comes up, or by remembering a name or term we plan on Googling later on. This is an important paradigm for presenters to understand.
You may have all the facts. Your audience members may hear all of them. But they’re certainly not leaving the room with more than one or two of them still in their head. We simply don’t use our memories like that. Instead, give them something to think about. Then get out. Those who are deeply interested in your subject matter, or who need it later, will follow up for more information.
Takeaway: Make all your info easily accessible for easy reference, and spend most of your presentation simply making a connection and drawing your audience in to your subject matter.
Tip #8: Emphasize interpretation
Focus on what the facts mean (an analysis), rather than the facts themselves. David Epstein’s “Are athletes really getting faster, better, stronger?” is a great demonstration of this. “He walks you through only the essential information,” explains Mike Pacchione, “and then tells you why that information matters.” You might not remember all the stats, but you’ll remember parts of the stories he tells.
Tip #9: Involve your audience
To improve recall, make your audience a part of your presentation to improve their ability to encode your info. I’ve chosen a rather extreme example here, where Bobby McFerrin uses audience participation to demonstrate the pentatonic scale.
Remember — attention, retention, and retrieval
A poorly planned presentation will have everybody staring down at their phones quicker than you can read your second slide. Follow these tips to help keep those phones in their pockets, or even better, trained on you and your eye-catching slide deck.
About the Author
Patrick Faucher is the Creative & Strategic Services Lead at CHI. A communications strategist with over a dozen years experience, he specializes in creating content engineered to build awareness, understanding, engagement, and adoption through an approach rooted in design thinking (rapid prototyping) and behavioural insights (nudging).
