When you watch a PowerPoint presentation, what do you hate | Hacker News Reader

When you watch a PowerPoint presentation, what do you hate

I'm not looking for citations to how to make a great presentation, I'm asking for something more focused: when you watch someone in your field do a presentation, what specific things either about the slide or the talk irk you?

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Slides should never be read off. Slides are good as a note to remind you on what to talk about. They're good for presenting data or diagrams that make a topic clearer.

When I was teaching computer science, I'd have slides that basically just gave a photo of a transistor, or one example of converting binary to hex. The rest would be explained in person or on a whiteboard.

A good presenter should be interactive in some form. The slides are a hook, but not the story.

I hate when the presenter reads back to me what is on the slide. The slides is context that the presenter should elaborate on. We can all read what is on the slide.

When I used to teach at IBM, one of my favourite bits of recurring feedback was that I only use slides as a guide. It is the presenter's job to give context, which allows you to read the audience and go on anecdotal excursions when you know they're receptive to it, and it'll help them retain any new bits of knowledge. Some audiences are already familiar with bits of the material, so why batter them over the head with it just because you decided to spell it out verbatim in the visual material? Besides, reading the screen to the audience means you aren't paying enough attention to them to even know what parts they may be struggling with.

Amen.

Interesting - One of the things we teach is that we don't want our people competing with the slides, so if you want to put up a quote to expand upon it, first you have to read the quote - otherwise, you're talking and people are reading

I also hate “well you can read the slide”. Now I feel I need to speed read the damn thing as it could be whipped away at any minute. Also can everyone read that font size?

When I was working at Amazon a few years ago, PowerPoint was banned for most employees (at least for engineers and their immediate management). It was refreshing to see that the presenters had to be prepared to communicate a well thought-out topic, instead of relying on the slides (or worse, reading out the slides verbatim). Any dense form of communication had to be done in writing beforehand.

In my opinion, slides should only be used to visualize information; charts, digrams, illustrations, etc. They should also, sparingly, demonstrate the structure of the presentation; think of it as a serialized version of your mind map. Any more information should come from the presenter otherwise.

"This slide says..."

When people start off every (let alone any) slide this way, I'm left to believe the presenter doesn't know the material and has resorted to teaching me how to read.

This is related to what uberman said, with the blatant habit of telling the audience over and over again that they are reading the screen verbatim for them. Imagine if newscasters announced every time the teleprompter scrolled.

Even worse is when presenters say "This slide speaks to..." No it doesn't speak. The audience can only wish it would speak so they wouldn't have to listen to the pinhead up front of the room speaking down to them like they were school children.

Too many words on a slide and too small a font (contrast Lawrence Lessig's slides [0] or Dick Hardt's [1]). Looping animated gifs (especially when they're overused). Bad fonts, colors, layout. Monotonous delivery (e.g. saying ”I'm excited” without excitement in your voice).

NOTE, I just sat through 2 days of slides, so I'm a little cranky.

[0] https://youtu.be/rHTBQCpNm5o

[1] https://youtu.be/RrpajcAgR1E

Probably going too fast through the material. Of course it might be that I’m not their target audience.

And star wars pictures or similar crap to “make me laugh”. I haven’t watched Star Wars and even if I have I probably would rather you made the talk naturally interesting. Than insert a ba boom cha.

That I'm in a meeting.

And therefore at work!

Animations - any animations

When the presenter uses .pptx to launch presentation instead of .ppsx #smh

Dramatic reading of slides and 10-12 point typefaces in slides.

Couple of things:

1. Don't read the slides. We can all read. Give us additional context that the slide doesn't have. But...

2. If the slide communicates clearly and concisely what you need to say, don't keep talking for the sake of talking. Stick to what you need to get your point across. And...

3. As with all presentation and public speaking skills, figure out what your story is. What narrative are you trying to tell? For example, if your presentation is on the efficacy of an experiment, tell us a story about it. How did we start this journey, what happened along the way, and where are we going? Why should I give a crap about your presentation? And how can you get me personally invested in your success?

Some more context on the last point, which I actually think is the most important one. Tell a story and make me care!

Here's an example. I was at a meeting where the ad tech team was giving a presentation on their progress toward quarterly goals. The slides were essentially numbers, and the presentation went more or less like this:

"About 1.5% of all users clicked on ads in our app. This quarter our goal was to increase ad conversions by 25%, and we actually increased it by 32% for an additional $X hundred thousand dollars in revenue. Next slide, please."

Zzzzzzzzzzz... BORING! Who gives a shit? Nobody but the CFO cares. We all get paid our salary, not some percentage of the profits. A few hundred grand in revenue means bupkis for me and my team.

Make me care! That's all I really want. I want to care about what you're talking about.

So... here's the real story. You put up a slide with only one number on it: 1.5%. Then you say:

"Only about 1.5% of our 600,000 active monthly users clicked on ads this quarter. We made $X million dollars this quarter based on ads alone -- and that's just the start! With only 1.5% of users engaging with ads, there's nowhere to go but up! With a little more investment into our ad tech roadmap, we believe we can increase that to 5% within one quarter, and 10% by the end of the year. That represents a 10,000% increase in investment! Our ad sales team will be thrilled, the ad partners will be chomping at the bit to give us even more ad revenue, and our bottom line will skyrocket! One-point-five percent! Can we get to 10% in a year? I say yes. Yes, we can. Let's do it. Next slide, please."

This tells a story. It grabs you by the cojones and says, Hey! This is exciting! We have a HUGE opportunity in front of us! Not just incremental gains of 25% to 32%, but an enormous opportunity to not just double or triple but potentially 10x our product. That means more budget, more projects, more engineers, more hires, and more more more! You -- yes YOU! -- can be part of this incredible journey."

And that's a way better story to tell.

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