technical and scientific contents presentation aproach

The Art of the Technical Presentation: How to Present Technical Topics to Non-Technical People

So, you need to make a technical presentation to people outside of your field. It should be easy, right? All you have to do is let the bounty of your knowledge flow forth. But what if your message gets lost in the gap between your expertise and your audience’s point of view? Find out how to conquer the divide with an artfully designed presentation.

Although great presentations are a mix of education, communication, and collaboration, in the end, they all boil down to persuasion. Luckily, you don’t need a degree in psychology to get through to your listeners. These five tips will help you build a simple presentation that gets your message across, imparts key technical details, and leaves you and your audience feeling like you got what you needed.

Focus on your purpose

What’s the nitty gritty reason why you’re doing this presentation? Whether you’re seeking funding, partnership, a job, or a sale, you’re essentially trying to persuade your audience to take action. 

What do you want them to do when they’ve heard your spiel? Remember this as you plan each step of your presentation, and make sure that every element you add contributes to your purpose. If you notice your content going off on a tangent, cut that part out. Keep it tight, and you’ll keep their attention.

Find the Gap

Once you’ve got a clear purpose in mind, think about why you need to do this presentation. There must be something that your audience doesn’t know or fully appreciate yet, because otherwise they’d already be with you.

But be careful here. A lot of us fall into the trap of thinking they need to hear everything we know. If you take the time now to tease out the information that’s critical to your message, you’ll save yourself from overwhelming your listeners and losing their support. 

What’s the simplest way you can explain the difference between what they’re doing now, and what will happen if they adopt your idea? An infographic can be a powerful and succinct way to make your message hit home, and Beautiful.ai’s templates can make it easy.

One trick that will help you explain technical things in simpler terms is to empathize with your audience. What do they want to get from working with you? Let’s say you’re speaking to investors. They want a return on their investment, right? So you’ll need to highlight facts, figures, and examples that show why your proposal is going to profit them in the end. Think about who you’re speaking to, and how cooperating with you will make their lives better.

Some other common needs that your project might meet are helping your audience to save time, have less stress, or enjoy better relationships. Make sure you frame your request in terms of how it will benefit your viewers.

Images can be a powerful way to help listeners picture the results that you’re promising in vivid detail. With Beautiful.ai’s image gallery, you’ll have thousands of photos, icons, and visual elements at your fingertips that you can add to your presentation for free. You can also upload your own custom images with an effortless drag and drop.

Keep it short

Another way to make a technical topic easy to digest is to keep your presentation brief. One trick is to create an outline to distill your message into 3-5 key points. Another is to use Guy Kowasaki’s 10/20/20 rule (10 slides, 20 minutes, and a minimum of 30 font) to force yourself to be concise.

Some technical presenters check their urge to splurge by only addressing “ what ” their idea will accomplish, rather than the “how”.

And of course, you can save words and pack a stronger punch by incorporating visual elements into your presentation. Beautiful.ai has templates to help you easily build a pictograph or specialized slide with a Venn diagram, flowchart, bar graph, and more to make your point in fewer words with a greater lasting impression. 

Did you know that people remember things they learned with an accompanying visual over 6x longer than information they only heard verbally?

Use good design

Although you can insert good information into any presentation maker, even the most brilliant thoughts will be lost on your audience if the styling doesn’t flow. Awkward spacing, inconsistent colors and fonts, and illegible sizing are hugely distracting to your audience and can steal your thunder in a heartbeat.

Beautiful.ai uses smart slides technology to automatically adjust these elements on every slide. Whether you work with our templates for slides and presentations or customize a look that’s all your own, no matter what images or elements you add, the rules of good design will be applied. Your slides will come out balanced and beautiful and your message will be crystal clear. It’s like having a pro designer fixing each slide as you work.

No more all-night formatting battles or embarrassing, cluttered messes. Just powerful presentations that persuade your audience and make you proud.

When all is said and done, your technical presentation can get through to non-technical people if you stay focused on your purpose, bridge the gap between what they already know and what they need to learn to get on-board with your plan, empathize with their needs, and boil your message down into its most persuasive elements.

You can make an outstanding impact with even the most technical presentations if you start with an intelligent plan and use specialized design tools like Beautiful.ai. Try it today.

Beautiful.AI Team

Beautiful is an AI-powered presentation tool that makes it fast and easy for anyone to build clean, modern and professionally designed slides that they can be proud of.

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Technical Presentation

Structure diagram, criteria for success.

• The presentation starts with the motivating problem for the research and why it’s being presented.
• Every slide shows something relevant to the motivating problem.
• Every slide shows no more information than necessary to convey the message.
• Slide titles stand on their own; other text supports the visuals.
• The audience takes away the presenter’s desired message .

Identify Your Message and Purpose

Identify your message and goals as a presenter and use them to organize your presentation. Your message is what you wish to convey to the audience, and is your primary goal. Other goals could include eliciting feedback, receiving a job offer, etc. Use your goals to structure your presentation, making it easier for the audience to follow your logic and identify important points that support your goals.

For example, if your goal is to communicate a new scientific result, focus on the results and broader implications rather than your methodology. Specific methods should take a back seat (e.g. “I measured key material properties,” rather than “I found the thermal decomposition temperature and profile”). Spend more time focusing on what the result means, and how it can be used.

Alternatively, if your goal is to elicit feedback from colleagues on an experimental apparatus, focus more on the experimental methods. Compare the advantages and disadvantages to alternatives. Explain your assumptions, base models and why your proposed experimental design will give more useful results than other designs would.

In less formal settings such as lab meetings, you can explicitly tell your audience what you’re looking for (e.g., “I’d appreciate feedback on my experimental methods”).

Analyze Your Audience

Understanding your audience is of paramount importance for a successful presentation. Highlight how your goals overlap with what audience cares about, so they receive your message. A well-designed presentation will steer the audience’s attention such that you can lead them to the exact point that you want them to take away.

Different audiences have different goals for attending a presentation, and therefore pay attention to different things. For example, at the same talk, an engineer may be interested in using your result to solve their problem, a scientist in the broader scientific advance, a venture capitalist in its impact as a novel product, and clinician about how your device could improve their patients’ care. The introduction of your presentation should speak to the range of backgrounds and experiences in your audience.

That being said, often an audience consists of people with similar backgrounds and interests. Therefore, identify whether jargon is appropriate for an audience, and to what extent. Consider whether other methods, such as images or analogies, are more appropriate to convey concepts that would otherwise rely on jargon.

Plan Out the Presentation

Presentations are constrained by the fact that they progress linearly in time, unlike a written piece of communication, where the reader may jump forwards and backwards to get at the information they seek. Outline the content of the entire presentation first, then begin to design the slides, rather than jumping straight into them.

Lay out the order in which the content needs to be presented to achieve your goals, such that your message flows from point to point, topic to topic. This order may be very different from the structure of the journal paper you’ve already written.

Start by motivating your work with a problem that everyone cares about. Then develop your message step by step, from the background to the final message, so the logic flows clearly.

In many cases (depending on the audience), it might be most appropriate to reveal your conclusions up-front, so that the audience can tie everything else in the presentation back to supporting those conclusions. For instance, technology-focused program managers or engineering sponsors are likely most interested in your results, which will determine whether they are interested enough to pay attention to your process and justification. By contrast, certain scientific communities appreciate being taken through your scientific process to develop their own conclusions before you present yours.

Because the audience cannot immediately see a presentation’s structure like they can with a paper, it is often a good idea to provide a high-level roadmap of the presentation early on. At key points throughout the presentation, remind them of where they are on the roadmap.

Connect Your Work Back to the Broader Motivation

At the beginning of your talk, develop the broader context for your work and lay out the motivating questions you aim to answer. The audience should understand how your answers have an impact on the broader context, and why a solution was not immediately possible without your work.

At the next level down, when showing data and results, make sure it’s clear what they contribute to answering the motivating questions.

Anticipate Questions

If your audience is following along with your presentation, they’ll likely have questions about why you made certain decisions or didn’t make others. Sometimes, the questions could arise from what you’ve said and presented. Other times, they’ll arise from a listener’s knowledge of the field and the problem that you’re working on.

While you design your presentation, think about what kinds of questions may come up, and identify how you will address them. For less formal talks, you can anticipate interruptions to discuss these questions, whereas for more formal talks you should make sure that none of the questions are so big that they’ll preoccupy your listeners. For big questions, decide if you’ll explicitly address them in your talk. For smaller ones, consider adding back-up slides that address the issue.

Remember – while you know all of the information that is coming up in your talk, the audience probably does not. If they develop a question that doesn’t get addressed clearly, they could get distracted from the rest of the points you make.

You can use questions to create strong transitions: “seed” the listener’s thought process with the questions you’re about to answer in an upcoming slide. If a listener develops a question, and then you answer it immediately after, your message will stick much better!

Each Slide Should Convey a Single Point

Keep your message streamlined—make a single point per slide. This gives you control over the pace and logic of the talk and keeps everyone in the audience on the same page. Do not be afraid of white space—it focuses your audience’s attention.

The slide title should identify where you are on your roadmap and what topic the question the slide is answering. In other words, the audience should know exactly where in the presentation and what the slide answers just from the slide title.

Strong Titles Tell a Message

Strong titles highlight where on the roadmap you are, and hint at what question the slide is answering. Weak titles tend to be vague nouns that could be used across many slides or presentations. A rule of thumb is your title should be a clear, single-line phrase illustrating the importance of the slide.

Note that different mechanical engineering fields have different preferences for titles that are phrases versus full sentences. In general, design, system, or product-focused presentations tend to have short titles that only highlight what the speaker is saying, allowing audiences to focus more on the body of the slide, which is usually a figure. In other fields, a strong title might instead be a full sentence that states a message.

Emphasize Visuals

When a new slide is presented, most people will shift their attention from what you’re saying to the slide. People can often interpret figures and listen, but not read text and listen simultaneously. The more words on the slide, the less control you have over your audience’s attention. If you are reading words off the slide, you’ve lost the audience’s attention completely—they’ll just read the slide too.

Use brief statements and keywords to highlight and support the slide’s individual point. Slides are a visual medium, so use them for figures, equations, and as few words as possible to convey the meaning of the slide.

If you have a block of text on your slide, ask yourself what the takeaway message is, and what is the necessary supporting material (data, analysis). Then, identify how text can be reduced to still support your point clearly. Consider…

• Replacing text with figures, tables, or lists.
• Eliminating all but key words and phrases, and speaking the bulk of the text instead.
• Breaking up the slide into multiple slides with more visuals.

Replace blocks of text with easy-to-read pictures, tables or diagrams.

Left: The original slide provides specific information as text, but makes it easy for both speaker and audience to read directly off the slide, often leading to a distracted audience.

Right: The improved slide conveys the same information with a simple graphic and keywords, conveying the chronology more clearly, and allowing the reader to speak the same information without reading off the slide.

Simplify Figures

The purpose of a figure is to convey a message visually, whether it be supporting evidence or a main point. Your audience usually gives you the benefit of the doubt and assumes that whatever you show in the figure is important for them to understand. If you show too much detail, your audience will get distracted from the important point you want them to gather.

An effective presentation figure is often not one made for a paper. Unlike you scrutinizing your own data or reading an academic paper, your audience doesn’t have a long time to pore over the figure. To maximize its effectiveness, ask yourself what minimum things need to be shown for the figure to make its point. Remove anything that doesn’t illuminate the point to avoid distraction. Simplify data labels, and add emphasis to key parts using colors, arrows, or labels.

Additionally, presentations offer different opportunities than papers do for presenting data. You can use transitions on your slides to sequentially introduce new pieces of information to your slide, such as adding data to a plot, highlighting different parts of an experiment (or equation), or introducing text concepts as bullets.

Simplify data, simplify labels for emphasis.

Top: Academic referees and peers would prefer to see the complete theoretical model and experimental data (top), so they can interpret it for themselves. In addition, in papers, space is limited, while time to digest is not.

Bottom: But in a presentation, simplifying the data makes it easy to focus on the feature of interests for the presentation, or even at that moment (different regions may be highlighted from slide to slide). Slides provide plenty of space, while time is at a premium. [Adapted from Wind-Willassen et al., Phys. Fluids 25, 082002 (2013); doi:10.1063/1.4817612]

Introduce Your Data

Make sure your audience will be able to understand your data before you show it. They should know what the axes will be, what points in the plot generally represents, and what pattern or signal they’re looking for. If you’re showing a figure common to a specific audience, you may not need to explain as much. But if you show the data before the audience knows how to read it, they’ll stop listening to you, and instead scrutinize the figure, hoping that a knitted brow will help them understand.

If you are worried your audience won’t understand your data, one approach is to show sketches of what the data would should like if your hypothesis were true or false. Then show your real data.

For an audience unfamiliar with cyclic battery testing as a way to measure corrosion, first show a slide explaining how the electrical signal would appear without corrosion ( top ) before showing the slide with the actual data ( bottom ). Use parallel design across the explanation and data slides. This way, the audience is introduced to the logic of the experiments and how to draw conclusions from the data, making them more likely to follow and agree with the point made on the second slide. [Adapted from AAE2]

Be Critical of Visual and Textual Jargon

If there are discipline-accepted symbols, for example in fluid or electrical schematics, using them is an effective tool to simplify your visual for people in your field. However, if these may be unknown to a significant portion of your audience, be sure to add a descriptive keyword, label or legend.

Use simple, consistent visual design

A clean set of slides will minimize visual noise, focus the audience’s attention and improve the continuity between what you’re showing and telling. The graphical design is also important for setting the tone and professionalism of the presentation.

• Are colors related to each other? Do some carry intrinsic meaning (e.g. blue = cold, water, red = hot)?
• Are you using colors that are well-represented when projected?
• Are your color choices appropriate for colorblind members of the audience? Can you textures or line/point styles to differentiate data instead?
• Spread out elements on a slide to use space effectively—don’t be afraid of white space! By limiting the amount of information on a slide, you can control what your audience will focus on at each moment in time.
• Use your software’s alignment and centering features.
• When items are grouped as a list, make sure they actually belong under a helpful unifying theme.
• Make sure all text and figures are legible to the back of the room.

Resources and Annotated Examples

Annotated example 1.

This is a technical presentation given by MechE graduate students for a system design class. 13 MB

Annotated Example 2

This presentation was given by a MechE PhD student during interviews for postdoc positions. 1 MB

How to give a technical presentation (how to give a scientific talk)

By michael ernst, january, 2005 last updated: march 21, 2022, introduction, the content, answering questions, in-class presentations, practice talks, other resources.

(Also see my advice on giving a job talk and on making a technical poster .)

A successful career depends on the ability to give effective technical presentations, whether at a conference, to your research group, or as an invited speaker. This page notes some problems that I very frequently see in talks.

Get feedback by giving multiple practice talks ! One of the most effective ways to improve your work is to see the reactions of others and get their ideas and advice.

Think about the presentations you attend (or have attended in the past), especially if they are similar in some way to yours. What was boring about the other presentations? What was interesting about them? What did you take away from the presentation? What could you have told someone about the topic, 30 minutes after the end of the presentation?

Before you start preparing a talk, you need to know your goal and know your audience. You will have to customize your presentation to its purpose. Even if you have previously created a talk for another venue, you often need to make a new one, particularly if the audience differs or you have done more work in the meanwhile.

The goal of a talk you give to your research group is to get feedback to help you improve your research and your understanding of it, so you should plan for a very interactive style, with lots of questions throughout. In a conference talk , questions during the talk are unlikely, and you have much less time; your chief goal is to get people to read the paper or ask questions afterward. In a seminar or invited talk , you want to encourage questions, you have more time, and you should plan to give more of the big picture.

The goal of a talk is similar to the goal of a technical paper : to change the audience's behavior. Therefore, you should also read and follow my advice about writing a technical paper . Decide what the change is, and focus your talk around that. Typically, you have done some research, and to effect the change you need to convince the audience of 3 things: the problem is worthwhile (it is a real problem, and a solution would be useful), the problem is hard (not already solved, and there are not other ways to achieve equally good results), and that you have solved it. If any of these three pieces is missing, your talk is much less likely to be a success. So be sure to provide motivation for your work, provide background about the problem, and supply sufficient technical details and experimental results.

When you give a talk, ask yourself, “What are the key points that my audience should take away from the talk?” Then, elide everything that does not support those points. If you try to say too much (a tempting mistake), then your main points won't strike home and you will have wasted everyone's time. In particular, do not try to include all the details from a technical paper that describes your work; different levels of detail and a different presentation style are appropriate for each. Never paste PDF of a table from a paper to slides. Reformat the table to be more readable and to remove information that is not essential. The talk audience does not have as much time to comprehend the details as a paper reader does.

Before you create slides, a good way to determine what your talk should say is to explain your ideas verbally to someone who does not already understand them. (You may use a blank whiteboard, but that often is not necessary.) You may need to do this a few times before you find the most effective way to present your material. Notice what points you made and in what order, and organize the talk around that. Slides should not be an obstacle that constrains your talk, but they should support the talk you want to give.

Do not try to fit too much material in a talk. About one slide per minute is a good pace (if lots of your slides are animations that take only moments to present, you may have more slides). Remember what your key points are, and focus on those. The key point should be written on the slide, for example as its title or as a callout. Don't present more information than your audience can grasp; for example, often intuitions and an explanation of the approach are more valuable than the gory details of a proof. If you try to fit the entire technical content of a paper into a talk, you will rush and the audience may come away understanding nothing. It's better to think of the talk as an advertisement for the paper that gives the key ideas, intuitions, and results, and that makes the audience eager to read your paper or to talk with you to learn more. That does not mean holding back important details — merely omitting less important ones. You may also find yourself omitting entire portions of the research that do not directly contribute to the main point you are trying to make in your talk.

Just as there should be no extra slides, there should be no missing slides. As a rule, you shouldn't speak for more than a minute or so without having new information appear. If you have an important point to make, then have a slide to support it. (Very few people can mesmerize an audience on a technical topic, and leave the audience with a deep understanding of the key points, without any visual props. Unfortunately, you are probably not one of them.) As a particularly egregious example, do not discuss a user interface without presenting a picture of it — perhaps multiple ones. As another example, you should not dwell on the title slide for very long, but should present a graphic relevant to the problem you are solving, to make the motivation for your work concrete.

Slide titles. Use descriptive slide titles. Do not use the same title on multiple slides (except perhaps when the slides constitute an animation or build). Choose a descriptive title that helps the audience to appreciate what the specific contribution of this slide is. If you can't figure that out, then you do not yet understand your own material.

Introduction. Start your talk with motivation and examples — and have lots of motivation and examples throughout. For the very beginning of your talk, you need to convince the audience that this talk is worth paying attention to: it is solving an important and comprehensible problem. Your first slide after the title slide should be motivation, such as an example of the problem you are solving.

Outline slides. Never start your talk with an outline slide. (That's boring, and it's too early for the audience to understand the talk structure yet.) Outline slides can be useful, especially in a talk that runs longer than 30 minutes, because they help the audience to regain its bearings and to keep in mind your argument structure. Present an outline slide (with the current section indicated via color, font, and/or an arrow) at the beginning of each major section of the talk, except for the introductory, motivational section.

Conclusion. The last slide should be a contributions or conclusions slide, reminding the audience of the take-home message of the talk. Do not end the talk with future work, or with a slide that says “questions” or “thank you” or “the end” or merely gives your email address. And, leave your contributions slide up after you finish the talk (while you are answering questions). One way to think about this rule is: What do you want to be the last thing that the audience sees (or that it sees while you field questions)?

Builds/animations. When a subsequent slide adds material to a previous one (or in some other way just slightly changes the previous slide), all common elements must remain in exactly the same position, pixel-for-pixel. A good way to check this is to quickly transition back and forth between the two slides several times. If you see any jitter, then correct the slide layout to remove it. You may need to leave extra space on an early slide to accommodate text or figures to be inserted later; even though that space may look a little unnatural, it is better than the alternative. If there is any jitter, the audience will know that something is different, but will be uneasy about exactly what has changed (the human eye is good at detecting the change but only good at localizing changes when those changes are small and the changes are smooth). You want the audience to have confidence that most parts of the slide have not changed, and the only effective way to do that is not to change those parts whatsoever. You should also consider emphasizing (say, with color or highlighting) what has been added on each slide.

Keep slides uncluttered. Don't put too much text (or other material) on a slide. When a new slide goes up, the audience will turn its attention to comprehending that slide. If the audience has to read a lot of text, they will tune you out, probably missing something important. This is one reason the diagrams must be simple and clear, and the text must be telegraphic. As a rule of thumb, 3 lines of text for a bullet point is always too much, and 2 full lines is usually too much. Shorten the text, or break it into pieces (say, subbullet points) so that the audience can skim it without having to ignore you for too long.

Do not read your slides word-for-word. Reading your slides verbatim is very boring and will cause the audience to tune out. You are also guaranteed to go too fast for some audience members and too slow for others, compared to their natural reading speed, thus irritating many people. If you find yourself reading your slides, then there is probably too much text on your slides. The slides should be an outline, not a transcript. That is, your slides should give just the main points, and you can supply more detail verbally. It's fine to use the slides as a crutch to help you remember all the main points and the order in which you want to present them. However, if you need prompting to remember the extra details, then you do not have sufficient command of your material and you need to practice more before giving your talk.

Just as you should not read text verbatim, you should not read diagrams verbatim. When discussing the architecture of a system, don't just read the names of the components or give low-level details about the interfaces between them. Rather, explain whatever is important, interesting, or novel about your decomposition; or discuss how the parts work together to achieve some goal that clients of the system care about; or use other techniques to give high-level understanding of the system rather than merely presenting a mass of low-level details.

(It's possible to overdo the practice of limiting what information appears on each slide, and you do want to have enough material to support you if there are questions or to show that the simplified model you presented verbally is an accurate generalization. But the mistake of including too much information is far more common.)

Text. Keep fonts large and easy to read from the back of the room. If something isn't important enough for your audience to be able to read, then it probably does not belong on your slides.

Use a sans-serif font for your slides. (Serifed fonts are best for reading on paper, but sans-serif fonts are easier to read on a screen.) PowerPoint's “Courier New” font is very light (its strokes are very thin). If you use it, always make it bold, then use color or underlining for emphasis where necessary.

Figures. Make effective use of figures. Avoid a presentation that is just text. Such a presentation misses important opportunities to convey information. It is also is wearying to the audience.

Images and visualizations are extremely helpful to your audience. Include diagrams to show how your system works or is put together. Never include generic images, such as clip art, that don't relate directly to your talk. For example, if you have a slide about security, don't use the image of a padlock. As another example, when describing the problem your work solves, don't use an image of a person sitting at a computer looking frustrated. Just as good pictures and text are better than text alone, text alone is better than text plus bad pictures.

When you include a diagram on a slide, ensure that its background is the same color as that of the slide. For example, if your slides have a black background, then do not paste in a diagram with a white background, which is visually distracting, hard to read, and unattractive. You should invert the diagram so it matches the slide (which may require redrawing the diagram), or invert the slide background (e.g., use a white slide background) to match the diagrams. A light-colored background with dark text is usually the best choice (preferably white background with black text; see the next paragraph about eye candy).

Do not use eye candy such as transition effects, design elements that appear on every slide, or multi-color backgrounds. At best, you will distract the audience from the technical material that you are presenting. At worst, you will alienate the audience by giving them the impression that you are more interested in graphical glitz than in content. Your slides can be attractive and compelling without being fancy. Make sure that each element on the slides contributes to your message; if it does not, then remove it.

Emphasis. Slides that are monocolor black on a white background can be boring. This tires the audience, and it may prevent them from appreciating the big picture. Use color, callouts (e.g., arrows or speech bubbles), or other mechanisms to draw attention to the most important parts of your slides or graphs. For example, suppose you have a list of 3-5 bullet points, each one line of text long. You might want to emphasize the 1-3 most important words in each bullet point.

Color. About 5% of American males are color-blind, so augment color with other emphasis where possible. For example, on an outline slide, in addition to color I use boldface and also a right arrow (⇒) in the left margin to indicate the current section of the talk.

The presentation

Make eye contact with the audience. This draws them in. It also helps you determine when they are confused or have lost interest, and whether your pacing is too fast or too slow.

Stand and face the audience.

• Don't give a talk while seated. Standing gives you more energy, the talk is more dynamic, and it is easier to maintain eye contact.
• Do not face the screen, which puts your back to the audience. This is offputting, prevents you from getting feedback from the audience's body language, and can cause difficulty in hearing/understanding you. Do not look down at your computer, either, which shares many of the same problems.
• Don't stand in front of the screen. This prevents the audience from viewing your slides.
• Being animated is good, but do not pace. Pacing is very distracting, and it gives the impression that you are unprofessional or nervous.

When giving a presentation, never point at your laptop screen, which the audience cannot see. Amazingly, I have seen many people do this! Using a laser pointer is fine, but the laser pointer tends to shake, especially if you are nervous, and can be distracting. I prefer to use my hand, because the talk is more dynamic if I stride to the screen and use my whole arm; the pointing is also harder for the audience to miss. You must touch the screen physically, or come within an inch of it. If you do not touch the screen, most people will just look at the shadow of your finger, which will not be the part of the slide that you are trying to indicate.

If you find yourself suffering a nervous tic, such as saying “um” in the middle of every sentence, then practice more, including in front of audiences whom you do not know well.

If you get flustered, don't panic. One approach is to stop and regroup; taking a drink of water is a good way to cover this, so you should have water on hand even if you don't suffer from dry throat. Another approach is to just skip over that material; the audience is unlikely to know that you skipped something.

Think about your goal in giving the talk. When presenting to your own research group, be sure to leave lots of time for discussion and feedback at the end, and to present the material in a way that invites interaction after and perhaps during the talk. (When presenting to your own group, you can perhaps give a bit less introductory material, though it's hard to go wrong with intro material. It should go quickly for that audience; you ensure that everyone is using terms the same way; and it's always good to practice presenting the motivation, context, background, and big ideas.)

For computer science conferences, the typical dress code is “business casual”. (For men, this is a dress shirt with slacks or jeans.) Some people dress more formally, some more casually. The most important thing is that you are comfortable with your clothing; if you are not, your discomfort will lead to a worse presentation.

Answering questions from the audience is very hard! Even after you become very proficient at giving a talk, it will probably take you quite a bit longer to become good at answering questions. So, don't feel bad if that part does not go perfectly, but do work on improving it.

Just as you practice your talk, practice answering questions — both the ones that you can predict, and also unpredictable ones. Give practice talks to people who are willing to ask such questions.

When an audience member asks a question, it is a good idea to repeat the question, asking the questioner whether you have understood it, before answering the question. This has three benefits.

• You ensure that you have understood the question. When thinking under pressure, it can be far too easy to jump to conclusions, and it is bad to answer a question different than the one that was asked. A related benefit is that you get to frame the question in your own words or from your own viewpoint.
• You give yourself a few moments to think about your answer.
• If the audience member does not have a microphone, the rest of the audience may not have been able to hear the question clearly.

Be willing to answer a question with “no” or “I don't know”. You will get into more trouble if you blather on or you make up an answer on the fly.

For an in-class presentation by a student, you will be judged on how well other people understand the material at the end of the class, not on how well you understand the material at the beginning of the class. (You do need to understand the material, but that is not the main point.)

When you present someone else's paper in class, you should cover not only the technical details (people generally do a good job of this), but also what is novel and why others didn't do it before. That is just as important but very often overlooked. Focus on what is important about the paper, not just on what is easy to explain or to give an example for.

Know what your main point is, and don't get bogged down in easier-to-understand but less interesting details. Try not to bring up a topic until you are ready to discuss it in detail — don't bring it up multiple times.

Encourage questions — it's the best way to deepen understanding — and be able to answer them. If other students wrote questions in a reading summary, be responsive to them. When you ask a question, don't assume the answer in the form of your question. For example, don't ask, “Was there anything novel in the paper, or not?” but “What was novel in the paper?” It can be very effective to ask a question that reveals understanding of a subtle or easy-to-misunderstand point (but an important one!) in the paper, because this will lead the audience members to reflect both on the paper and on the way they read and understood it. Don't be too abstruse, and don't get bogged down in unimportant details just to show your mastery of them.

Examples are often very helpful. Augment your talking with visuals on the board or slides. Either is fine. The board may encourage more interaction (and it slows you down in a beneficial way), but does require pre-planning; don't just go up and start drawing. Most people find comfort in having pre-prepared slides, and slides can be a good choice because they can be more legible and detailed, can include animations, etc. Don't waste a huge amount of time on elaborate slide decks, though; that is not the point.

Always give at least one practice talk before you present in front of an audience. Even if you have read over your slides and think you know how the talk will go, when you speak out loud your ideas are likely to come out in a different way. (This is true about writing , too: even if you know what you want to say, it takes several revisions to figure out the best way to say it.) In fact, you should practice the talk to yourself — speaking out loud in front of a mirror, for example — before you give your first practice talk. In your individual practice session, you must say every word you intend to in the actual talk, not skipping over any parts.

It can be a good idea to keep your practice talk audience relatively small — certainly fewer than 10 people. In a large group, many people won't bother to speak up. If the pool of potential attendees is larger than 10, you can give multiple practice talks, since the best feedback is given by someone who has not seen the talk (or even the material) before. Giving multiple practice talks is essential for high-profile talks such as conference talks and interview talks. Avoid a small audience of people you don't trust, who might be unanimous in a wrong opinion; getting a balance of opinions will help you avoid making too many mistakes in any one direction.

Videotape yourself to see how you come across to others. This information can be a bit traumatic, but it is invaluable in helping you to improve.

When giving a practice talk, number your slides (say, in the corner), even if you don't intend to include slide numbers in your final presentation.

When giving a practice talk, it is very helpful to distribute hardcopy slides (remember to include slide numbers) so that others can easily annotate them and return them to you at the end of the talk. (Also, the audience will spend less time trying to describe what slide their comment applies to, and more time writing the comment and paying attention to you.) For non-practice talks, don't give out hardcopy slides, as they would tempt the audience to pay attention to the piece of paper instead of to you.

Go to other people's practice talks. This is good citizenship, and cultivating these obligations is a good way to ensure that you have an audience at your practice talk. Furthermore, attending others' talks can teach you a lot about good and bad talks — both from observing the speaker and thinking about how the talk can be better (or is already excellent), and from comparing the feedback of audience members to your own opinions and observations. This does not just apply to practice talks: you should continually perform such introspective self-assessment.

(Also see Tessa Lau 's advice on giving a practice talk — which focuses on a practice talk for a PhD qualifying exam, but is relevant to talks in general.)

Here are some other good resources for speakers who wish to give a good talk.

See Ian Parberry's speaker's guide .

The LaTeX Beamer documentation has some good advice.

Back to Advice compiled by Michael Ernst .

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

4.6 Presentations

Presentations are an interesting genre, since they can cover a variety of genres and purposes. Presentations provide the opportunity to present information in a multimodal format, and often require you to condense information for a broad audience. Within the very broad genre of “presentation” many genres fall with more specific conventions and constraints. Some examples include:

• Conference presentations
• Less formal meeting or business presentations (internal)

As technology continues to develop, you might consider other genres under the umbrella of “presentations,” including:

• Youtube videos

In this section, we talk about the specific genre of presentations, but we also focus on taking complex information (such as gathered in a formal report) and reworking, condensing, and remixing that information into a presentation, a website, a poster or infographic, or a podcast.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion

Just like with the other common genres that we’ve discussed so far, presentations are developed for a specific audience. So, you need to consider how your audience might best receive the information that you are working to communicate. Presentations are a great way to reach an audience, and as a communicator you get to explore various communication modes and approaches. As with anything else, what might work for one audience would not work for another audience; think back to the different ways to communicate the process of conducting a Covid-19 nasal test. Each example was effective, but only in the context of their intended audience.

Technical presentations are a specific genre that often take the complex, lengthy information included in a formal report and condenses and translates that information in a way that includes visual and audio communication modes. Consider why it is useful to present information in various ways (as a formal report and as a 5-10 minute presentation). How might presenting information in various ways or formats increase accessibility? How might developing a presentation work towards equity of information access?

When creating a presentation, the principles of universal design are important things to keep in mind. One example might be adding captions if you create a presentation that has any audio component. The captions are essential for any audience members who are hearing impaired, AND they make it easier to absorb content and understand the audio for your entire audience. Remember that universal design means that accessibility of information is an essential part of your presentation: do not think about accessibility after you’ve created your content, but work it in from the beginning and throughout your process.

Technical presentations

Technical presentations can vary quite a bit in length and content, depending on your purpose, audience, and context (remember that the rhetorical situation is always relevant!). Generally speaking, a technical presentation will:

• Condense a longer text, such as a formal report
• Summarize the most important, useful, or meaningful information from that text
• Use visuals, text, and audio together in order to tell a story

Most often, presentations work to inform, to persuade, or both. All the things that we’ve discussed so far are important to consider when you create a presentation, including plain language, document design, and considering diversity, equity, and inclusion. Just as with any other genre, to create an effective presentation, you must understand your audience.

Google Slides

These are only 3 of many free tutorials available online.

When creating effective presentation slides, be sure that you balance the amount of information on each slide. Consider how your audience is interacting with these slides: they are not likely sitting down with so much time to carefully read through each one. Rather, they may only have a minute to take in all the content. So, less is often better than putting too much text on any one slide. It’s also important to use a variety of visual modes–such as graphics and images–along with text.

The text that you choose should summarize key points, and the images should reinforce or illustrate those points. Do not make your audience take in large blocks of text. Instead, summarize key questions, data points, findings, and conclusions. Show them examples that help to illustrate these important points, but do not overwhelm them. You cannot include everything in a presentation that you would include in a lengthy report. Rather, you must choose the most important pieces so that your audience has a clear idea of what you want them to take away from your project.

When planning and creating audio, be sure that you do not simply read the text from our slides. Instead, you can use the audio portion of your presentation to further explain key concepts. Give your reader a bit more detail, but do not overwhelm them. A presentation works to create a narrative or tell a story. The audio and text should complement each other, but not be exactly the same (if you’ve ever attended a presentation where the presenter read each slide out loud, you know how uninteresting that can be!).

Finally, consider accessibility when you design your presentation. Create closed captions or subtitles when recording audio, and be sure to incorporate the principles of universal design. Try to imagine how to make information accessible to your audience in regards to your text, your use of language and terminology, your use of visuals and graphics, and your use of audio.

Message titles

On way to create stronger, more memorable presentations is through the use of  message titles  rather than  subject titles  for each slide. It’s important to use strong titles, and a message title delivers a full message to your reader. A subject title is briefer and less specific. An example of the difference between a message title and subject title might be:

Subject title: 

Covid-19 prevention

Message title: 

How can I protect myself from Covid-19?

A message title is generally more effective for audiences because it provides more information. Further, delivering a full message helps audiences to retain the information presented in that slide and it frames what you cover in that section of your presentation. Remember that audiences must  listen  to your presentation and  read  your slides at the same time. Subject titles provide information, but message titles helps audiences place that information into a more specific framework. A message title delivers your message in a more complete way.

Condensing and remixing

While most formal reports use some sort of presentation software and rely on a combination of slides (which contain visuals and text) and audio (which may be spoken live as you present to an audience or may be recorded ahead of time), there are other ways to remix and present information in a condensed and useful way. As technology develops, so does the presentation genre. For example, podcasts, videos, or websites might be useful in place of a technical presentation, again depending on the audience, purpose, and context.

If you are enrolled in WRIT 3562W, you are not asked to create a podcast or website; however, you may come across such genres and want to use them as sources in your own report. And, you will likely want to (or be asked to!) create a website or podcast someday. So how can you begin to take information presented in something like a formal report and revise, translate, and remix it for a completely different medium?

First, consider the rhetorical situation and reflect on your own experiences as a website user or a podcast listener. Which websites do you like best? Which podcasts do you enjoy? Then, do some reflection and analysis and consider the following questions:

• When interacting with a website, what features are most important to you? How are you typically interacting with content (do you want to be able to search for something specific, do you want something easy to skim, do you want to deeply read all the text, etc.)?
• Think of the easiest to navigate website you’ve visited recently; what specific features made it easy to navigate? How did it use text, images, alignment, repetition, contrast, colors, language to help you know how to find and understand information?
• Think of the most difficult to navigate website that you’ve ever visited; what made it difficult? What specific features can you identify or isolate that made it hard to find information?
• Consider your favorite podcast; how does the creator(s) organize the content and present information clearly? How long does it take to listen to? What environment do you usually listen to podcasts in (your car, at home, using headphones, on a speaker while you cook dinner…). What specific features can you identify or isolate that make it enjoyable?

These types of reflection questions help you to make decisions about the texts that you create. They are useful when considering conventions or strengths of specific genres, AND they are useful when you have to create a genre that is completely new to you. Remember that analyzing the rhetorical situation and genre conventions together make it manageable as you approach any new communication task.

Throughout this text, we’ve discussed technical communication as rhetorical, as always concerned with diversity, equity, and inclusion, how we define or set the boundaries for technical communication, and the conventions of common genres. As you continue your education and practice as a technical communicator, or as you approach any new communication situation, keep doing the work of analysis and reflection. Consider how each act of communication engages a specific audience for a specific purpose. Even the most seemingly objective genres require you to make choices: what information do you include, whose voices and experiences do you elevate, how do you take in feedback and revise your texts, how do you approach research in a way that reduces bias and incorporates marginalized experiences–these are all important pieces of the communication process. As technical communication continues to develop and evolve, and as technology and genres also change, keep these considerations in mind.

Activity and Reflection: Presenting information 

Together or with a partner, find a presentation (you can search YouTube for technical presentations or Ted Talks). Reflect on the following questions to perform a  rhetorical analysis  on the presentation:

• Who is the target audience for this presentation? How can you tell?
• What is the main purpose or goal of the presentation? How can you tell?
• What did you like about the presentation (be specific)? What features make it effective?
• What would you change, and why?
• How does the presentation use  text  and audio  together to deliver a message? How do these elements complement each other?

Introduction to Technical and Professional Communication Copyright © 2021 by Brigitte Mussack is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Craft Effective Technical Presentations: 5 Success Strategies

Dominik Sumer

Aug 30, 2023 · 8 min read

Technical presentations can be tricky to execute. You know your subject inside out, but is that enough?

How do you ensure your audience stays engaged throughout the presentation, and how do you answer their questions effectively?

This blog post provides modern strategies for crafting effective technical presentations, covering all aspects, from understanding your audience to handling questions and feedback.

You will also learn about the practical parts of technical presentations, including proper tools and examples.

These tips will help you deliver a successful presentation that makes a lasting impact on your audience.

Anyone can use this guide as a checklist , but the following can get huge benefits:

• Software Engineers or Developers
• Tech YouTubers
• Candidates who are presenting in tech interviews
• Social Media Influences like tech on LinkedIn
• Students, Tech Teachers, and much more.

Identify your Audience:

In our previous guide about technical writing , we shared 19 expert tips you should know.

Let me quickly highlight the five most important tips:

• Understand Audience
• Define Purpose
• Always do your research
• Organize thoughts
• Avoid Jargon and Acronyms

Understanding your audience is not a first step but why?

Because first, you need to identify WHO is your target audience.

Question it by yourself, and write down the three closest audiences like:

• JavaScript Developers: Those who want to learn about JavaScript technologies. You can help them learn the tech faster by sharing beautiful code snippets .
• SaaS Owners: Those tech founders who want to learn about the ongoing development progress of their software. Give them tips on how to tackle obstacles in software development by using technical presentation slides .
• Tech Talks: Those interested in code screencasts within the video content like YouTube or TED Talks. You can use rich animated content, like videos created with snappify.

So, identify your audience first and use the smart tools to simplify things for you and the audience.

Use Smart Tools:

So, what are smart tools in the digital world?

Smart Tools are intelligent software applications that help users perform complex tasks more efficiently and effectively.

They simplify processes, improve productivity, and help achieve goals quickly and easily online.

You can learn about our curated list of technical writing tools , which comes with Artificial Intelligence.

Before using your tool for technical presentations, make sure to check these features first:

• Can you create a fully animated slide?
• Is there any feature for Video Export?
• The tool must be user-friendly to avoid presentation disruptions.
• Clear and visually appealing infographics are important for tools with graphs, diagrams, or slides.

Now that you know enough about the features, here is another list of modern tools to help you become a good presenter.

• Snappify: It can help you present code beautifully and has all the features I have mentioned above. It also has pre-made templates to help you create and share snippets faster.
• PowerPoint: A user-friendly software for creating dynamic presentations with text, images, charts, and multimedia elements.
• Google Slides: A web based presentation tool that lets users create basic presentations and save them online.

Let's take a closer look at the Slides and Video Export features of snappify and how it can become your new companion for your technical presentations.

It comes with a Present button at the top of the bar, which can help you show your code snippets in the presentation mode.

In slides, there are several options for animations:

Besides showing your presentation, you can download all slides or export videos to share on social media.

You can follow this tutorial on creating code presentations with snappify .

Video Export : TypeWriter Example

Video showcasing the TypeWriter transition

Structure Your Presentation

To craft an effective technical presentation, it is crucial to structure your content in a clear and logical flow .

Begin with an attention-grabbing introduction that captivates your audience and sets the tone for the presentation.

Organize your content into sections or chapters, making it easier for your audience to comprehend and follow along.

• Divide your presentation into key sections or points.
• Each section should have a clear focus and contribute to your main message.
• Use bullet points and concise text to support each point.
• Transition smoothly between sections to maintain a logical flow.
• Include visuals such as images, charts, graphs, animations , and videos to enhance understanding and engagement.
• Share real-life examples or case studies that illustrate your points.
• Use relevant data and statistics to back up your points and add credibility.

Finally, remember to summarize key points and provide a memorable conclusion to leave a lasting impact.

Create your next presentation

snappify will help you to create stunning presentations and videos.

This video was created using snappify 🤩

Choose a good Font and Color for the Slides

Font and color choices in slides play a key role in shaping the impact and effectiveness of your presentation.

These choices go beyond aesthetics; they influence how your content is perceived, understood, and remembered.

Here are quick tips to make effective font and color choices:

• Readability: Use simple, easy-to-read fonts that can be seen from far away. Avoid fancy or complex fonts that can make reading difficult.
• Consistency: For a professional look, limit your presentation to two font styles: headings and body text.
• Contrast: Use contrasting fonts for headings and body text for better readability. Headings should be in bold or larger font, while body text should be in regular font.
• Hierarchy: Establish hierarchy with color by using bold or contrasting hues for headings and more subdued tones for body text.
• Limit Bright Colors: While bright colors can add visual interest, avoid using too many as they can be distracting and make your presentation look unprofessional.

Remember that your font and color choices should support your technical content and help convey your message effectively.

Test your chosen fonts and colors on different screens to ensure they appear as intended.

Consistency in font and color usage contributes to a polished and visually appealing presentation.

Also take a look at our handcrafted templates to get started with your technical presentations.

Engage with Stories

People remember stories better than facts alone.

Include relatable case studies to illustrate your points and make your presentation more relatable.

Storytelling is a powerful technique that can elevate your technical presentation from informative to captivating.

Humans have been using stories to communicate and connect for centuries, and integrating this approach into your presentation can help you create a deeper and more lasting impact on your audience.

Here's how you can effectively use storytelling to engage your audience during your technical presentation:

Quick Story Example:

Meet Maya, a talented developer on a mission to make her technical presentations truly captivating.

One day, she discovered snappify, a tool rumored to bring code snippets to life .

Maya decided to give it a shot.

With snappify, Maya's code snippets transformed into dynamic visuals that got animated smoothly across the screen.

During her presentation, she used it to break down complex algorithms step by step.

The audience was captivated, effortlessly following along as the code was visually displayed.

Impressed by Maya's presentation, fellow developers asked about snappify.

Maya shared how the tool had elevated her delivery, making code accessible to all.

Afterward, snappify was known for its captivating technical demonstrations.

Developers worldwide used it to transform complex code into interesting visuals, captivating audiences and enhancing code comprehension.

Now, turn your boring code into fancy and beautiful snippets before sharing it on social media or inside your technical presentation.

In conclusion, delivering a successful technical presentation requires technical skills, engaging visuals, and audience interaction.

A compelling story and utilizing effective visuals are crucial for delivering a memorable and impactful presentation.

Following the tips in this comprehensive guide, you can always deliver successful technical presentations for interviews, YouTube videos, tech talks, social media posts, and much more.

How can I adjust my technical presentation to different levels of expertise among the audience?

Adjust technical depth and terminology based on audience familiarity. Provide real-world examples for beginners and deeper insights for experts.

What is the difference between presentation and technical presentation?

Presentations can be either general or technical. General presentations inform or persuade, while technical presentations explain complex concepts to an audience with relevant expertise like engineering, coding, or more.

How do I overcome nervousness before a technical presentation?

Practice is key. Familiarity with your content and great rehearsal can help reduce anxiety during the presentation.

What is most important in technical presentation?

Effectively convey complex concepts with clear explanations, visuals, and relevance to the audience's needs and expertise - that's clarity.

What are the four essential components of a technical presentation?

A technical presentation has four parts: intro, content, conclusion, and Q&A. Introduce, present, summarize, and impress.

How do you engage your audience during a technical presentation?

To keep your audience engaged during a technical presentation, use relatable examples, break down complex information, and include interactive elements like polls or Q&A sessions. Personal stories can also make it more interesting.

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Reference management. Clean and simple.

5 tips for giving a good scientific presentation

What is a scientific presentation?

What is the objective of a scientific presentation, why is giving scientific presentations necessary, how to give a scientific presentation, tip 1: prepare during the days leading up to your talk, tip 2: deal with presentation nerves by practicing simple exercises, tip 3: deliver your talk with intention, tip 4: be adaptable and willing to adjust your presentation, tip 5: conclude your talk and manage questions confidently, concluding thoughts, other sources to help you give a good scientific presentation, frequently asked questions about giving scientific presentations, related articles.

You have made the slides for your scientific presentation. Now, you need to prepare to deliver your talk. But, giving an oral scientific presentation can be nerve-wracking. How do you ensure that you deliver your talk well, and leave a good impression on the audience?

Mastering the skill of giving a good scientific presentation will stand you in good stead for the rest of your career, as it may lead to new collaborations or even new employment opportunities.

In this guide, you’ll find everything you need to know to give a good oral scientific presentation, including

• Why giving scientific presentations is important for your career;
• How to prepare before giving a scientific presentation;
• How to keep the audience engaged and deliver your talk with confidence.

The following tips are a product of our research into the literature on giving scientific presentations as well as our own experiences as scientists in giving and attending talks. We advise on how to make a scientific presentation in another post.

A scientific presentation is a talk or poster where you describe the findings of your research to others. An oral presentation usually involves presenting slides to an audience. You may give an oral scientific presentation at a conference, give an invited seminar at another institution, or give a talk as part of an interview. A PhD thesis defense is one type of scientific presentation.

➡️ Read about how to prepare an excellent thesis defense

The objective of a scientific presentation is to communicate the science such that the audience:

• Learns something new;
• Leaves with a clear understanding of the key message of your research;
• Has confidence in you and your work;
• Remembers you afterward for the right reasons.

As a scientist, one of your responsibilities is disseminating your scientific knowledge by giving presentations. Communicating your research to others is an altruistic act, as it is an opportunity to teach others about your research findings, and the knowledge you have gained while researching your topic.

Giving scientific presentations confers many career benefits , such as:

• Having the opportunity to share your ideas and to have insightful conversations with other scientists. For example, a thoughtful question may create a new direction for your research.
• Gaining recognition for your work and generating excitement for your research program can help you to forge new collaborations and to obtain more citations of your papers. It's your chance to impress some of the biggest names in your field, build your reputation as a scientist, and get more people interested in your work.
• Improving your future employment prospects by getting presentation experience in high-stakes settings and by having talks listed on your academic CV.

➡️ Learn how to write an academic CV

You might have just 10 minutes for your talk. But those 10 minutes are your golden ticket. To make them shine, you'll need to put in some homework. You need to think about the story you want to tell , create engaging slides , and practice how you're going to deliver it.

Why all this effort? Because the rewards are potentially huge. Imagine speaking to the top names in your field, boosting your visibility, and getting more eyes on your work. It's more than just a talk; it's your chance to showcase who you are and what you do.

Here we share 5 tips for giving effective scientific presentations.

• Prepare adequately for your talk on the days leading up to it
• Deal with presentation nerves
• Deliver your talk with intention
• Be adaptable
• Conclude your talk with confidence

You should prepare for your talk with the seriousness it deserves and recognize the potential it holds for your career advancement. Here are our suggestions:

• Rehearse your talk multiple times to ensure smooth flow. Know the order of your slides and key transitions without memorizing every word. Practice your speech as though you are discussing with friendly and attentive listeners.
• Record your speech and listen back to yourself giving your talk while doing household chores or while going for a walk. This will help you remember the important points of your talk and feel more comfortable with the flow of it on the day.
• Anticipate potential questions that may arise during your talk, write down your responses to those questions, and practice them aloud.
• Back up your presentation in cloud storage and on a USB key. Bring your laptop with you on the day of your talk, if needed.
• Know the time and location of your talk. Familiarize yourself with the room, if you can. Introduce yourself to the moderator before the session begins.
• Giving a talk is a performance, so preparing yourself physically and mentally is essential. Prioritize good sleep and hydration, and eat healthy, nourishing food on the day of your talk. Plan your attire to be both professional and comfortable.

It’s natural to feel nervous before your talk, but you want to harness that energy to present your work with confidence. Here are some ways to manage your stress levels:

• Remember that your audience want to listen to you and learn from you. Believe that your audience will be kind, friendly, and interested, rather than bored and skeptical.
• Breathing slow and deep before your talk calms the mind and nervous system. Psychologist Amy Cuddy recommends practicing open, confident postures while sitting and standing to help you get into a positive frame of mind.
• Fight off impostor syndrome with positive affirmations. You’ve got this! Remember that you know more about your research than anyone else in the room and you are giving your talk to teach others about it.

Giving your talk with confidence is crucial for your credibility as a scientist. Focusing on your delivery helps ensure that your audience remembers and believes what you say. Here are some techniques to try:

• Before beginning, remember your professional goals and the benefits of giving your presentation. Start with a smile and exhale deeply.
• Memorize a simple opening. After the moderator introduces you, pause and take a breath. Welcome the audience, thank them for coming, and introduce yourself. You don’t need to read the title of your talk. But briefly, say something like, “today I’m going to talk to you about why [topic] is important and [what I hope you will learn from this talk]” in 1-2 sentences. Preparing your opening will settle your nerves and prevent you from starting your talk on a tangential topic, ensuring you stay on time.
• Project confidence outwardly, even if you feel nervous. Stand up tall with your shoulders back and make eye contact with individuals in the audience. Move your focus around the room, so everyone in the audience feels included.
• Maintain open body language and face the audience as much as possible, not your slides.
• Project your voice as much as you can so that people at the back of the room can hear you. Enunciate your words, avoid mumbling, and don’t trail off awkwardly.
• Varying your vocal delivery and intonation will make your talk more interesting and help the audience pay attention, particularly when you want to emphasize key points or transitions.
• Pausing for dramatic effect at crucial moments can help you relax and remember your message, as well as being an effective engagement device.
• A laser pointer can be off-putting for the audience if you are prone to having a shaky hand when nervous. Use a laser pointer only to emphasize information on the slide while providing an explanation. If you design your slides thoughtfully , you won’t need to use a laser pointer.

Not all parts of your talk may go according to plan. Here are some ways to adapt to hitches during your talk:

• Handle talk disruptions gracefully. If you make a mistake, or a technical issue occurs during your talk, remember that it’s okay to skip something and move on without apologizing.
• If you forget to mention something but the audience hasn’t noticed, don’t point it out! They don’t need to know.
• As you give your talk, be time-conscious, and watch the moderator for signals that the time is about to expire. If you realize you won’t have time to discuss all your slides, skip the less important ones. Adjust your presentation on the fly to finish on time, prioritizing content as needed.
• If you run out of time completely, just stop. You don’t have to give a conclusion, but you do need to stop on time! Practicing your talk should prevent this situation.

The ending of your talk is important for emphasizing your key message and ensuring the audience leave with a positive impression of you and your work. Here are some pointers.

• Conclude your talk with a memorized closing statement that summarizes the key take-home message of your research. After making your closing statement, end your talk with a simple “Thank you”. Then pause and wait for the applause. You don’t need to ask if the audience has questions because the moderator will call for questions on your behalf.
• When you receive a question, pause, then repeat the question. This ensures the whole audience understands the question and gives you time to calmly consider your answer.
• In a talk on attaining confidence in your scientific presentations, Michael Alley suggests that if you don’t know the answer to the question, then emphasize what you do know. Say something like, “Although I can’t fully answer your question, I can say [this about the topic].”
• Approach the Q&A with interest rather than anxiety by reframing it as an opportunity to further share your knowledge. Being curious, instead of feeling fearful, can help you shine during what might be the most stressful part of your presentation.

Communicating your research effectively is a key skill for early career scientists to learn. Taking ample time to prepare and practice your presentation is an investment in your scientific development.

But here's the good part: all that effort pays off. Think of your talk as not just a presentation, but as a way to show off what you and your research are all about. Giving a compelling scientific presentation will raise your professional profile as a scientist, lead to more citations of your work, and may even help you obtain a future academic job.

But most importantly of all, giving talks contributes to science, and sharing your knowledge is an act of generosity to the scientific community.

➡️ Questions to ask yourself before you make your talk

➡️ How to give a great scientific talk

1) Have a positive mindset. To help with nerves, breathe deeply and keep in mind that you are an authority on your topic. 2) Be prepared. Have a short list of points for each slide and know the key transition points of your talk. Practice your talk to ensure it flows smoothly. 3) Be well-rested before your talk and eat a light meal on the day of your presentation. A talk is a performance. 4) Project your voice and vary your vocal intonation and pitch to retain the interest of the audience. Take pauses at key moments, for emphasis. 5) Anticipate questions that audience members could ask, and prepare answers for them.

The goal of a scientific presentation is that the audience remembers the key outcomes of your research and that they leave with a good impression of you and your science.

Take a moment to exhale deeply and collect your thoughts after the moderator has introduced you. Don’t read your talk's title. Instead, introduce yourself, thank the audience for attending, and provide a warm welcome. Then say something along the lines of, "Today I'm going to talk to you about why [topic] is important and [what I hope you will learn from this presentation].” A rehearsed opening will ensure that you start your talk on a confident note.

Prepare a memorable closing statement that emphasizes the key message of your talk. Then end with a simple “Thank you”.

Preparation is key. Practice many times to familiarize yourself with the content of your presentation. Before giving your talk, breathe slowly and deeply, and remind yourself that you are the expert on your topic. When giving your talk, stand up tall and use open body language. Remember to project your voice, and make eye contact with members of the audience.

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TAILORING SCIENTIFIC COMMUNICATIONS FOR AUDIENCE AND RESEARCH NARRATIVE

For success in research careers, scientists must be able to communicate their research questions, findings, and significance to both expert and nonexpert audiences. Scientists commonly disseminate their research using specialized communication products such as research articles, grant proposals, poster presentations, and scientific talks. The style and content of these communication products differ from language usage of the general public and can be difficult for nonexperts to follow and access. For this reason, it is important to tailor scientific communications to the intended audience to ensure that the communication product achieves its goals, especially when communicating with nonexpert audiences. This article presents a framework to increase access to research and science literacy. The protocol addresses aspects of communication that scientists should consider when producing a scientific communication product: audience, purpose, format, and significance (research narrative). The factors are essential for understanding the communication scenario and goals, which provide guidance when tailoring research communications to different audiences.

I. INTRODUCTION:

The impact of scientific research relies on the communication of discoveries among members of the research community. Sharing research—allowing other researchers to critique and build upon it—is a fundamental part of the scientific research process. Over time, however, scientific communications have become so specialized that they are primarily accessible only to experts in a given field. Scientists working in other fields and nonexperts alike can find typical scientific communication products (research articles, grant applications, poster presentations, and research talks) difficult to understand. To reach nonexpert audiences, scientists must be able to communicate in a variety of settings, media, and for a variety of different audiences.

This article provides an overview of the different audiences that scientists are likely to encounter in their careers and considerations for communicating with each of them. A general strategy or protocol is presented to tailor scientific communications according to three key factors of any communication scenario: the audience, the purpose, and the format. In addition to these factors, the sequence and selection of information is equally important for communicating the significance of the research. Concepts from narrative storytelling are also presented to help scientists identify and communicate the significance of research to the intended audience.

Evolution of Contemporary Scientific Discourse

Scientific vocabulary is rich in technical terms and jargon that is not commonly used by the general population. As recently as the nineteenth century, scientists used language and communication formats that would have been recognizable to educated nonexperts from a wide variety of fields and professions. Since that time, however, communication practices within scientific research fields have become different from the common language usage of the general public in both content and style. Scientific documents, such as research articles, grant proposals, and poster presentations, follow a logic that, while familiar to other scientists, can be difficult for nonexpert audiences to follow, properly access, and utilize. As a result, a communication gap has formed between the scientific community and the general public. In some cases, such as climate research and vaccine safety, this communication gap contributes to increased skepticism about scientific research findings and even mistrust of scientists and the scientific process.

The communication gap exists not only between scientists and the public, but also among scientists from different research fields. Investments in scientific research expanded greatly after World War II, resulting in increased numbers of individual scientists, subdisciplines, and specialized discourses used within each field. Today, scientific communications (specifically peer-reviewed research articles) have become specialized to the point that a “form that was as readable as the average newspaper has, in some fields, become a jungle of jargon that even those familiar with the territory struggle to understand” ( Knight, 2003 , p. 376). Because research articles and talks are the primary way that scientists disseminate their research, and because scientific research is increasingly interdisciplinary, this can create a barrier between researchers working in different scientific fields.

Communication Skills for Success in Science

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine recommend that Ph.D.-level scientists should be able to “communicate, both orally and in written form, the significance and impact of a study or body of work to all STEM professionals, other sectors that may utilize the results, and the public at large” ( Leshner & Scherer, 2018 , p. 107). To accomplish this, scientists must be able to move fluently between different audiences (STEM professionals, other sectors, and the public) and communication forms (written and oral), while highlighting the significance and impact of their research. For example, Dr. Neville Sanjana demonstrates how a discussion of CRISPR can be modified to tailor both technical language and level of detail to five different audiences: a 7 year-old, a 14 year-old, a college student, a grad student, and a CRISPR expert ( WIRED, 2017 ). The protocol presented in this article is a step-by-step guide for tailoring research significance to these audiences and can be used to create any scientific communication product.

II. Three Key Factors in Science Communication: Audience, Purpose, and Format

There are three key factors to consider when approaching a scientific communication scenario: the audience, the purpose, and the format of the communication product ( Alley, 1996 ,p. 3–7). The interaction between these three factors guides the communication strategy by focusing on who will receive it, why you are communicating, and how you will communicate (see Figure 1 ). Whether you are working in a primarily oral, written, or visual format, it is helpful to analyze the communication scenario as the first step in creating the communication product. Ask yourself three questions:

Analyzing the interaction of audience, purpose, and format of a scientific communication is the first step in tailoring scientific presentations and communications to different audiences.

• Who will receive the communication and in what setting? — This question will help you to create a profile of your audience.
• What is the purpose of the communication and what do you want it to accomplish? — This question helps to establish the goal of your communication product.
• Will the communication product be oral, written, visual (or some combination) and what constraints does this format impose? — This question helps to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your format.

Carefully analyze these factors prior to composing and deliving your scientific communication product. Taking time to understand the communication scenario at the outset allows you to create a framework to guide each decision that must be made along the way. Use this protocol throughout the composition and revision process to ensure that you are tailoring your scientific communication correctly. Each factor is examined in more detail below and a checklist is provided at the end of the article.

Consider Audience

The audience is the most important factor to consider when tailoring scientific communications. The audience’s response to your communication is the metric determining whether the communication meets its goal. For example, if you aim to instruct a motivated group of high school students but they cannot follow the presentation you have prepared, then your communication product will not have achieved its goal. For this reason, it is important to keep the audience in mind while composing your communication and to view the communication product through their eyes and ears to the extent possible. This helps you focus on the reception of the communication and align it with your intentions.

Creating a profile of your audience will help to guide the choices you will make while creating the communication product. To do this, imagine the people you want to communicate with and answer the questions below.

• Who will receive this communication?
• How and where will they receive the communication?
• What do they know about the subject?
• Why are they motivated to receive the communication?

If you are unsure how to answer any of these questions, then you will need to do more research on your audience. This can include talking to individuals who represent your intended audience, reading or watching the media this audience frequently encounters, or talking to colleagues who are familiar with the audience. Speaking directly to members of the audience is the preferred method, because it allows you to get feedback on draft communications and tailor them to your target audience in real time.

Each audience has distinct interests and motivations for receiving scientific communications. These can be influenced by audience characteristics such as primary language, demographics, interest in science, etc. Understanding the level of scientific expertise of the audience is one of the most important characteristics to consider. Are they experts in your scientific field, experts in another scientific field, or nonexperts? Audiences may also be a combination of experts and nonexperts. Table 1 categorizes some common audiences of scientific communications according to levels of expertise: researchers, publishers, funders, conference organizers, students, policy-makers, journalists, and business people. Understanding their level of expertise in the field is a first step toward tailoring the communication for the intended audience or audiences.

Example Audiences Categorized by Level of Scientific Expertise

Tailoring scientific communications to expert or nonexpert audiences requires a variety of adjustments to content and style. Choosing the correct level of detail and method for presenting data are both important considerations. Expert audiences will expect the greatest level of detail and most comprehensive presentation of data in order to critique the research and understand its implications for the field. Nonexpert audiences may respond better to a simplified version of the research that focuses clearly on significance and impact but sacrifices some detail. At the level of vocabulary, it is important to choose words that are familiar to the audience. An audience of expert scientists will benefit from the use of technical terms and jargon, which function as short-hand within the field; these same words will alienate the general public and may be unfamiliar to scientist from other disciplines. Tailoring the content and language to the needs and interests of your audience ensures that you do not talk over the heads of lay people or talk down to experts; both will interfere with audience engagement and your communication aim.

Consider Purpose

The second factor to consider when tailoring your scientific communication is your purpose or goal for communicating with the audience. Scientists use communication products to achieve a variety of aims. They instruct individuals and groups that want to learn about their research. They inform peers, policy-makers, and journalists of their discoveries. They critique the research of peers and indicate new research that is needed to advance the field. They persuade grant reviewers and editors to fund and publish their work, respectively. They persuade patent agents and business people that their discoveries have commercial potential. They may persuade and recruit members of the general population to engage with their research or even enter scientific training and careers. To identify the purpose of your scientific communication product, answer the questions below.

• Why are you creating this scientific communication?
• What challenge or problem does this communication respond to?
• What do you want the scientific communication product to accomplish?

By responding to these questions, you articulate your own motivations for the scientific communication and the outcome you hope to achieve. In other words, you identify the need for the communication and your metrics for success.

Consider Format

The third factor to consider when tailoring scientific communications to different audiences is the format, medium, or genre of the communication product. Select a format that fits your communication needs while allowing the audience to engage optimally with the scientific content you want to present. Table 2 summarizes common scientific communication genres and formats. When selecting a format, consider the types of communications and media that your audience is likely to encounter in a normal day. Think about what your audience reads (academic journals and posters, newspapers, magazines, and social media), watches (television, videos, and films), and listens to (radio, music, and podcasts). Whether you are writing, speaking, creating a video, or engaging in another form of communication, the format imposes constraints on the communication scenario and informs the style and content.

Common Science Communication Genres and Formats

If you have flexibility in your format, answer these questions to help identify the best medium or genre for your communication product:

• What is the best format, medium, or genre to reach the intended audience?
• Which communication format am I best prepared to work in?

Written, oral, and visual formats each have inherent strengths and weaknesses. For example, a live talk can maximize interactions with the audience, allowing the speaker to establish rapport, check for comprehension, and respond to questions. The audience also has the opportunity to incorporate visual information such as the speaker’s body language and slides or other visual aids. A pre-recorded video presentation provides the benefits of the visual and oral formats, like the live talk, but would not facilitate audience interactions. The live talk relies on consistent attention from audience members to follow the flow of information; those who become distracted are likely to miss information and may have difficulty re-engaging with the presentation. Choose the best format for your audience and purpose, then keep strengths and weaknesses in mind while creating the communication product.

Once the format has been selected, answer these questions to identify how the format will affect the content and style:

• What constraints does the format impose?
• Is the format primarily written, oral, visual, or a combination of these?

Audiences expect communication products to adhere to common characteristics of the genre or format. Newspaper readers will look for headlines to orient themselves and select articles to engage with. Podcast listeners will identify the beginnings and endings of episodes in response to familiar theme music or other regular audio features. Scientists expect journal articles to present information in a particular sequence (abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, conclusion, and references). While the common features of the genre and readers’ expectations place constraints on the scientific communication product, they also help audiences quickly orient themselves to the format and more deeply engage with the scientific content. Understand the constraints of the format and work within them to create a communication product that responds to the needs of your audience while achieving your communication goals.

III. Significance: Telling the Story of Your Research

Significance refers to the difference that your research makes in the world. To have significance or impact, research must change the current state of the field by answering a question, solving a problem, or filling a gap in existing knowledge. When you communicate the significance of your research, you tell the story of the impact it can have on the world. A story, in its most basic and fundamental form, describes a scenario that changes in some important way over a period of time: “The story always involves temporal sequences … [and] at least one modification of a state of affairs” ( Prince, 2003 , p. 59). These defining aspects of time and transformation are what distinguish stories from other modes of communication and align well with the goals and process of scientific inquiry. Scientific research seeks to observe changes within experimental contexts in the interest of discovering new knowledge and solving problems. The change observed, as well as its implications and applications, point to the significance and impact of the research. Therefore, to identify the significance of your research, find the story.

Storytelling for Scientists

It is worth stating explicitly that scientific stories are not fiction. Rather, the story emerges from the interpretation of novel data produced through rigorous experimental design. Environmental scientist Dr. Joshua Schimel explains that “[t]o tell a good story in science, you must assess your data and evaluate the possible explanations—which are most consistent with existing knowledge and theory? The story grows organically from the data and is objective, dispassionate, and fully professional” ( Schimel, 2012 , p. 9). Science stories are driven by the question or research problem addressed. The story emerges from the relationship between the research question and the novel data.

The temporal characteristic is equally important. When it comes to communicating the story of your research, there are two different sequences at work. The sequence of experiments that you perform and observations that you make contribute to the lab notebook information sequence (see Figure 2 ). This sequence catalogs the details of the scientific discovery, however, this linear documentation of time, effort, and resources does not communicate the significance and story of the research in a compelling way. To highlight the research story, it is necessary to construct another sequence, the research story information sequence (see Figure 3 ), which highlights significance by connecting novel experimental data to the question or problem that motivates the research. A compelling research narrative necessarily skips over some details, like failed experiments, in order to concretely illustrate the connection between question and novel data.

A detailed lab notebook is essential for future research reproducibility; however, this sequence of information does not tell a very interesting story for either experts or nonexperts.

A research story selects and sequences information to highlight the significance of the research: how new knowledge emerges from the relationship between the question asked and novel data.

Significance and Audience

We have seen how tailoring science communications to a variety of audiences can affect the content and style of the communication product. Different audiences require appropriate language and level of detail. Likewise, scientific communication products should highlight the significance and impact of the research as seen through the lens of the intended audience. Like the content and style of any scientific communication, the message of research significance should be tailored to the interests and perspective of the audience. For example, the discovery of a new molecular structure or pathway may be significant within a narrow research field, but it will likely need to be placed within broader context and implications for human health or medicine to seem important to the general public.

IV. Checklist for Tailoring Scientific Communications to a Variety of Audiences

Use this checklist to tailor your scientific communications to different audiences. Steps 1–4 provide guidelines to prepare and organize your communication product. Step 5 is intended to aid with getting feedback on your communication product for revision.

• Why am I creating this scientific communication?
• What do I want the scientific communication product to accomplish?
• What is the significance of the research for this audience?
• What is the research story information sequence?
• Is the language and level of detail right for the audience?
• Does the format meet the communication goals?
• Does the communication product highlight the significance of the research?

V. CONCLUSION:

Effective scientific communication requires careful analysis of the communication scenario and ability to highlight the research significance in narrative form. The protocol presented here is a starting point to develop a scientific communication practice for both expert and nonexpert audiences. These strategies may help increase access to scientific research among a wide range of populations—expert and nonexpert alike. By analyzing the audience, purpose, and format of your communications, you prepare to tailor scientific communications to the target audience and scenario. By highlighting the research narrative, you emphasize the potential impact that the research can make in the world. This framework provides a structure for self-analysis and revision for any scientific communication scenario, and accounts for variations in style, content, and narrative that are necessary to tailor scientific communications to any audience.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

I would like to thank all of my science communication students at Washington University in St. Louis; your questions and feedback motivated me to connect narrative theory concepts to science communication instruction. Portions of this work were supported by NIH grant #3T32GM008151-34S1.

LITERATURE CITED:

• Alley M. (1996). The craft of scientific writing (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Springer. [ Google Scholar ]
• Knight J. (2003). Scientific Literacy: Clear as Mud . Nature 423 , 376–378. 10.1038/423376a. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Leshner A, & Scherer L. (Eds.). (2018). Graduate STEM Education for the 21 st Century . Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. 10.17226/25038. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Prince G. (2003). Dictionary of Narratology . Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Schimel J. (2012). Writing Science: How to write papers that get cited and proposals that get funded . New York, NY: Oxford University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• WIRED. (2017). Biologist explains one concept in 5 levels of difficulty-CRISPR . WIRED . Retrieved from https://youtu.be/sweN8d4_MUg

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7 Steps to Delivering a Technical Presentation

June 21, 2021 - Dom Barnard

So you want to share the fruits of your technical labor with a presentation? Perhaps, you’re an engineer, a maker, a coder, or a designer, and you’re looking to discuss a research study, explain a process, or demonstrate a product.

Regardless of the agenda,  speaking to a group  can be intimidating. However, there are steps you can take to deliver an effective technical presentation that gets your point across and appeals to the audience.

Whether you’re presenting in person or via  web conferencing software , the following tips and best practices will help you be prepared, feel more confident, and set up the tools you need to conduct your presentation without any issues.

Know your subject matter

A great presentation isn’t about reading a bunch of slides – your attendees are capable of reading much faster on their own.

If you are going to pack your slides with dozens of details and bullet points, you might as well ditch the slides and write an article instead. It’s difficult for the audience to listen to a presenter and read a lot of information at the same time.

Your job as a presenter is to be the expert that your attendees expect you to be. Keep your slides simple and minimal. In fact, 91% of people say that  well-designed slides  help  boost their confidence  when giving a presentation.

Remember that your slides are not the star of the show, you are. Help your audience understand and make sense of what they are reading in your slides. To do this, make sure you are using a  suitable structure  for your presentation.

You can do these things only when you’re well-versed in what you’re presenting. The slides are supposed to be your outline, or simply a table of contents to remind you what to cover during the presentation.

Know your audience

Knowing your audience  is crucial for any presentation, but it’s even more important for a technical one. If your audience is as experienced and comfortable with the topic of your presentation as you are, then you don’t want to dumb it down to the extent that it bores them.

On the other hand, you don’t want to give a complex presentation to an audience with no clue of what you’re talking about.

There may also be times when your attendees are people with different levels of technical skill, experience, and interests. Then your job is to make sure that the content of your presentation is relevant and doesn’t alienate any of those segments.

Image Source:  Digital Clarity Group

To understand how technical you need to be, consider what your audience might already know and how much is required for them to understand to meet your goal.

If your objective is to acquire funding, for instance, your audience will be more interested in financial benefits than the technical details of your product. The idea is to meet the needs of your audience, not to fuel your passion for engineering.

Configure your IDE

Since you’re delivering a technical presentation, there may be instances where you’ll want to walk your audience through your development environment, code scripts, software demos, or other technical components.

However, you may have adjusted how things look on the screen according to what’s the most convenient for your usual workflow. And what’s good for working in your day-to-day routine may not render well as you go full screen in presentation mode.

If the attendees can’t decipher what’s on the screen, they’ll get confused and will find it hard to focus on your talk. So it’s important that you customize whatever you’re going to show in your presentation such that it’s easily readable and viewable.

There are several steps you can take to make this happen. First of all, don’t use dark backgrounds. Light-colored backgrounds are easy on the eyes. Second, adjust your font styles and sizes to make sure they’re big enough.

And finally, learn to zoom in on specific areas as required, depending on whether you’re using a  Windows PC  or a  Mac system .

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Minimize distractions

Nothing is more annoying than to keep getting disruptive notifications or popups from in the middle of your presentation. These can be from your operating system (Windows or Mac), or apps such as Slack, Email, Twitter, and more.

At times, these notifications can be personal, embarrassing, or contain confidential information that you don’t want your audience to see.

Therefore, it’s best to make sure in advance that there are no unpleasant surprises. Before you get up to give your presentation, turning off your notifications can go a long way.

This will also reduce the number of processes running on your machine and free up available resources. As a result, the resource-intensive programs that are part of your presentation will run a lot smoother. Here’s how to turn off  notifications for Windows ,  Google Chrome , and  Mac .

Get the right equipment

If you want to be a master presenter, you should have the proper tools for the job. The basics include a desktop or laptop machine with good configuration, a big display screen, presentation software (usually MS Powerpoint or Keynote), and a clicker/pointer device.

A clicking device, like the  Logitech Wireless Presenter , can help you switch slides from wherever you are in the room, point to a specific part of a slide, and add an overall professional touch to your presentation.

In addition, you should have any cables (HDMI, VGA, USD, etc) and adapters required to connect the devices you are going to use for the presentation.

Conrad Delock USB 3.0 Network adapter

If you have no idea about what will be available at your presentation venue, then carry one piece of each of the commonly used cables and adapters. You’ll thank us later.

Rehearse in advance

Practice your slides and your demo multiple times before the presentation, even if you have presented the exact same thing in the past. Do not make any assumptions about your actual presentation environment based on your practice environment.

Technologies and situations change, and you may find things that catch you off guard. Run through everything at least once the night before just to be sure.

Practice your presentations with  interactive exercises .

Even better if you can record yourself during these rehearsal presentations and watch the recordings later to find areas of improvement.

Also, if you’re relying on downloading or doing something in front of the audience that may require a high-speed internet connection, don’t assume you’ll have access to such a network during your presentation. Download and install whatever you need ahead of time.

Finally, enjoy the experience

You’re giving a technical presentation, but that doesn’t mean it has to be boring, or that you have to be serious all the time as you talk.

It’s okay to have fun, crack some jokes,  tell a story ,  ask a rhetorical question  or invite participation from the audience when presenting. In fact, a study showed that presentations that don’t let the audience participate see a  drop of 14%  in engagement.

Don’t worry too much about things going wrong. See every presentation as a dialogue with your attendees and an opportunity to learn and be a better presenter. If you are enjoying yourself, so will your audience.

October 26, 2023

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How to Deliver a Memorable Technical Presentation

Master the art of technical presentations, whether it's in your project meeting or an industry conference. Unleash your potential with these invaluable tips to ensure your presentation success.

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Tips to Ace Your Technical Presentation

Let’s say your company launched a SaaS application a few days ago. As head of the team, the onus is on you to spearhead the sales process. And the first step started with drafting a technical presentation explaining the product. Yes, you are a pro who knows all about the technical aspect, and you might be confident too.

But there are several questions you should ponder over

• Who will you be presenting to?
• How well is everyone aware of SaaS products?
• What should be your approach to drive sales and convince people of the product?

The answers to these questions will change the course of your presentation each time because the content will have to be modified accordingly. 

Technical presentations are lengthy, specific, and involve complex information/ideas (often dreary and detailed), making them difficult to deliver over non-technical ones. And that’s why they require a different approach, which we have covered in this article. 

How to Deliver a Winning Technical Presentation?

Here are some pro tips for creating impeccable slides and leaving your mark.

1. What is the core message and purpose of your presentation?

Structure your presentation around the key goal, which could be anything from sharing information and eliciting feedback to getting funding or a job offer, etc. 

Organizing your presentation around a core theme will help your audience identify and follow the central points that support your content.

For instance, if your goal is to present a scientific result, include more information about what the result means and how it can be used rather than focusing on your methodology.

Or if your goal is to elicit response/feedback on some experiment, focus more on the methods, i.e., advantages, disadvantages of different models, your assumptions, how your model is more useful, etc.

Tell your audience what you want them to do. Why should they do it, and how?

2. Who is your audience?

Knowing your people (audience analysis) will help you stick to the right chord. 

It will also help you know how much technical jargon you can rely on and whether images and analogies would suit the audience better.

Your audience might be diverse (investors, clients, customers, etc.) with different interests, knowledge bases, goals, and concerns. And, mind you, they are as central to your presentation as you are. So, know as much as you can about them and structure your presentation accordingly. Highlight how your message overlaps with what these people care about, and remember to include the diverse backgrounds and experiences in the introductory part. And you will have everyone’s attention right from the start. 

3. Define a clear outline

You can divide the content into three sections for clear structure and easy comprehension. The first section gives an outline/summary of the main topic and illustrates why it was important enough to become the subject.

The second part can elaborate on the main subject with its minute technical details and everything that the audience needs to know.

The third section can highlight the resolution, solution, CTA, and course of action to the problem presented.

An effective presentation is not one where you detail every possible information about the topic or include as many issues as possible. It is when you can get people to build understanding and support for your central message. 

4. Take help of everything that can explain the concept 

For any presentation, words/text are not enough. And it becomes all the more imperative in a technical presentation slide.

According to a survey, people prefer 1/4th of the slide composed of text at most.

Since you will have to use jargon here and there, you can’t rely just on your speech. Use pre-designed PowerPoint templates comprising graphs, diagrams, animations, videos, infographics, etc., to help people understand technical concepts and information clearly. You can also use other experiential methods like prototypes, handmade models, or real-time experiments. 

For a better understanding, go through this video showcasing paper prototyping of a mobile application :

5. Remember to be consistent

When your presentation slides differ in size, display, structure, etc., it can distract or confuse people and make them lose attention. Creating a consistent theme is important to help people focus and keep your presentation aligned.

Take the help of these tips to incorporate consistency in your work-

• Go for colors that complement each other, following the preferred color scheme.
• Choose fonts that are easy to read in a presentation or digital content like Serif or Sans-serif.
• Go for the same layout for a similar kind of content. Use one kind of layout for cover slides, one kind for section introduction, and one for content slides. It will help your audience categorize the content and know where to look for what information. 

And, of course, don’t forget how immensely it will help you as a presenter.

And yes, keep your presentation short – not more than 10 slides. You can go for the 10/20/30 rule, i.e., 10 slides, 20 minutes, and 30 font size.

6. Leave space for questions and queries

Since your presentation is technical and the audience might be diverse, be prepared to answer questions. The major cause of anxiety before a presentation is a lack of preparation. Being thorough with the subject matter will also aid you in answering any questions being asked, apart from avoiding presentation jitters.

Allocate a well-designated time to interact with the audience. You can also do that during the course of the presentation if it doesn’t interfere with your speech. It will keep people engaged and alert as they get small windows to pose queries throughout. 

7. Practice sessions

You might be confident about your content, but when you speak/deliver, your words and ideas might come out in a different way and not as you intend. 

It could so happen that you are not too good with voice modulation or at specifying relevant points. That’s why it is imperative that you have multiple practice talks before delivering the presentation.

Keep your practice audience small and diverse so that you get relevant opinions and everyone has something to share. 

You can share hard copies and remember to number your slides as well. It will help people annotate them and return them at the end. You can videotape yourself as well to see how you come across and improve accordingly.

8. A few quick tips  

Keep in mind where you want to take your audience through the presentation. What perspective shift do you seek? 

Do you want them to invest in the product? Or is it just an internal meeting highlighting the attributes of the product?

WIIFY is an acronym for What’s in It for You. Make sure you present it to your audience. For example, in the case of the SAAS application, your WIIFY to your potential investors would be - Investing in our product will get you an excellent ROI. 

Let them know the USP of your proposition and the concept you are presenting. For example, you could highlight your USP as the one place for everything from website development to QA testing.

Use a short statement to capture everyone’s attention. It may be anecdotes, statistics, analogies, aphorisms, a question, etc. 

For example, you could start with a statement like - Keep track of how many times I shall say ‘if’ when I explain the success of this product.

Or an analogy like - SAAS is like traveling by train where you have assigned routes and co-ride with other passengers. 

Do’s and Dont's  

• The presentation should start with the motivation, i.e., why this particular thing needs to be presented.
• Every presentation slide should contain only relevant information and not more than that.
• Titles should be enough on their own (self-explanatory); the rest of the text should be there to support the visuals, comprising relevant graphs, charts, histograms, etc. 
• And most importantly, the audience properly understands the message the presenter desires to convey. Also, be mindful of overusing jargon. 

In a Nutshell

Be thorough about the topic, learn about your audience, take the help of props and visual aids, and structure your presentation well. Don’t forget to interact with your audience as and when you get the chance. Also, make sure your audience knows what to do with the information you shared, i.e., give them a proper course of action.

Keeping these points in mind will help you create a coherent technical presentation that can serve its purpose. 

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6 How to Give An Oral Presentation

This is a post-graduate level course covering the topics of effective personal presentation for researchers from any discipline across campus. This module introduces key elements of communicating – in person – the topics and results of your scholarly work. Presentations must be careful to convey the research in a clear and unambiguous manner so that it cannot be misinterpreted by the audience while ‘getting the message across’.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand your given audience and determine what level of abstraction or level of technicality is appropriate
• Determine the purpose or message of your presentation – what are the main ideas/concepts the audience should learn
• Structure a presentation
• Identify the context for creating the presentation – standard presentation, keynote presentation, plenary presentation, or determining the choice of voice

Video Lecture :

Video Transcript

Recommended Exercise:

Before advancing to the next module, try the following exercise.

Choose a relatively small topic in your field of interest/research. Prepare a few slides to present the topic. The slides should not be too busy or complex, but should display your information in textual or graphical form. Once completed, try to imagine you are seeing your slides for the first time, and time how long it takes you to (silently) read your slides and comprehend what the text, diagrams, and tables mean. If it takes longer than a minute to do so, the slide contains too much information. Try trimming the slides down to accommodate this time limit.

Continue moving through the presentation as you would for an audience, speaking about your topic based on the slides. Try two levels of abstraction – a simpler, less detailed version, and then one more suitable for an audience with direct knowledge of your field. In the low level of abstraction (suitable to non-expert audience), you should not talk more than two minutes per slide and should stick closely to the information presented on the slides. In the higher level of abstraction (suitable to an expert audience), you should be able to elaborate more on the information, talking for approximately 2-4 minutes per slide. Practice for peers, friends or family members if possible!

Note: You can find many presentations on the Internet for inspiration. Use the criteria from this module to determine if the presentation is worthy of emulating!

Technical Communications Copyright © by McMaster University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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8. ORAL AND VISUAL PRESENTATIONS

Suzan Last and Monika Smith

Like any kind of advanced communication skill, the art of giving effective presentations is not in-born; it requires deliberate practice — that is, systematic practice that requires focused attention on improving, and making use of feedback from others to help you do so. An excellent way to learn more about delivering effective presentations is to follow a systematic process:

• Observe others
• Study their strategies and reflect on their effectiveness
• Select and practice strategies that will work for you; reflect and get feedback from others.

Step 1: Observation

You can learn a lot simply by observing how successful public speakers “work the room” and engage their audience. Observe what they do. How do they use their voice as a tool of communication? How do they deploy tone, pausing, pacing, and projection? What do they do with their hands? How do they make use of the physical space around them? Take note of how speakers physically operate, either in person or on media: identify what they do, make note of what you think works well and what doesn’t, then put what you’ve learned into practice.

As a student, you might start by observing your professors. Aim to identify what makes one professor a great lecturer and another less engaging. Compare what they do with their voice, their hands, their gestures, their movements. Pay attention to how they pace their talk to draw you in and create emphasis. Reflect on what they do to convey a sense of enthusiasm for what they’re talking about—or fail to do so. You want to know what kinds of things to avoid—a dull monotonous tone, for example—as well as what kinds of things to adopt to ensure your voice comes across as a powerful tool for communicating your ideas clearly and emphatically.

EXERCISE 8.1: Observation in action

Whether observing your favourite professor give a lecture; watching your favourite podcaster, TV or YouTube presenter; or viewing the videos linked below, turn your observations into an active learning experience: create a list of what the speakers do well as speakers , and then use them as role models. The goal is to create a toolkit of practical tips, approaches, and ideas for building confidence, developing your own “spark” as public speaker, and engaging your audience. In short, watch, observe, and learn.

Here are some public speakers on film that you may enjoy watching and learning from:

• Really achieving your childhood dreams by Randy Pausch, [1] computer scientist (Carnegie Mellon). As you watch the video, make note not simply of what he says, but how he says it.
• “The Wisdom of a Third Grade Dropout” by Rick Rigsby [2]
• “The Joy of Stats” by Hans Rosling [3] offers an engaging and inspiring description of 250,000 data points from over 200 years for 200 countries—in 4 minutes flat!

Step 2: Study and Reflect

Learning from experts who lay out a set of simple techniques is a confidence builder because it shows that great speakers are made, not born. With deliberate practice, anyone can do this. There are no mysteries, just specific, applicable strategies that anyone can adopt to establish rapport with an audience and make a meaningful impact.

Here are some more great online resources to help you develop further:

• Advanced Public Speaking Institute (Tips )
• Toastmasters 5 tips for public speaking (YouTube)
• 10 Most Common Rookie Mistakes in Public Speaking – Terry Gault (Prezi Blog)
• The Power of your Hands – Allan Pease (TED)
• How to Sound Smart in your TED Talk − Will Stephen (TED)
• How I Overcame my Fear of Public Speaking − Danish Dhamani (TED)

EXERCISE 8.2

Take notes from the sources while you study them.  Making written notes about points you want to remember can be an effective way to promote deep learning. As you watch each of the videos, identify 2-3 key tips. If you are doing this activity in class, share your “top two” tips with classmates and make note of their “top two” tips in turn.

Then consider the value of the tips and strategies you’ve compiled. What makes them seem to work so well and, equally important, how could you feasibly incorporate them into your presentations to make them your own?

Step 3: Select, Practice and Assess your Progress

Now that you have identified strategies that you find effective and think might work for you, try putting them into practice.  See if they add some extra “oomph” to your presentation style. Afterwards, either by engaging in self-reflection, or by asking for feedback, consider how well these strategies worked for you and whether you need to further hone, adapt, or change the way you used them.

Videos are helpful because they not only provide information, but visually demonstrate the ideas (both showing and telling); however, you can also learn from many books on the subject. Here are four classic books by public speaking experts designed to help you develop your own strong presentation skills. By focusing on aspects such as“voice,” or by getting you to create effective slideshows, they offer a range of practical, “tried and tested” approaches designed to help you build confidence, speak fluently, and hold an audience’s attention with relevant, well designed visuals.

• Lilyan Wilder, 7 Steps to Fearless Speaking offers a lively, straightforward “how to” approach to public speaking, paying special attention to what to do before you even get on stage to deliver your talk. In short, according to Lilyan Wilder, it’s all about preparation. Wilder’s seven steps have been used by many successful public figures, including George H.W. Bush, Oprah Winfrey, Fortune 500 CEO’s, as well as network anchors at CNN, CBS, and more!
• Lee LeFever, The Art of Explanation: Making your Ideas, Products, and Services Easier to Understand invites you to become an “explanation specialist” by using simple elements to motivate your audience and inspire them to say “yes!” to your designs and ideas.
• Garr Reynolds, PresentationZen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery provides a clear, easy-to-read set of tips for cutting through the noise and blather of modern life and reaching an audience through simple, pared-down slides and story-telling:  two techniques that can help you connect with and inspire your audience in an authentic, genuine way.
• Nancy Duarte, Slide:ology: T he Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations looks to the role of presentation software in the visualization of ideas and information. Its goal is to turn you into a “visual thinker” so you can design presentation graphics that enable your audience to easily and effectively process data—an especially valuable skill for technical presenters who often have to convey complex data in meaningful ways to non-technical audiences.

EXERCISE 8.3 Build your repertoire

Visual Aids – PowerPoint Basics

Even the most dynamic speakers often make use of visual aids to accompany their presentation and help illustrate their ideas. Having well designed visuals as part of your presentation is one way for beginners and those honing their skills can add interest and audience engagement to their talks. PowerPoint is probably the most common form of visual aid used in presentations, so much discussion has been focused on the pros and cons of this medium. Indeed, a Google search of “death by PowerPoint” brings up over 90 million results!

While there are many other presentation tools out there that you should explore (and perhaps present to your classmates or colleagues in your own presentation!), PowerPoint is a standard workplace tool, so it would be wise to gain proficiency with it. The key concept to remember is that your visual aids should supplement and illustrate what you want to say to your audience. YOU are the presenter; your slides illustrate and amplify what you want to say.

PowerPoint Terminology

When designing a PowerPoint presentation, it is helpful to be familiar with key terminology used to discuss the various elements. Here are a few terms to get started:

• Deck :  the entire presentation (all the slides in the presentation; see Figure 8.2.1) .
• Gloss :  what the speaker says about each slide. The speaker should not simply read what is on the slide. Slides should have minimal text in the form of key words and short bullet points. They might include key quotations. Speakers should elaborate on what is written or shown on the slide in their gloss.
• Slide :  one “page” of the presentation ( Figure 8.2.2 shows one slide from the deck above) with the various elements identified.
• Slide Titles :  usually at the top of the slide, the title acts as a “heading” indicating the topic to be discussed in each slide.
• Body Text:   written text on the slide, often in the form of bullet points or key terms. This text should be kept to a minimum (key words/phrases; quotations you want to read out loud). Don’t write your “script” in the slide’s body text.
• Exhibits :  illustrative graphics on the slides that are glossed in the presentation. You should discuss graphics and explain what is important about them.
• Decorative Graphics : Slide motifs, themes, and other non-essential images that add visual appeal to the slides, but do not illustrate substantive ideas.
• Notes : The section underneath the slide where you can write notes you want to cover in your gloss. The audience will not see the “notes” portion.

Click on the Sample PowerPoint Presentations listed below to see detailed examples of PowerPoint decks.

PowerPoint Presentation on PRESENTATIONS (.ppt)

Tuckman’s Model of Team Formation – Sample student presentation (.ppt)

Definitions in Technical Writing – Sample student presentation (.pdf) (Created by Isaac Morton)

Visual Rhetoric

PowerPoint is not the only visual medium you might use. Pamphlets, posters, billboards, and other kinds of displays can also work to effectively convey your message if they are well designed. Considering how to present ideas visually can be as important as determining what to say. Here are some resources to help you design visual information in a rhetorically effective way:

Visual Rhetoric page from the Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University

Rule of Thirds (Wikipedia)

Color theory (Tiger Color)

Psychology of Font Choices (The Daily Egg)

• R. Pausch, “Really achieving your childhood dreams, Sept. 18, 2007 Youtube [Online]: Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo ↵
• R. Rigsby, “The wisdom of a third grade dropout will change your life,” Oct. 2017, Youtube [Online]. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg_Q7KYWG1g ↵
• H. Rosling, “The joy of stats,” Nov. 26, 2010, YouTube [Online]. Available: https://youtu.be/jbkSRLYSojo ↵
• Keithonearth, [Bicycle image embedded in slide]. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derailleur_gears#/media/File:Derailleur_Bicycle_Drivetrain.svg . CC BY-SA 3.0 . ↵

Technical Writing Essentials Copyright © by Suzan Last and Monika Smith is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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