Presentations are a key component of academic life. The quality of your talk plays a critical role in how your message is received — but what makes a presentation good? While personal preferences vary and no single formula fits every scenario, the most impactful talks share a common trait: their visual elements are thoughtfully designed to support the speaker’s delivery, resulting in a cohesive, compelling narrative that communicates ideas with clarity and takes us along for the journey.
A presentation is a process with distinct stages: planning, preparing, and delivering. Each stage is an opportunity to tailor your talk to both your audience and your strengths. The Center for Health and Science Communication at Becker Library provides support every step of the way, with programs and services to ensure you succeed. Our offerings include one-on-one consultations for using graphic design software such as PowerPoint and CorelDraw, as well as customizable presentation workshops.
Here are some key considerations for the planning stage.
Set the foundation.
Presentations today are less about exhaustive detail and more about sparking curiosity. With so much information available online, consider using your talk to invite reflection and discovery. Ask yourself: Of all the directions my work is taking, which one means the most to me? Even if the circumstances dictate the topic (say, a conference or a job interview), identify the aspect you find most engaging and build your story around it.
- Scope and timing. When planning a presentation, allocate sufficient time for the delivery itself but also for introductions, potential technical hiccups, and interactions with the audience. Likewise, the scope of your content should align with the time available: overloading your slide deck will overwhelm the audience and diminish your impact. For example, a one-hour session typically allows 45 minutes of speaking time; for this situation, prepare a maximum of 40 slides. Standard conference talks, in general 15–20 minutes long, are most effective when centered around a single key message and supported by a dozen or so slides; lightning talks, lasting 3–5 minutes, should include no more than five slides.
- Rethinking structure. Many scientific presentations follow the IMRaD format (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion) of academic papers, but this structure usually fails in live talks. By the time you show your results — sometimes a barrage of dense, publication-quality figures — the audience has forgotten the introduction and the experimental setup. The discussion is often served as one or more slides comprised almost entirely of text. Try this approach instead: start with the scientific question you set out to answer, and why it is important. Then, spend most of your time walking the audience through your key experiments and core findings, avoiding excessive technical details. As you present the data, weave in context and interpretation, thus integrating relevant introduction and discussion elements into the narrative alongside the results. Finish strong with a graphical summary to help attendees recall the main ideas, and leave it on screen as you open the floor for discussion.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of this series, featuring guidance and tools for preparing and delivering an impactful presentation.