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Technology Presentation templates

Show everyone technology has no secrets for you by using our awesome free google slides themes and ppt templates. these decks follow the latest trends in design and can be customized at will thanks to the included resources..

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Computer Engineering Technology

We dream of things, and then computer engineers come and make them into reality! Phones were just a dream a few decades ago, and now everyone has one on their pocket. What will engineering come up with next? Be a part of the change the world is waiting to see...

Tech Startup

The future is here! If your business is about new technologies and you want to give a nice creative touch to your pitch deck, Slidesgo can provide you with the tools that you need.

Technology Consulting

If you want to attract new clients to your technology company and to keep them satisfied, design your own consulting sales pitch with these minimalistic slides.

Tech Newsletter

A cool professional newsletter is all that you need to keep your colleagues up to date with the latest news from your tech company. But if you want them to read it, you need to get their attention, offer something interesting. This new presentation template can help you build teamwork.

Digital Transformation in Consumption

Download the Digital Transformation in Consumption presentation for PowerPoint or Google Slides and start impressing your audience with a creative and original design. Slidesgo templates like this one here offer the possibility to convey a concept, idea or topic in a clear, concise and visual way, by using different graphic...

Global Technology Investments Project Proposal Infographics

Download the "Global Technology Investments Project Proposal Infographics" template for PowerPoint or Google Slides to get the most out of infographics. Whether you want to organize your business budget in a table or schematically analyze your sales over the past year, this set of infographic resources will be of great...

Electronic Circuit Style CV

Are you an electricity professional looking for new challenges in your career? This resume has the perfect design to land your next job. Its blue background conveys confidence, and its futuristic style makes it clear that you're on the cutting edge and an expert in your field. The geometric shapes...

Digital Culture in the Workplace

Download the Digital Culture in the Workplace presentation for PowerPoint or Google Slides and take your marketing projects to the next level. This template is the perfect ally for your advertising strategies, launch campaigns or report presentations. Customize your content with ease, highlight your ideas and captivate your audience with...

AI Tech Agency

It’s amazing how robots and computers are able to perform tasks that we thought only humans could do. If your agency is specialized in artificial intelligence, this free marketing presentation template can help you get your points across easily!

LED Advertising Screen for Marketing

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Futuristic Background

When you need to impress everybody and stay relevant, you must look ahead and aim to be the first. Take a peek into the future with this new template Slidesgo has just designed. It’s free and perfect for techie topics or just for giving your presentation a futuristic vibe!

Industrial Maintenance Company Business Plan

Download the Industrial Maintenance Company Business Plan presentation for PowerPoint or Google Slides. Conveying your business plan accurately and effectively is the cornerstone of any successful venture. This template allows you to pinpoint essential elements of your operation while your audience will appreciate the clear and concise presentation, eliminating any...

Systems Engineering Business Plan

Download the Systems Engineering Business Plan presentation for PowerPoint or Google Slides. Conveying your business plan accurately and effectively is the cornerstone of any successful venture. This template allows you to pinpoint essential elements of your operation while your audience will appreciate the clear and concise presentation, eliminating any potential...

Soft Colors UI Design for Agencies

Agencies have the most creative employees, so having boring meetings with traditional Google Slides & PowerPoint presentations would be a waste. Make the most out of this potential with this creative design full of editable resources and beautiful decorations in calming, pastel tones. Let the creativity of your agency be...

Tech Company Onboarding

What a nice surprise your new employees are going to get! Well, you're going to welcome them and prepare their onboarding with this template here, especially for tech companies! The design is sensational: a dark style combined with purple tones (which gives it that technological touch, don't you think?) and...

Virtual Metaverse Project Proposal

When real life is not enough, when we want to go beyond reality, what can we do? With this futuristic-looking template, you can introduce your audience to the wonderful virtual metaverse! Maybe you're a baker in real life and a bladesmith in a virtual world! Inform about this project, your...

5G Wireless Technology Pitch Deck

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Data Science Consulting

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28 Free Technology PowerPoint Templates for Presentations from the Future

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By Lyudmil Enchev

in Freebies

3 years ago

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If you’re amongst the science and technology teachers, students, or businesses in the field; we have something for you. We deep-dived to find the best free technology PowerPoint templates for your presentation, so today’s collection has 28 amazing designs to choose from.

The following selection has templates related to science, technology, cybersecurity, search engines, bitcoin, networking, programming, and engineering, so there’s something for everyone.

1. Computer Hardware Free Technology PowerPoint Template

This template sports a cool design with a bright light of a microchip processor and a blue background. Ideal for explaining concepts such as semiconductors, databases, and central computer processors.

• Theme : Technology, Hardware
• Slides : 48
• Customization : Fully editable + 136 editable icons
• Graphics : Vector
• Aspect Ratio : 16:9
• License : Free for Personal and Commercial Use │ Do Not Redistribute Any Components of the Template

2. Space Science Free Technology Powerpoint Templates

This free template has 3D spaceship graphics and blue background color. It’s great for presentations on astronomy.

• Theme : Technology, Cosmos
• Slides : 25
• Customization : Fully editable
• Resolution : 1920×1080

3. 5G Technology Speed Free Powerpoint Templates

Design with twinkling rays of geometric shapes is perfect for presentations on technology topics such as internet networking, intranet, and communication technology.

• Theme : Technology, Networking, 5G
• Customization : Editable

4. Start-Up Tech Corporation Free Powerpoint Template

This free tech corporation template is great for presentations on tech business startups.

• Theme : Technology, Tech Business, Start-Up Companies

5. App Startup Free Powerpoint Technology Template

This design is great for presentations on communication, mobile technology, and other digital devices used for the PPT presentations.

• Theme : Technology, Apps, Software

6. Cloud Technology Free Powerpoint Template

A technology template with a clean and modern design for your presentations about cloud computing and other computing services.

• Theme : Cloud Technlogy

7. Artificial Intelligence High Technology Free PowerPoint Template

This template represents artificial intelligence as an illustration . It also includes related shapes to allow for a variety of expressions.

• Theme : Technology, Artificial Intelligence

8. Search Engine Optimization PowerPoint Template

The template is SEO-themed but you can adapt it to any presentation related to marketing and search engines.

• Theme : Technology, Marketing, SEO

9. Binary Code Free PowerPoint Template

The cool binary code design makes this template perfect for any presentation on computer science.

• Theme : Computer Science, Programming

10. Network Free Technology PowerPoint Template

Sporting design with crags and electric rays in many angles are representing networking around the globe, the template is suitable for presentations on communication, networking, technology, and crag wheels.

• Theme : Technology, Networking

11. Hexagonal Design Free PowerPoint Template

Here we have a free template with hexagons and icons pattern for techy content. Its dark background and bright blue color palette give a professional look.

• Theme : Technology

12. Technology Pixels Free PowerPoint Template

A technology-themed template for presentations on consulting, IT, software, and other related subjects. The pixel pattern is grouped by tones which you can change from the master slides.

13. Connections and Networking Free PowerPoint Template

This free Powerpoint template is perfect for a presentation about the internet, blockchain, machine learning, cybersecurity, or cloud computing.

14. Isometric Free Technology PowerPoint Template

Here we have an amazing isometric design and high-tech background with gradients. Ideal for subjects like cloud computing, SaaS development, servers, and networks, or cybersecurity.

• Theme : Networking, Programming

15. Free PowerPoint Template with Techy Contour Lines

This design has an abstract contour lines background in a dark green color. Ideal for subjects like geography, technology, video games, or even military affairs.

• Theme : Technology, Gaming

16. Marketing and Technology Free PowerPoint Template

The isometric design has illustrations on business, marketing, and technology topics that will make every slide stand out.

• Theme : Technology, Marketing

17. Purple Hexagons Free PowerPoint Template

For presentations related to scientific or technological topics, with professional hexagonal design.

• Theme : Technology, Science

18. Rockets Taking Off  Free PowerPoint Template

Rockets taking off is a great metaphor for growing businesses. It’s also a symbol of progress and technology.

• Slides : 35

19. IOT Smart City Free PowerPoint Template

Smart City offers a futuristic design for subjects such as internet communication, smart city concepts, and tech innovation.

• Theme : Technology, Smart City

20. Cyber Security Free PowerPoint Template

The perfect template for presentations on cybersecurity, antivirus software, and other related topics.

• Theme : Technology, Cyber Security

21. BlockChain Free PowerPoint Templates

This template is a 3D rendering design of blockchain technology and you can use it for a variety of purposes.

Presentation Design Tips You Wish You Knew Earlier:

The shorter you keep the text, the better. In fact, some specialists suggest that you shouldn’t use more than 5-6 words per slide . And sometimes, a single word combined with a powerful visual is enough to nail the attention of the people sitting in front of you and make them listen to what you have to say.

22. BitCoin Themed Free PowerPoint Template

A very versatile template that includes 20 semi-transparent illustrations of different concepts: security, social networks, programming, bitcoin.

• Theme : Technology, Bitcoin

23. Technical Blueprint Free Technology PowerPoint Template

This template uses a blueprint style and a monospaced font to emulate the technical drawings used in construction and industry.

• Theme : Technology, Engineering

24. Blue Connections Free PowerPoint Template

The design of this free template fits social media, connection, internet, cloud computing, and science-related topics.

• Theme : Technology, Social Media

25. Cute Robots Free PowerPoint Template

Here we have a colorful design with beautifully illustrated robots for presentation on technology, science, and physics.

• Theme : Technology, Physics

26. Green Circuit Free PowerPoint Template

This is a free template with futuristic vibes that you can use for your tech presentations both in PowerPoint and Google Slides.

27. Data Particles Free Technology PowerPoint Template

The design with particle lines gives it a modern and slightly technological look.

28. Science Hexagons Free Technology PowerPoint Template

The background gradients highlight the white text, and the hexagons give it a techie style.

Final Words

That’s it. Today’s collection covered the best free technology PowerPoint templates that you can download and adapt to your presentations related to science, technology, programming, engineering, and physics. Now all you need to do is open your PowerPoint and make the most amazing presentation your viewers have ever seen.

For more freebies, you can check the Best Free Powerpoint Templates of 2022  or see these related articles:

• 36 Free Food PowerPoint Templates For Delicious Presentations

31 Free Modern Powerpoint Templates for Your Presentation

• 25 Free Education PowerPoint Templates For Lessons, Thesis, and Online Lectures

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Lyudmil Enchev

Lyudmil is an avid movie fan which influences his passion for video editing. You will often see him making animations and video tutorials for GraphicMama. Lyudmil is also passionate for photography, video making, and writing scripts.

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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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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.

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Communication, facilitation, ​powerspeaking blog: tips and strategies for crafting presentations, deliver more powerful technical presentations: 8 techniques.

by Ralf Wolter     Aug 4, 2022 1:36:00 PM

Before moving into training and coaching, I was an IT Consulting Engineer for 25-plus years.  To this day, I have a left-brain bent.  But I remember the experience that changed my perspective on what makes a powerful technical communicator (hint: it involves both hemispheres).

I was watching a very senior engineer at Cisco give a technical presentation.  This engineer was so senior and well-regarded, he held a prestigious Fellow position at the high-tech company.  

What struck me was that he was so good at illustrating his points and keeping the audience rapt.  I approached him after his talk and asked him, ‘What’s your secret sauce?’  He said, ‘Whenever I give a technical talk, I start by explaining in a way that my mum would understand it.’

I really liked the way he dove into deep technical detail only after he introduced the concepts with brief, compelling stories and vivid analogies.  To me, that was a perfect way to make sure everyone understands what you’re talking about, without dumbing down the content.

What I’ve learned since then is that this kind of approach to technical presenting doesn’t take away from the content expert’s credibility; as a matter of fact, it adds to it, especially if they’re addressing a mixed audience.

Delivering clear, complex data in a meaningful way to the people and businesses impacted is more important than ever—at work and in our communities.  

To do it well, you might need to rethink some of the hallmark left-brain preconceptions about how to craft and deliver your talk.  But trust me, it’s well worth the journey.

Here are our top pointers . . .

1. Start With Your Audience in Mind

Who are you presenting to, and how is your main message or proposal relevant to them?  How much detail do they really want or need? Your technical peers might be happy to dive into lots of detailed data.  But how about a mixed audience of engineers, salespeople, and potential customers?  Or maybe senior executives , who just want the bottom line?

For example, let’s say you’re presenting to a mixed audience. The best strategy would be to organize your presentation so you begin with a big-picture overview and main message/proposal for the non-technical people; then a strategic level of detail for technical managers and technical specialists outside your area; and last, a deep dive for content experts who are familiar with your work.  

Senior-level executives prefer content focused on the overall impact of your data or proposal: the cost, ROI, and benefits. They want the high-level view, with executive summaries, solutions, and future business implications. (Check out our downloadable PDF, “ How to Present to Executives: 23 Proven Tips ”)

Non-technical audiences and technical people in different disciplines also appreciate higher-level content.  In addition, they typically want to know how what you’re presenting will affect them directly.  Will it impact their workload or priorities?  Will it delay other projects they’re working on?  Will it shift roles or responsibilities?

Technical audiences want content rich in detailed data analysis, design specifications, theory, and statistics. They expect you to know the jargon and to use technical terms. They want to know about the research behind your data, and they appreciate information such as algorithms, process-flow diagrams, feature lists, and coding examples.

One presenter we worked with noted that with mixed audiences, he starts by announcing, "Today, I'll be doing a split-level presentation. The first 10 minutes will be a big-picture, market-focused summary. In the next 10 minutes, I will provide an overview of the technology involved. In the last 10 minutes I will go into the detail and present the results of our code review. Feel free to leave before the next level of detail if that is not what you want."

So remember, consider your audience before you get too far in crafting your presentation.  By doing so, you will be more . . .

Engaging By directing your presentation to the audience’s needs, you’ll increase attention and retention.

Efficient By creating an audience-centric presentation from the start, you’ll find it easier to plan and deliver a relevant and memorable talk.

Effective By communicating an action the audience can take as a result of the presentation, you’ll have a greater impact (we go into this in “Identify an Action Step,” below).

Here’s a helpful Audience Analysis checklist we developed for workshop participants.

Next, what do you want the audience to do with the data you’re presenting? 

2. Identify an Action Step

Once you’ve analyzed your audience, the next best step is to ask yourself, "What do I want the audience to do, think, or feel as a result of hearing this presentation?" 

One common mistake many presenters make is to assume the audience understands what they’re being asked to do.  Unless your request is clear and concrete, you risk creating confusion and losing their support.

Here are some quick examples of effective vs. ineffective action steps . . .

Now it’s time to dive into the core content of your presentation . . .

3. Develop a Clear Main Message

Even if you have complex ideas or data to discuss, your presentation should have a clearly stated central purpose or key message.  Why are you presenting the data?  What do you want your audience to remember?  

A short, clear, and compelling main message accomplishes several important things . . .

Here are some best practices for developing your main message so it’s clear and memorable . . .

As PowerSpeaking, Inc. Master Facilitator Rita Williams emphasized in the video, repetition of your main message—word for word—is key.  Research has shown that people are much more likely to retain your clear, concise main message if you repeat it at least three times throughout your presentation, at the beginning, middle, and end.

Once you’ve analyzed your audience, identified an action step, and crafted your main message, it’s time to turn to the substance of your presentation . . .

4. Make Your Content Relatable and Memorable

Maybe you want to get a group of teams fired up about the next phase of product development.  Perhaps you need to enlist support from other departments to make a system change. Or maybe your team needs budget approval from senior management to launch a new project.

No matter your purpose, you’re far more likely to succeed if you help your audience relate to your content and remember (and maybe act on) it after the presentation is over.

We’ve found that the best way to do that is to craft a technical presentation that balances analytical and anecdotal evidence— and connects with people on a human level.

Analytical Evidence: Facts and Figures

Analytical evidence is typically evidence drawn from statistical information—especially data collected by systematic methods. for example, the number of component failures reported in a quarter, the percentage of people who had adverse reactions to a new drug, or the roi on a new service offering over a specified period of time would all be considered analytical data. , anecdotal evidence: stories, analogies, case studies, examples.

Anecdotal evidence tells a story rather than drawing solely on numbers or percentages. Examples:  A story about how a seriously ill patient responded to a new drug, reading a letter from a satisfied customer, or talking about an experience you had when calling your own company for customer service. 

Some technical people in our workshops bristle at the idea of storytelling or, as they’ll say, “trying to be entertaining.”  But being an entertainer isn’t the point here.  The point is that we’re all human, and images, metaphors, and stories spark our interest and lodge in our memories more easily than facts and figures alone.

  “In fact, the thickness of the Earth's atmosphere, compared with the size of the Earth, is in about the same ratio as the thickness of a coat of shellac on a schoolroom globe is to the diameter of the globe. That's the air that nurtures us and almost all other life on Earth, that protects us from deadly ultraviolet light from the sun, that through the greenhouse effect brings the surface temperature above the freezing point.”   

In his book “Actual Minds, Possible Worlds,” psychologist Jerome Bruner estimated that facts are about 22 times more memorable when they are delivered via a story.  

When the brain sees or hears a story, it mimics the pattern of the writer’s or speaker's brain. This is known as neural coupling, where in effect,  the storyteller literally shares their sensory experience with another person.  (A much more memorable experience than looking at a spreadsheet in a slide presentation.)

“ You cannot reach a person's head without first touching their heart, and the path to the heart runs through the brain, starting with the amygdala . . . We now know which brain chemicals make us pay attention to a speaker (cortisol) and which make us feel empathy toward another person (oxytocin)." — Carmine Gallo, "Storyteller's Secret.”

  “ You can’t play tennis with a bowling ball.”  

So, remember that research proves you will increase the impact of your data and your message by reaching people through their hearts and minds .

Next, use the power of imagery to help people understand and remember key points . . .

5. Be Creative With Visual Aids

Whether you’re presenting in person or virtually, there are several ways you can hold people’s interest and drive home your message by getting creative with visuals.

Add Imagery to Explain Data

You already know not to clobber your audience with endless data-dense slides, right?  Good.  The more you can convey data/key messages via imagery, the more engaging and memorable your content will be.

Here are a few more examples of combining simple, powerful images with (few) words to deliver a message . . .

Don’t Limit Yourself to Slides

Think about introducing a variety of visual aids to make your presentation more interesting . . .

Whiteboards : A virtual whiteboard or an in-person flip-chart are still great ways to emphasize key points, capture audience feedback or questions, or explain a concept. 

Props: Use props to illustrate a key metaphor or idea from your presentation. A world globe could help illustrate the global marketplace, or an apple could evoke preventive health care (“An apple a day keeps the doctor away.”) 

Handouts: A handout allows the audience to take something back to work that can be used as a reference or summary of your content.

Video Clips: These are a great way to break the monotony of still slides, and often introduce a more human factor to the topic. 

6. Use Pattern Disruption to Hold Attention

There’s nothing like breaking a pattern to snap people back to attention.  Think of a presenter who suddenly turns off the screen or introduces music.  Or how about a presenter who’s been talking for five minutes then suddenly . . . stops.  Silence, for like 30 seconds.  You’d look up, right?

Consider places in your presentation where people might need something fresh to keep them engaged.  Some examples . . .

• Stories and analogies
• Video clips or sound recordings
• Style changes (vocal, movement, gestures, pausing)
• Blanking the screen
• Visuals (graphics, illustrations, images)
• Audience participation (small group discussion, brainstorming)

Next, let’s look at one aspect of successful presenting that causes many techies to roll their eyes:  an engaging delivery style.  

Stay with me.  It’s relatively painless . . .

7. Don't Underestimate the Power of Style

A speaker who stands statue-still, stares at their slides or notes, and speaks in a monotone is enough to put anyone to sleep—no matter how interesting the content.  

Remember, even scientists, engineers, and system programmers are human.  And research has shown that we humans are moved by nonverbal communication.  We “read” a lot into its presence or absence, which means it can either obscure or make clear what we’re saying out loud.

“What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say." — Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you’re preparing to make a presentation or give a talk, it’s likely you do what most people do: focus solely on your content. While what you have to say is definitely key, how you say it—through nonverbal “language”—is a lot more important than you might think.

Research has shown repeatedly that your posture, gestures, facial expressions, and the tone and cadence of your voice play a huge role not only in getting your message across to an audience, but also, in engaging them, building trust, and increasing your credibility.

Your tone of voice, for example, has a big impact on how your content is received. 

Not being able to hear a speaker, either because of poor audio or a too-soft voice, isn’t just an annoyance. In a USC study that looked at the effects of poor audio in scientific presentations, they found that, “When the video was difficult to hear, viewers thought the talk was worse, the speaker less intelligent and less likable, and the research less important.”

Speaking in a dreary monotone is another way to lose your audience.  Watch how to avoid it and instead, create energy and interest . . .

source: Great Speech Writing, "How to Avoid Speaking in a Monotone," via YouTube

If you’d like more tips on making nonverbal communication work for you, check out our blog, “ Use the Power of Nonverbal Communication to Connect with Your Audience: 7 Tips .”

8. Bring Your Authentic Self to the Table

Speaking of the human factor when it comes to presentations, know that authenticity, openness, and passion go a long way in engaging your audience, building trust—and yes, even establishing your credibility. 

NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson once revealed her childhood passion for numbers in a very simple, relatable way . . .

“I counted everything. I counted the steps to the road, the steps up to church, the number of dishes and silverware I washed ... anything that could be counted, I did.” 

Now, if you had been in the audience when she led with that, she’d have your attention, right?  

No matter how complex the data or the message, an audience-centric, authentic, human approach is a good place to start.

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Topics: Effective Technical Presentations

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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

October 26, 2023

Can't find what you're looking for?

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.

What's Inside?

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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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.

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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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Chapter 16: Technical Presentations

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One important, but often overlooked, skill in engineering is presenting. From talking with students, I have noticed that a lot of engineering students are intimidated by public speaking. In fact, I have almost a decade of experience lecturing, but I still am a little scared standing in front of a large classroom! It is OK to be a little nervous. I tell students being a little nervous means that you care, and caring is part of successful presentations. This chapter aims to reduce your presentation anxiety by teaching you the skills you need. The main key is to practice, know the format, and be prepared.

Learning Goals

In this chapter we will learn:

• Why it is important to practice and get comfortable presenting technical information.
• What your presentation should entail for the main type of engineering presentations.
• How to present technical information professionally and engagingly.
• What “audience” means and how to use what you know about your audience to your advantage.
• The art of PowerPoint and how to use the features in a non-distracting way.
• What should (and should not) be included in a technical presentation.

Why Learning How to Present Is Important

It is one thing to have a good idea, invent something cool, or develop new technology, but it is a whole other thing to successfully disseminate that information. A lot of people don’t realize that presenting is a skill and like all skills requires practice and study to perfect. It seems like it is easy to slap together a PowerPoint and talk about your project, but if you do not put the time and effort into the presentation to ensure that it impacts your audience, your work will be wasted.

Key Concept: You have to learn how to present in a compelling manner in order to get people to pay attention to your product/idea/report/etc.

For example, I have been an instructor and advisor for several senior design teams. I have seen team projects range from truly impressive to mediocre. I have also seen the impressive teams be dismissed at competitions and the mediocre teams win awards at competitions because of presentation skills alone. What I am trying to convey to you is that presenting can be the “make or break” for a project. No matter how good your project is if you can’t describe to people how good your idea is, no one will care. That being said, the moral of this story is not to do a mediocre project and coast on your presentation skills. Combining a good project with a good presentation should be your goal.

Finally, it should be noted, that engineers have to present a lot . In fact, engineers have to do presentations a lot more than you might think. You might have to present your design idea to your research and development team. You might have to present to the entire company describing how you optimized a system process for efficiency. You might have to present to shareholders the newest technologies your team is working on. You might have to present to future customers on how your technology can improve their productivity. The point is, that engineers are expected to be good presenters and historically, University education in engineering does not explicitly address this skill. Hopefully, this chapter and your subsequent education reverses this.

Presentation Anxiety

Before we jump into some examples and tips, I wanted to take a quick note on presentation anxiety. As I mentioned before, there is no getting around it, you will probably be a little nervous when you present. That is ok! Almost everyone feels a little nervous. However, there are tactics that you can use to reduce your anxiety when stepping up in front of an audience.

One of the biggest keys to reducing your anxiety is preparation . In fact, there is no such thing as “over preparing”. The more you prepare for your presentation the better you will feel because you will be more confident about what you are speaking on.

Here are three tips that should help when it comes to preparation and alleviating anxiety:

Anxiety Reduction Mechanism 1) Rehearse, Rehearse, Rehearse…

Although it might seem self-explanatory or obvious, rehearsing is the most important step in reducing presentation anxiety. In my experience, this is the step that most students spend the least amount of time on even though it is the most important.

Out of all of the time you budget to create your presentation, the majority of time needs to be spent rehearsing.

The more you rehearse, the smoother your delivery will become and the more confident you will feel. Rehearse in front of your roommates. Rehearse in front of your classmates. Rehearse in front of a mirror. Rehearse to your parents (this is a great idea as it will probably impress them about how far you have come in your education and maybe get a few more bucks thrown on your campus cash card!). Rehearse in front of your grandparents (I am sure grandma would love to hear from you anyway). I think you get the idea. Rehearsing is key and the more that you practice your presentation, the more comfortable you will feel. Rehearsing in front of people that aren’t familiar with the course is even better. It will generate questions and make sure that you are explaining things in an optimal manner.

What I suggest to students is, that they time each of the rehearsals of their presentation. The key is to continue to practice rehearsing and practicing until the group can finish the presentation without making any mistakes and when they can finish within +/- 5 seconds of the same time (if it is a 10-minute limit presentation, the team can finish each practice session in 9:50 seconds to 9:55 seconds every time). As you can imagine, this takes a ton of practice but does reflect the level of polish necessary to feel confident about your presentation.

Anxiety Reduction Mechanism 2) Anticipate questions.

The next key to preparation for your presentation is to anticipate the questions you think the audience will ask, and be prepared with answers to those questions. You can’t anticipate every single question that you may get asked, but you can probably think of a few avenues that your audience members’ minds might wander.

For example, let’s imagine that you are giving a presentation on the efficacy of a vaccine. Depending on your audience, you should be prepared to answer the following questions:

• What is a vaccine?
• Specifically, how do vaccines work?
• Do vaccines cause autism? (Spoiler: NO )
• What types of adverse reactions might there be to the vaccine?
• How long will it take to produce 100 million doses of the vaccine?
• Are there specific storage requirements for this vaccine?

Preparing detailed answers to these questions will strengthen your knowledge of your presentation topic and alleviate your anxiety. Since you anticipated the questions your audience will ask, you don’t have to worry as much about looking like a fool on stage. This is also where rehearsing in front of someone who is not familiar with the course or topic can be very beneficial since it will generate a lot of these types of questions that you may have not considered.

Anxiety Reduction Mechanism 3) No one in the audience cares about you.

Sometimes students interpret this incorrectly. I am not saying that no one cares about you. Lots of people do. Your professor does, you have friends in the class, etc. What I mean by this is that it is important to remember that when you give class presentations, often, your classmates and peers have to give presentations as well.

Think back to the last class you were in where you had to present. Think about sitting in your chair, while another team is presenting, waiting for your turn. Be honest. Were you even listening to them? Or were you anxiously awaiting your turn at the presentation? Well, the reality is, everyone else is only thinking about themselves and their presentation while you are presenting . When you make a tiny mistake, no one notices. The only thing they will notice is if you totally bomb the presentation (which you won’t because you rehearsed so much).

So as part of your preparation, relax . The selfish and narcissistic tendencies of your classmates ensure that they won’t be paying as much attention to you as you think they might. Hopefully, that relieves a little bit of the pressure.

Discussion 16.1: How do you feel about presentation anxiety?

What Your Presentation Should Entail

As an engineer, you will typically be presenting on projects you are proposing or presenting data from projects that you have already completed. All of the advice from this chapter (no such thing as over-preparing, etc) will be helpful in reducing stage anxiety but to make sure that your presentation is well received, you need to make sure that the presentation contains the appropriate material.

You will be expected to have the following sections: title, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, and conclusion. The following example presentation will highlight the most important and standard slides that your presentation should (probably) entail.

To describe each of the required sections (keep in mind that I am showing only one slide for each section but it is likely that you will need multiple slides) I included example slides from a presentation I gave at an American Society for Engineering Education conference in 2019 in which I won the “Best Presentation” award. Note, that the slides shown below are only a subset of the slides that I presented at the conference. For the full slide deck, you can click here.

Title Slide

The title slide is just a place to include the names of all the people that worked on the project and their affiliations. And the title. Duh.

• Keep it simple.

Introduction / Background Slide(s)

The purpose of the introduction slide is to outline your current understanding of the subject. You need to include specific examples of previous work/research.

• Clearly explain the importance of the current project and what the significance of the project will be.
• Justify the merit of your project by presenting significant information.
• End with a specific, clear, and explicit purpose for the project. Some of the projects that you complete during your undergraduate career will be chosen for you. It does not mean that the purpose of the project is “because the professor told me to do it”. Spend some time thinking about the project and what learning outcomes you are expected to gain from it.

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Chapter 10. Designing and Delivering Presentations

In this chapter.

• Strategies for developing professional oral presentations and designing clear, functional slides
• Discussion of what makes presentations challenging and practical advice for becoming a more engaging and effective presenter
• Tips for extending the concepts of high quality presentations to creating videos and posters

Presentations are one of the most visible forms of professional or technical communication you will have to do in your career.  Because of that and the nature of being put “on the spot,” presentations are often high pressure situations that make many people anxious. As with the other forms of communication described in this guide, the ability to present well is a skill that can be practiced and honed.

When we think of presentations, we typically imagine standing in front of a room (or auditorium) full of people, delivering information verbally with slides projected on a screen. Variations of that scene are common. Keep in mind, though, that the skills that make you a strong presenter in that setting are incredibly valuable in many other situations, and they are worth studying and practicing.

Effective presentation skills are the ability to use your voice confidently to communicate in “live” situations—delivering information verbally and “physically,” being able to engage your audience, and thinking on your feet. It also translates to things like videos, which are a more and more common form of communication in professional spheres.  You will have a number of opportunities during your academic career to practice your presentation skills, and it is worth it to put effort into developing these skills. They will serve you well in myriad situations beyond traditional presentations, such as interviews, meetings, networking, and public relations.

This chapter describes best practices and tips for becoming an effective presenter in the traditional sense, and also describes how best practices for presentation skills and visuals apply to creating videos and posters.

Process for Planning, Organizing, and Writing Presentations

Similar to any other piece of writing or communication, to design a successful presentation, you must follow a thoughtful writing process (see Engineering Your Writing Process ) that includes planning, drafting, and getting feedback on the presentation content, visuals, and delivery (more on that in the following section).Following is a simple and comprehensive way to approach “writing” a presentation:

Step 1: Identify and state the purpose of the presentation. Find focus by being able to clearly and simply articulate the goal of the presentation—what are you trying to achieve? This is helpful for you and your audience—you will use it in your introduction and conclusion, and it will help you draft the rest of the presentation content.

Step 2: Outline major sections. Next, break the presentation content into sections. Visualizing sections will also help you assess organization and consider transitions from one idea to the next. Plan for an introduction, main content sections that help you achieve the purpose of the presentation, and a conclusion.

Step 3: Draft content. Once you have an outline, it’s time to fill in the details and plan what you are actually going to say. Include an introduction that gives you a chance to greet the audience, state the purpose of the presentation, and provide a brief overview of the rest of the presentation (e.g. “First, we will describe the results of our study, then we’ll outline our recommendations and take your questions”). Help your audience follow the main content of the presentation by telling them as you move from one section of your outline to the next—use the structure you created to keep yourself and your audience on track.

End with a summary, restating the main ideas (purpose) from the presentation and concluding the presentation smoothly (typically thanking your audience and offering to answering any questions from your audience). Ending a presentation can be tricky, but it’s important because it will make a lasting impression with your audience—don’t neglect to plan out the conclusion carefully.

Step 4: Write presentation notes. For a more effective presentation style, write key ideas, data, and information as lists and notes (not a complete, word-for-word script). This allows you to ensure you are including all the vital information without getting stuck reading a script. Your presentation notes should allow you to look down, quickly reference important information or reminders, and then look back up at your audience.

Step 5: Design supporting visuals. Now it’s time to consider what types of visuals will best help your audience understand the information in your presentation. Typically, presentations include a title slide, an overview or advance organizer, visual support for each major content section, and a conclusion slide. Use the visuals to reinforce the organization of your presentation and help your audience see the information in new ways.

Don’t just put your notes on the slides or use visuals that will be overwhelming or distracting—your audience doesn’t need to read everything you’re saying, they need help focusing on and really understanding the most important information. See Designing Effective Visuals .

At each step of the way, assess audience and purpose and let them affect the tone and style of your presentation. What does your audience already know? What do you want them to remember or do with the information? Use the introduction and conclusion in particular to make that clear.

For in-class presentations, look at the assignment or ask the instructor to make sure you’re clear on who your audience is supposed to be. As with written assignments, you may be asked to address an imagined audience or design a presentation for a specific situation, not the real people who might be in the room.

In summary, successful presentations

• have a stated purpose and focus;
• are clearly organized, with a beginning, middle, and end;
• guide the audience from one idea to the next, clearly explaining how ideas are connected and building on the previous section; and
• provide multiple ways for the audience to absorb the most important information (aurally and visually).

Developing a Strong Presentation Style

Since presentation are delivered to the audience “live,” review and revise it as a verbal and visual presentation, not as a piece of writing. As part of the “writing” process, give yourself time to practice delivering your presentation out loud with the visuals . This might mean practicing in front of a mirror or asking someone else to listen to your presentation and give you feedback (or both!). Even if you have a solid plan for the presentation and a strong script, unexpected things will happen when you actually say the words—timing will feel different, you will find transitions that need to be smoothed out, slides will need to be moved.

More importantly, you will be better able to reach your audience if you are able to look up from your notes and really talk to them—this will take practice.

Characteristics of a Strong Presentation Style

When it comes time to practice delivery, think about what has made a presentation and a presenter more or less effective in your past experiences in the audience. What presenters impressed you? Or bored you? What types of presentation visuals keep your attention? Or are more useful?

One of the keys to an effective presentation is to keep your audience focused on what matters—the information—and avoid distracting them or losing their attention with things like overly complicated visuals, monotone delivery, or disinterested body language.

As a presenter, you must also bring your own energy and show the audience that you are interested in the topic—nothing is more boring than a bored presenter, and if your audience is bored, you will not be successful in delivering your message.

Verbal communication should be clear and easy to listen to; non-verbal communication (or body language) should be natural and not distracting to your audience. The chart below outlines qualities of both verbal and non-verbal communication that impact presentation style. Use it as a sort of “rubric” as you assess and practice your own presentation skills.

As you plan and practice a presentation, be aware of time constraints. If you are given a time limit (say, 15 minutes to deliver a presentation in class or 30 minutes for a conference presentation), respect that time limit and plan the right amount of content. As mentioned above, timing must be practiced “live”—without timing yourself, it’s difficult to know how long a presentation will actually take to deliver.

Finally, remember that presentations are “live” and you need to stay alert and flexible to deal with the unexpected:

• Check in with your audience.  Ask questions to make sure everything is working (“Can everyone hear me ok?” or “Can you see the screen if I stand here?”) and be willing to adapt to fix any issues.
• Don’t get so locked into a script that you can’t improvise. You might need to respond to a question, take more time to explain a concept if you see that you’re losing your audience, or move through a planned section more quickly for the sake of time. Have a plan and be able to underscore the main purpose and message of your presentation clearly, even if you end up deviating from the plan.
• Expect technical difficulties. Presentation equipment fails all the time—the slide advancer won’t work, your laptop won’t connect to the podium, a video won’t play, etc. Obviously, you should do everything you can to avoid this by checking and planning, but if it does, stay calm, try to fix it, and be willing to adjust your plans. You might need to manually advance slides or speak louder to compensate for a faulty microphone. Also, have multiple ways to access your presentation visuals (e.g., opening Google Slides from another machine or having a flash drive).

Developing Strong Group Presentations

Group presentations come with unique challenges. You might be a confident presenter individually, but as a member of a group, you are dealing with different presentation styles and levels of comfort.

Here are some techniques and things to consider to help groups work through the planning and practicing process together:

• Transitions and hand-off points. Be conscious of and plan for smooth transitions between group members as one person takes over the presentation from another. Awkward or abrupt transitions can become distracting for an audience, so help them shift their attention from one speaker to the next. You can acknowledge the person who is speaking next (“I’ll hand it over to Sam who will tell you about the results”) or the person who’s stepping in can acknowledge the previous speaker (“So, I will build on what you just heard and explain our findings in more detail”). Don’t spend too much time on transitions—that can also become distracting. Work to make them smooth and natural.
• Table reads. When the presentation is outlined and written, sit around a table together and talk through the presentation—actually say what you will say during the presentation, but in a more casual way. This will help you check the real timing (keep an eye on the clock) and work through transitions and hand-off points. (Table reads are what actors do with scripts as part of the rehearsal process.)
• Body language. Remember that you are still part of the presentation even when you’re not speaking. Consider non-verbal communication cues—pay attention to your fellow group members, don’t block the visuals, and look alert and interested.

Designing Effective Visuals

Presentation visuals (typically slides, but could be videos, props, handouts, etc.) help presenters reinforce important information by giving the audience a way to see as well as hear the message. As with all other aspects of presentations, the goal of visuals is to aid your audience’s understanding, not overwhelm or distract them. One of the most common ways visuals get distracting is by using too much text. Plan and select visuals aids carefully—don’t just put your notes on the screen, but use the visuals to reinforce important information and explain difficult concepts.

The slides below outline useful strategies for designing professional, effective presentation slides.

• Write concise text. Minimize the amount of reading you ask your audience to do by using only meaningful keywords, essential data and information, and short phrases. Long blocks of text or full paragraphs are almost never useful.
• Use meaningful titles. The title should reveal the purpose of the slide. Its position on the slide is highly visible—use it to make a claim or assertion, identify the specific focus of the slide, or ask a framing question.
• Use images and graphics. Wherever possible, replace wordy descriptions with visuals. Well chosen images and graphics will add another dimension to the message you are trying to communicate. Make sure images are clear and large enough for your audience to see and understand in the context of the presentation.
• Keep design consistent. The visual style of the slides should be cohesive. Use the same fonts, colors, borders, backgrounds for similar items (e.g., all titles should be styled the same way, all photos should have the same size and color border). This does not mean every slide needs to look identical, but they should be a recognizable set.
• Use appropriate contrast. Pay attention to how easy it is to see elements on the screen. Whatever colors you choose, backgrounds and overlaid text need to be some version of light/dark. Avoid positioning text over a patterned or “busy” background—it is easy for the text to get lost and become unreadable. Know that what looks ok on your computer screen might not be as clear when projected.

Key Takeaway

• Create a structure for your presentation or video that clearly supports your goal.
• Practice effective verbal and non-verbal communication to become comfortable with your content and timing. If you are presenting as a group, practice together.
• Use visuals that support your message without distracting your audience.

Additional Resources

Fundamentals of Engineering Technical Communications Copyright © by Leah Wahlin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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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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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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Presentation Design and Delivery Cornell Certificate Program

Overview and courses.

Knowledge is power but it’s only half the battle. Sharing knowledge — that is, effectively communicating complex concepts to your audience — is the real strength.

This certificate program is designed to help you design, build, and deliver impactful in-person and virtual presentations to an array of internal and external audiences. The courses will provide you with an opportunity to examine, reevaluate, and collect rich insights into best practices for business, technical, and scientific presentations. Throughout this program, you will reevaluate current and past presentation practices that do not achieve the intended goals in order to help you refine your ability to deliver an effective message. You will practice techniques that can be adapted to meet specific communication needs including sharing highly technical information. Most importantly, you will have many opportunities to apply and experiment with the course concepts in your work.

You will be required to purchase Traci Nathans-Kelly’s book “Slide Rules” to complete your coursework. For the best experience in this program, it is strongly recommended to take these courses in the order that they appear.

Course list

• Redesigning Slides for Impact

As a person working in a technical field, you most likely have to give talks or presentations to different audiences, some of whom will be non-experts or decision makers outside your sphere of expertise. In this course, you will look at your own current practices for giving talks as a technical expert and establish a set of action items for improvement. You will look closely at your old habits and establish new ways to design, build, and deliver effective in-person and virtual presentations for an array of internal and external audiences. You will also examine, reevaluate, and apply best practices for engineering, technical, and scientific presentations, and explore current and past presentation practices that do not achieve the intended goals and results. This examination will help you refine your ability to deliver an effective message.

Specifically, you will perform an assessment of presentation techniques, both personal and at your workplace. From that starting point, you can reengineer your presentations to meet specific technical communication needs. Most importantly, you will have an opportunity to discover and articulate your organization's presentation culture, identify areas for improvement in your own slide design and presentation skills, set goals for leveraging effective new presentation habits, and formulate a detailed action plan for improvement. Throughout this course, you will read various selections from Dr. Traci Nathans-Kelly's book “Slide Rules,” which contains helpful insights and examples that you can apply in your own presentations.

Furthermore, you will prepare for a specific work-related talk and define the needs of co-presenters, audience members, subject matter experts, and other stakeholders.

• Engaging Presentation Techniques

Since the advent of presentation software like PowerPoint, presenters have been led astray by the design of slide templates. The software applications were originally created to help presenters outline their talks, but the slideware's design did not account for the needs of audiences nor factor in cognitive research. As a consequence, the templates have ingrained poor presentation habits that often confuse and disengage the people who are meant to benefit from these talks.

In this course you will have an opportunity to begin challenging the norm and break this cycle of "slide deck drudgery." By replacing old presentation habits with new best practices that you gain from this course, you can shift your focus to the needs and interests of your audience, and you can begin to use your slides to communicate your ideas more clearly and effectively. You will explore new techniques that will help you to improve the flow of your talk and keep your audience focused on your main ideas. You will then study effective presentation design and development practices as you read various selections from Dr. Traci Nathans-Kelly's book “Slide Rules,” which contains valuable insights and examples that you can apply in your own presentations.

You are required to have completed the following course or have equivalent experience before taking this course:

• Designing Slides for Live and Legacy Use

When giving a presentation, you want to ensure you communicate all of your critical ideas while you have your audience's attention. There are more effective ways of doing so beyond the standard large amounts of text and bullet points.

In this course, you will have the opportunity to rethink the way you design your presentations and slides. You will discover that there are straightforward ways to use your slide decks to serve two purposes: support your technical and business presentations while making your slide decks reusable and valuable resources inside your organization. You will then examine the life cycle of your presentations and begin to document who uses your slides, when they are used, and what clearances are needed to share and use them. You will also consider legal issues or proprietary concerns that may exist. Finally, you will start to build a process to help you protect proprietary information before you share it with external parties. As part of your study, you will review various selections from Dr. Traci Nathans-Kelly's book “Slide Rules,” which provides helpful insights and enlightening examples that you can apply in your own presentations.

• Strategizing for Audiences With Different Expertise

Your work in a technical field likely means that you periodically interact with colleagues, customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders who live in a different part of the world, speak a primary language different from your own, or have expertise in a different or non-technical field.

As a technical expert, your ability to anticipate the needs of audiences from diverse backgrounds and communicate effectively with them is essential.

In this course, you will have an opportunity to explore how you can prepare to meet the needs of audiences with differing backgrounds, primary languages, and levels of expertise, and even varying degrees of receptivity to your message. You will examine principles of persuasion and consider how and when to apply them both effectively and ethically. As part of your studies, you will also review pertinent selections from Dr. Traci Nathans-Kelly's book “Slide Rules,” and you will look at how you can prepare for the unexpected in your talks and maintain your composure when disruptions occur.

By the end of this course, you will have gained techniques and insights that you can apply as you prepare and develop presentations for a wide range of audiences with varying needs and interests.

• Projecting Expertise and Confidence During Presentations

Effective communication skills are the hallmark of a professional no matter what the profession. In this course, you will begin to parse the ways in which you present yourself to others as a technical expert. In any presentation or talk that you give, whether face to face or online, you want to project expertise, confidence, and professionalism. The idea of professionalism, however, can vary. Everyone expects professionalism, but the definition and perception of professionalism differs greatly among individuals, organizations, nations, and cultures.

In this course, you will delve into the concept of professionalism in presentations and explore how it varies depending upon the context, the participants, and their expectations.

You will study effective practices for designing, developing, and delivering professional-grade online meetings and team presentations. Additionally, you will have an opportunity to examine the importance of your body language, eye contact, and voice in projecting confidence in your talks, regardless of the setting or delivery medium. You will then record a talk and take an inventory of your expert presence in the video. You will also investigate the nuances and complexities of developing and delivering team presentations. In the final part of the course, you will complete the process of preparing to deliver a professional-level team talk.

Constructing High-Impact Content for Global Delivery

Thanks to ongoing advances in communication technologies, you can collaborate in real time with colleagues, customers, suppliers, investors, and other stakeholders around the world. That reality presents both exciting opportunities and potential challenges. You can share ideas and receive information with great ease, but your message could encounter cultural and language barriers as you communicate with diverse audiences.

In this course, you will explore effective ways to deliver high-impact content that meets the needs of multinational audiences in live, online, and face-to-face presentations. Using practical insights studied in this course, you will strategize and prepare for high-impact presentations in formal settings. You will scrutinize how to design and adapt your slides and delivery techniques to meet the needs of international audiences speaking multiple languages. You will also see how you can leverage your slide presentations to create custom videos that address the needs of your target audience.

How It Works

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Faculty Author

• Certificates Authored

Traci Nathans-Kelly currently teaches for Cornell University’s College of Engineering, with deep experience in online modalities for higher education. She has a particular interest in social justice and techquity issues. Dr. Nathans-Kelly interacts daily to help engineers and pre-professional engineers hone their technical messaging, whether it be via presentations, on paper, in meetings and teams, or through online channels.

Dr. Nathans-Kelly has worked with practicing professional engineers, technical experts, scientists, and related field experts for over 20 years, helping them to strengthen their abilities to become impactful contributors in their organizations. She is very active in IEEE, co-authoring the “English for Technical Professionals” online course, and works with the IEEE Continuing Education Committee, the Educational Activities Committee, and the IEEE Teaching Excellence Editorial Board.

Presentation Design and Delivery

Key course takeaways.

• Create slide decks that support your live presentations to your target audience and act as a secure knowledge/information repository for stakeholders after your talk
• Identify shortcomings in your presentation skills and formulate a plan for improvement
• Replace old presentation habits with new best practices, shifting your focus to the needs and interests of your audience
• Engage with audiences that have differing expertise when presenting
• Strengthen your delivery methods and techniques
• Modify and deliver presentations appropriate for a multinational audience

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What You'll Earn

• Presentation Design and Delivery Certificate from Cornell College of Engineering
• 60 Professional Development Hours (6 CEUs)

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Who should enroll.

• Business leaders
• Technology professionals
• Entrepreneurs
• Consultants
• Anyone interested in effectively conveying ideas to a professional audience

“eCornell gave me the confidence I needed to take a seat at the table and say: I’m ready.”

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Presenting design concepts: how mechanical engineers can sell slam-dunk ideas

Presenting design concepts isn't the most fun part of a mechanical engineer's job. Learn a few tips to make the process less painful.

Gary McCormick

September 8, 2015

If you’re like most mechanical engineers, you entered the field because you like solving problems and making things. That’s the fun part of the job. But other aspects of mechanical engineering are necessary to support the designing-cool-stuff part, and although they might not be as interesting, they don’t have to be unpleasant. One such task is presenting design concepts.

Whether you are pitching to VC angels for startup funding or presenting to your company management about an ongoing project, presenting technical information—often to nontechnical people—is an important, and challenging, part of a mechanical engineer’s job. Keeping the following basics in mind can ensure your presentation goes smoothly.

Know your audience

This is the single most important factor to consider when preparing a design presentation. Any time you present technical information, you have to be aware of your audience’s level of expertise. Presenting to “money people” or management (even engineering managers, who may be years removed from actual design work) usually requires a broader, big-picture type of approach with less technical nitty-gritty. Too much emphasis on technical details with a nontech audience, and they will stop following you and start thinking about their dinner reservations or afternoon tee time.

I recently served on a jury for a case that called a mechanical engineer as a witness to present expert testimony. All his talk of three-axis accelerometers and moment arms was meat on the table to me. And thanks to his communications skills, my fellow jurors, none of whom had a technical education, also followed—and understood—his testimony. He kept the explanations fairly simple, without talking down to his audience, and the results reflected his skill.

But if your audience does comprise other engineers, you can get into the nuts-and-bolts technical issues—the stuff you really like to talk about—without fear of losing their attention.

“When you’re presenting to your peers, you’re looking for suggestions and ideas on ways to improve your design and make it more manufacturable,” says Elise Moss, senior mechanical engineer at Newisys. “If you’re working in the same company, they might be working on similar projects, and they may have parts or assemblies or purchased components that you can cannibalize to make your project easier to manufacture or cheaper to produce. So when you’re presenting to other engineers, the goal is to get ideas to improve your design.”

Know your product

The types of questions you may have to field during and after a design presentation vary depending upon your audience, so the better you know all aspects of the subject matter, the better-equipped you are to field questions.

Alternative concepts (especially lower-cost alternatives, if your audience includes bottom-line-type management or budget people), materials, manufacturing resources, potential materials suppliers or parts vendors, safety issues, schedules—all are fair game for questions. You might not necessarily include them in your pitch, but have the information in your hip pocket. In-depth knowledge of the concept and preparation based on the makeup of your audience are the best way to be prepared for questions.

What if you are asked a question that you don’t have the answer to, at least not in the moment? As a young engineer, I had to present to the head of a government agency, a man with a reputation for being short-tempered and impatient with waffling engineers. After watching him thoroughly dress-down a coworker for his lack of knowledge, I knew what to do when I couldn’t answer a question on the spot (my mother didn’t raise any fools): I responded that I didn’t have that information at hand, but I would transmit the information at the earliest possible opportunity. My answer satisfied the customer, and I left the podium with my pride intact.

Moral of the story: Take action to get the answer, and get it to the person asking as soon as you can. Hemming and hawing makes you look like you are hiding something, at worst, and, at best, gives the impression that you are not well-prepared for the presentation.

Tailor your presentation materials to the subject

The most common presentation method is the ubiquitous Microsoft PowerPoint. Slavishly following PowerPoint’s lead usually results in information-sparse, outline-oriented lists that presenters then read to their audiences, a technique derided by premier information specialist Edward Tufte .

A slideshow can be a viable presentation method, but rule No. 1 is: Don’t read your slides . Prepare a narrative, which is your main information source; let the slides present basic points; and then deliver that narrative as the meat of your presentation.

Of course, engineers can usually do better than a slideshow. Utilize 3D graphics, computerized animation, or even 3D-printed prototypes to demonstrate your concepts. Engineers excel at visualization, so when presenting a design concept, put those powers of visualization to work to help those who don’t possess them.

When presenting to his manufacturing clients, Scott Wertel of Wertel Enterprises, LLC, finds that those visualizations are key. “Share a screen, if you can, so it’s live, and you can visualize the model,” he says. “Hide and show things so the client can actually get a viewpoint. The focus is always very much, ‘Your operator is standing here. Visualize the product going through the machine. Visualize what the operator is doing. Here’s why it’s better; here’s why it’s safer; here’s what your throughput is going to be.’ It really helps, too, if I’ve modeled up a mannequin so they can see how the person is standing around the equipment.”

Prepare, practice, present

Not everyone is a natural public speaker, no matter how well you know your subject matter. The best way to combat that fear is to prepare thoroughly and practice your pitch beforehand. Preparation breeds confidence, and there is no substitute for running through your presentation a few times with colleagues or friends.

But that’s not all. If possible, check out the venue and the equipment beforehand to make sure that everything is connected and operating properly. It’s surprising how a little thing like reaching confidently for the switch on the projector as you start your presentation can get you out of the starting blocks smoothly—and how quickly things can run off the rails if you start with technical glitches.

If presenting design concepts is going to be a regular feature of your job, make it a strength . Work at it if it doesn’t come naturally to you. Take a class at the local college, find a chapter of Toastmasters International , whatever it takes to develop that skill. You may be an excellent engineer, but if you cannot communicate the pertinent information about your design to others—especially nontechnical folks—you might as well have a blank sheet of paper.

About Gary McCormick

Gary McCormick is that rare thing: a mechanical engineer in Silicon Valley who doesn’t just design the boxes that contain the interesting electronic stuff. Working in the field since 1981, Gary has experience in mechanical engineering design, production, and testing. He has been pursuing a side career as a freelance writer (and disproving the theory that engineers can’t write) since 211.

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