Presenting with Power: Effectively and Dynamically Communicating Technical Info

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Presenting with Power Effectively and
Dynamically Communicating Technical Info

• Christina Bourgeois
• Georgia Institute of Technology
• School of Electrical and Computer Engineering

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80 of Your Presentation Will Be Forgotten

• People tend to remember
• Tone
• Pace
• Nonverbal expressions
• People tend to easily remember things in 3s
• Stop, look, and listen
• Blood, sweat, and tears
• Friends, Romans, Countrymen

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Todays Objectives The Rule of Three in Action

• Presentation Content
• Slide and Speaker Aesthetics
• Performance Dos and Donts

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Planning Your Presentation The Rule of Three

• What three key points do you want your audience
  to remember?
• Structure your talk around the three points and
  find ways to illustrate them.
• Have a clear beginning, middle, and end to your
  talk.

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What? Why? How?

• The purpose of a design presentation is to
  summarize
• WHAT your technical approach is
• WHY you chose that approach
• HOW you implemented the design

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Customize Content for the Audience

• Who will be in the audience?
• What are their expectations?
• Are you presenting new material or building upon
  prior knowledge?
• How many attendees?
• Will the talk be interactive?
• How much time is allotted for the talk?

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Content Guidelines for a Design Presentation

• Title slide (Highly descriptive title)
• Problem Statement or Objectives/Goals
• Technical Approach
• Results
• Discussion
• Conclusions and/or Future Work
• Questions slide

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PowerPoint Dos

• Include a descriptive title/heading line on every
  slide.
• Keep slides simple and uncluttered by using short
  phrases, not long sentences.
• Use consistent capitalization and punctuation on
  all slides.
• Use consistent verb tense on all bullet items.
• Number your slides.

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Choosing a Font
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Font Guidelines

• Avoid distracting or unprofessional fonts such as
  Comic Sans or Monotype Corsiva.
• Use Arial, Helvetica or any sans serif font.
• (these slides use Arial font)
• 44, 40, or 36 point titles.
• 32, 28, or 24 point text for most lines.
• (nothing less than 24 point text)
• Use italics or color for emphasis, bold text is
  not effective.

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Effective Font Size
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Choosing the Right Contrast and Colors

• White background with dark text is the norm at
  professional conferences.
• Dark backgrounds with light text project well.
• Red, orange, or blue lettering become unreadable
  when projected on dark background.
• Avoid busy slide designs, those with
  distracting boarders or graphics keep it simple
  and clean.

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To Upper Case or to Lower Case, That is the
Question
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Display Speed and Special Effects

• Slow slides and complicated special effects
  distract the audience.
• Slide transition effects should not be used.
• Do not use sound effects (crashing glass canned
  applause).

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When to Show When to Tell

• Make use of visuals wherever you can!
• People like to see what youre doing
• Diagrams
• Photos
• Flow charts
• Tables
• Use text when you present concepts that you cant
  show or when words help to describe the visual.

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How to Show Effectively
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Using Diagrams

• Keep diagrams simple, easy to understand.
• Lines must be thick to be visible when projected.
• Text must be large enough to be readable.
• Guide the audience to the important aspects of
  the diagram by using a pointer or standing next
  to the screen and pointing (with your hand) to
  the important data.

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What Works
Specimen 2 6.35mm/0.25 diameter hole drilled in
11 increments
Specimen 1 6.35mm/0.25 long edge
notch introduced in 10 length increments (notch
width of 0.025mm/0.01)
12.7 mm
89.6 mm
101.6 mm
50.8mm
Aluminum 50.8mm x 152.4mm x 4.76mm (2 x 6 x
3/16)
152.4 mm
2.25 MHz, 12.7mm diameter piezoelectric discs
bonded to top surface
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What Doesnt Work
Medtronic Delta Valve
Codman Hakim Programmable Valve
Medtronic Strata Valve
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Ultrasonic Signals from Nominally Identical
Samples
Undamaged Specimen 1 at Room Temperature
Undamaged Specimen 2 at Room Temperature
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Vague Project Objectives

• Follow the wall
• Detect collisions
• Detect beacons
• Finish safely

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Better Project Objectives

• Design robot to independently patrol a given
  walled area
• Identify and react to friendly, foe, and neutral
  beacon agents
• Avoid collisions with interior walls, exterior
  walls, and beacons

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Technical Details ImportantCollision Avoidance

• Uses Braitenberg positive feedback fear method to
  speed from obstacles
• Reads sonar sensors continually to locate objects
  that come within 350mm
• Processes sensors in prioritized order 2, 3,
  1, 4, 0, 5 (6 and 7 are ignored)
• Deals reliably within any environment where
  accurate sonar readings occur

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Too Much TextLocation Awareness

• Method 1 used Pythagorean theorem and law of
  cosines - failed in design
• Method 2 used state transition table with known
  area values failed in test
• Method 3 used turn count also failed

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Vague Conclusions

• Hardware programming is a complex challenge
• Combinations of solutions seemed to work best
• Teamwork is vital to group project completion

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Presenting With StyleLooking as Good as Your
Slides

• Think conservative.
• Clean, pressed shirts and slacks/skirt.
• Menwhite t-shirt under button down or polo
  shirts.
• Shoes and belt should be same color.
• Womenslacks or knee length skirts, moderate
  heel, minimize accessories.
• Nothing tight or trendy.

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Giving Your Talk

• 8 minutes is a short, formal talk.
• Not enough time to say everything about your
  project
• Must plan your comments for each slide
• Stick to your slidesdont digress
• Dont read the slides to the audienceslides
  should be used as prompts, not as a script.
• Remember to project your voice, maintain eye
  contact, and avoid filler words (um, ah, like).
• Be prepared to answer questions.

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Performance Techniques Bringing Your A Game

• Take several deep breaths.
• Stand up straightpay attention to your posture.
• Make eye contact with your audience.
• Project your voice.
• Pace the rate of your speech so that it is
  natural and moderate.
• Monitor your gestures and avoid habitual
  behaviors (hands in pocket, playing with your
  hair, pacing).

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Presentation Nevers

• Never run over your time limit. Ever!
• Never apologize for any aspect of your
  presentation. If you have to apologize, you
  arent prepared.
• Never respond aggressively to a question or
  comment. Even if you are right, the whole
  audience will resent you for picking on that poor
  questioner.

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Top 5 Secrets of the Pros

• Tour the space youll be presenting in prior to
  your talk.
• 4. Make sure the rooms technology is compatible
  with yours.
• 3. Stand to one side of the projection screen
  instead of behind the podium.
• 2. Use the meteorologist chop instead of a
  laser pointer or a cursor.

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And the 1 Secret

• Practice!
• A lot!

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• Questions?