Rules for making a good presentation

Steve Jobs once said, «Design is not how a product looks and feels. Design is how it works.» And we at 3owls agree 100% with that statement.

Each time we sit down to prepare a new presentation, our specialist looks at this graph:

This is the so-called «attention curve», prepared on the basis of numerous psychological studies. It shows that in the first 10 minutes a person’s attention decreases rather slowly, and in the period from 15 to 30 minutes the speed is significantly then the level of attention begins to rise again.

What can you learn from this?If your presentation is short, try to keep it under 10 minutes. Speech in segments of 15-20 minutes.Some important thoughts that you want to convey to the audience should fall at the end of these intervals (kind of «checkpoints»).

How to distribute information between parts of the presentation?

Here, too, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. There are specific recommendations that have been tested on more than one project.

One of the most common (and most effective) approaches is to use the law of composition. According to it, The distribution of time between parts of the presentation looks like this: 20% for the introduction, 60% for the main part and the climax, and 20% for the conclusion. It all depends on the goals of the presentation, the product (service) being described, the audience and a number of other factors.

Here are a few ideas for each of the parts:

About the audience, its «pains» and CJM

Before preparing a presentation, we at 3owls must conduct audience research (which we advise you to do as well). Based on its results, we get answers to the following questions:

• How is the audience related to the topic presented by the service or product and what experience does she have on the topic of the presentation?
• How “in the subject” are the listeners, how deeply do they understand the issues under consideration?
• Which of the listeners and in which degree influences decision-making?
• Under what circumstances will the presentation be shown?