Giving Presentations the EVL way

Giving Presentations the EVL way “Jason, you maybe a good programmer but it don’t mean beans if you can’t tell a good story!” - Tom Moher Jason Leigh and Andy JohnsonElectronic Visualization Laboratory University of Illinois at Chicago (last updated 12/08)

The Introduction • TELL A GOOD STORY! • Rehearse an opening • Know your audience. Give them a copy of your slides • What is the motivating problem? • Why is it important? • Sound enthusiastic • Everyone wants to hear a good presentation- the only one who can screw it up is you. Have you ever gone to a movie that you wanted to suck? • No outline slide please- everyone knows you are going to give an intro, a middle and a conclusion.

The Content • Speak slowly, boldly, loudly, and clearly • Choose good visible fonts, sizes and colors • Dark backgrounds, light text, consistent color scheme • Use slides as notes, not a book. Don’t read your slides (unless you have difficulty with English because it is your second language). • If you put up a formula you better explain it so that your audience understands. Pages of formulae will lose people • Interact with your audience • Look at your audience, all of them. Not just one person or the floor, or the screen, or your notes • Define your acronyms if audience does not know them • Test your slides on the projector ahead of time - Stand where the audience will be and see what they see. Can you see?

How Many Slides • Stay on time! Rehearse! Stay on time! Rehearse! • Figure on 2 minutes per slide • Really - its true • If it takes less than that to go through a slide maybe it isn’t worth devoting a slide to it • If it takes more than 2 minutes then the slide is probably too dense • You should aim to finish 1 minute before your time runs out

Versions of Presentations • You will often give the same talk more than once • Modify your slides for this particular audience • Do not have a mass of slides and skip over several of them - that shows bad planning and a disregard for your audience

White background, Black Text- Agh!Tolerable if you have only Overhead Transparencies. • Dark backgrounds, light text. • Choose good visible fonts, sizes and colors. • You’re from a graphics lab, you better have pictures! • This is 40pt font • This is 32pt font • This is 24pt font - This is the limit • This is 18pt font • This is 14pt font • This is 12pt font • This is 10pt font Step to the back of the room and try and read this slide

Dark Background Example • Dark backgrounds, light text. • Choose good visible fonts, sizes and colors. • You’re from a graphics lab, you better have pictures! • This is 40pt font • This is 32pt font • This is 24pt font - This is the limit • This is 18pt font • This is 14pt font • This is 12pt font • This is 10pt font Step to the back of the room and try and read this slide

Another Dark Background Example • Dark backgrounds, light text. • Choose good visible fonts, sizes and colors. • You’re from a graphics lab, you better have pictures! • This is 40pt font • This is 32pt font • This is 24pt font - This is the limit • This is 18pt font • This is 14pt font • This is 12pt font • This is 10pt font

Choose a good font size • This is 40pt font • This is 32pt font • This is 24pt font - This is the limit • This is 18pt font • This is 14pt font • This is 12pt font • This is 10pt font Step to the back of the room and try and read this slide

Choose colors that’s easy to read • This is text - good! • This is text - good! • This is text - good! • This is text - agh!!!!!!! • This is text - no!!!! • This is text - good! • This is text - borderline Step to the back of the room and try and read this slide

This is 40pt font This is 32pt font This is 24pt font - This is the limit This is 18pt font This is 14pt font This is 12pt font This is 10pt font This is 40pt font This is 32pt font This is 24pt font - This is the limit This is 18pt font This is 14pt font This is 12pt font This is 10pt font Choose a good font • Use only one font during your talk Arial / Helvetica Times Roman • Sans-serif fonts like Arial are easier to read than serif fonts like Times Step to the back of the room and try and read this slide

You’re from a graphics lab, you better have lots of pictures! • Use pictures to wake-up the presentation • But use meaningful pictures • Explain the pictures to the audience • Are the labels in the picture readable? • Make it match your slides. You match your tie to your shirt don’t you? • Show a video of your application running

Graphs • Remember that white background & blacktext is bad! Invert thechart so it has a blackbackground • Don’t accept whatExcel gives youFix the colors to makeeverything readable • Everything that appliesto your slides appliesto your pictures and graphs • Read the text for the audience if it is unavoidably too small

More on Graphs • Avoid 3D charts & graphs – they often make it harder to understand • Avoid fully saturated primary colors • Try to keep the entries in the legend in the same order as the data in the graph • If you show numbers in your graph, make sure you don’t have extra significant digits

Highlight important info in tables. The table on the right is very hard to read. The ones below are easier to read Tables Seconds

More on Tables • Keep track of your significant digits • the results should not show greater accuracy than the original measurements. Don’t let excel etc add on extra digits • in a presentation the numbers should only show enough precision for the audience to see the trend – more digits can obscure that trend • all related data in a table should have the same number of significant digits • Choose a text alignment (left, center, right) that makes it easy for the audience to see the trends in the data

Animations • Animation can be used to clarify diagrams, showing flows or transitions between states • More often its over-used • Be very careful using cutesy animation sequences in a serious presentations • Do not use excessive ‘bling’ like multiple types of slide transitions. Stick with one simple transition for all of the slides

Movies • Movies can be very nice for illustrating visualization applications and user interfaces. • Make sure the movie plays smoothly on the hardware you will be using • Trim the movie to show what is important rather than skipping through a larger movie

The Conclusions • Don’t end with: “well uh that’s it.” • End with: “And that concludes my talk, If there are questions I’d be happy to answer them.” • Rehearse the close of your talk • Show a fast 1 slide overview of your work • Show a web site where they can get more information and your contact info - leave it on the screen so people can write it down

Answering Questions • Repeat the question so that everyone in the room can hear • If you don’t know the answer, just say so • If a question will take a lot of time to answer, tell them that you’d be happy to discuss this further after the talk • If a member of your thesis insists you are wrong, don’t “spar” with him/her. You will always lose. Say something like: “Maybe you’re right, I’ll look more deeply into it…”

Backups • Have a backup of your slides on the same machine • Have a backup of your slides on a usb keychain drive or a DVD • Make sure you have a backup dongle / adapter to connect your laptop to the projector

Giving Demos • The demo is like a play that must WORK! • Rehearse your demo. Sound enthusiastic • Test your demo and all its components the day before • Book the equipment in advance. Email out a message to tell everyone not to screw up your settings & equipment • Arrive 1 hour early & check all the equipment AGAIN because people will have screwed up your equipment- welcome to EVL • Do you know who all the tech experts are and how to contact them? Alan, Pat, Lance? You should • What is your backup plan if some component fails? What is the backup for your backup plan? What if ALL the tech fails?

Giving Demos (cont) • Speak slowly, boldly, clearly, competently. Give the audience a context. They are not psychic! • Encourage your audience to play with the application • Give them the tracked glasses. Keep the wand initially & then gradually relinquish control to audience • Don’t hack in a fix in the last minute, or the last day • Don’t develop new code right up to the moment you have to demo it. Make a firm decision of what you can show and make sure it works flawlessly • Don’t say anything in your slides and then later in the demo say you had a problem and you disabled it

Tools for creating presentations • Powerpoint / Keynote • Photoshop - picture touch up • XV / imageMagic / Graphic Converter - file format conversion • IrfanView

Just Do It- but do it GREAT! • Tell a Great story ALWAYS • Make the demo work flawlessly and brilliantly • Speak clearly, boldly, slowly and enthusiastically • You’re not doing this for course credit. This is a personal reflection of YOU and your competence • Imagine everyone in EVL has died, WORK THE PROBLEM, MAKE IT WORK • Do or do not, don’t waste your audiences time • Stay on time! Rehearse! Stay on time! Rehearse!

Giving Presentations the EVL way