Delivering Effective Presentations in Science & Medicine

Three core philosophies to consider when approaching presentation design.

Topics covered in this presentation.

1. Learning Theory
   Concepts in learning theory can inform the fundamental architecture of a presentation.
2. Graphical Design
   Standards for turning data-points into accurate and effective graphics.
3. Presentation Engineering
   Leveraging digital presentation software for effective storytelling
4. Typesetting
   Be kind to your audience and gentle on their eyes.
5. Deploying
   Ideas for preparing to deliver your presentation

1 | Learning Theory

Elements of learning theory can be used to structure a presentation.

Films like Inception are very complicated, but they are well received by audiences. Contrast this with a highly technical presentations where many professionals struggle to engage audiences and facilitate learning. I call this "the Inception paradox." Filmmakers and writers use a rich tradition of story design to draw in attention and facilitate learning. As physicians and scientists, we can learn from these cross-disciplinary practices.

A lot of inspiration for the content in this section comes from the writing guide Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace. Although this is a resource for better writing, the ideas described in this book have a lot of relevance in the presentation preparation space.

Element #1: Continuity Our brains learn better with continuity of topics because the context surrounding a learning point helps trigger retention.

Element #2: Repetition Repetition in the introduction, content, and summary phases further facilitate learning and encourage retention.

1. Introduction — tell them what you’re going to tell them.
2. Content — tell them.
3. Synthesis — review, summarize, and put it in context.

So now you have two tools based on principles of learning theory that you can use to help with the initial planning of your presentations:

1. Continuity of topics — This provides a microstructural framework. Use this concept to develop-out slides and transitions between slides.
2. Repetition — This provides a macrostructural framework. Use this concept to plan the overall flow and components of your presentation.

2 | Graphical Design

Standards for turning data-points into accurate and effective graphics.

Our world (medicine, biology, chemistry, physics) is filled with complex and repeatable patterns driven by many factors and variables. These relationships are not always apparent to the viewer. However, graphics are leveraged to help our minds link these variables and make predictions. In fact, data charts and graphics are the most effective tool for telling complex data-centric stories.

Here are a couple historical examples...

Four general guidelines for graphical excellence

These principles are drawn heavily from Edward Tufte’s famous The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. We’ll apply all four to a real dataset in a moment.

1. The chart’s dimensionality should not exceed the dimensionality of the data used to generate the chart. Two variables → a 2-D chart, never a fake-3-D one.
2. Area carries meaning. The eye reads the area of a mark — use bars only when height is the quantity.
3. Maximize the ratio of information to ink. If an element adds no meaning, remove it.
4. Use scales that reflect the real process. An exponential process wants a log axis.

Examples of these guidelines being put into practice. The data at the right shows number of E. coli bacteria present in a cell culture given a certain amount of time after inoculation. Data points are present for strains of E. coli; a wild-type (normal) strain and a mutant strain. If we put this information directly into microsoft excel, you will get an image much like the first one seen directly below.

In Summary Be critical, be careful, and be truthful of your graphics.

3 | Presentation Engineering

Leveraging digital presentation software for effective storytelling

PowerPoint offers dozens of options; when considering whether or not to use a transition or animation, ask whether the transition or animation will increase the clarity of the presentation.

PowerPoint is fundamentally a vector-graphics program. Every element is defined by math, not pixels — a position, a size, a color, and whether it’s visible. Magnify it 10,000× and it stays crisp. And because each of those properties is just a number, a single keystroke can change how an element looks.

Animations transitions control the flow of attention. Utilize animations and transitions that complement the theory of learning that we have already discussed.

Artificial intelligence in presentation design.

Artificial intelligence has come a long way in the last few years. With such a rapidly evolving, complex, and powerful technology, it is hard to know how best to apply it to your work. How do we judge where to spend extra time working "by hand" versus letting AI do work in the background?

Do not use AI to analyze or visualize data directly. Instead, use AI to build tools to analyze and visualize data. Let's look at what this means...

Bottom line: let AI generate hard-coded, inspectable tools — scripts you can read and repeat with different inputs — that do the analysis and graphing.

4 | Typesetting

Be kind to your audience and gentle on their eyes

(even if they don't know it)

Typesetting:To arrange type (characters) or process data so that the composition of elements can be publicly presented.

Let's take a look at an example. Here is a fundamental phrase from a high-school biology textbook. Many viewers of this presentation will agree that there is something wrong with how it is typeset. It's small, unreadable, and placed strangely on the page.

A few “presentation pillows” to consider.

• Use words to capture concepts, not sentences. The fewer words on the slide, the better.
• Use high-contrast colors: black on white, white on black. But red on black is a sin — very low readability.
• Transition softly. A gentle fade between slides is kinder than a hard cut (use the fade feature from the transition menu in PowerPoint).
• Encourage reflection. Sometimes it’s worth a quiet moment — a piece of art, a pause — to mark how far you and the audience have come.

5| Deploying Presentations

Ideas for preparing to deliver your presentation

You can pour weeks into a talk and a poor delivery still undoes it. A few things that protect the landing.

Your slides are not your notes. People learn better when more senses are engaged. Don’t read the text on the screen — let the visual carry the structure while your voice carries the teaching, and the two reinforce each other.

Practice — out loud, in an empty room, and then in front of mentors or colleagues who’ll give you honest, critical feedback.

Acknowledge complexity, then organize it. When something is genuinely hard, say so — and then take responsibility for bringing order to it. Take this classic:

On posters, put the most important thing — usually your novel data — at the visual center, where the eye is drawn. The layout can be a classic triptych, or something new; experiment.

And don’t linger. It’s tempting to labor over a slide and then talk to it for five minutes. Most audiences won’t follow. George Lucas built the Return of the Jedi sand barge over months in the desert — and put it on screen for seconds. Effort spent building a thing doesn’t entitle it to the audience’s time. Show the important part, then move on.

Review and Synthesis