Take a look at this chart below. Let’s picture it in two different scenarios.

Scenario one

It’s Monday morning. You grab your cup of coffee, sit down at your computer and start going through your emails. Your colleague has sent you an interim report on findings from their current research project. You scroll through, read the report and take time to understand and interpret the chart. “Excellent work”, you say. You go about your business.

Scenario two

Your same colleague has been invited to present the findings from the interim report. Being 2020, let’s say this is on Zoom. They have 15 minutes to get through about 20 slides, which leaves about 45 seconds per slide. One of the slides is the same chart. The chart appears. They keep talking, and you start trying to read, interpret and make comparisons between the categories. However, your concentration is broken because the presenter is still talking and what they are talking about is not where you are on the chart. Next minute, the slide changes. “I’m confused”, you say.

My point is when designing charts for your PowerPoint presentations, there are different considerations to designing for reports or infographics. With reports and infographics, you have a lot more time to read and digest the information. For presentations, we need to reduce the cognitive load and simplify the chart as best we can to illustrate the point.

So, what can we do?

The chart above was one that came from one of my awesome clients. The horizontal grouped bar is great and does everything a bar chart needs to. She has added data labels and removed all the background noise like the gridlines. But it still takes a bit of work to go back and forth from the key down the bottom and match up with the categories and how they perform against each other. Time is not usually a luxury we have in PowerPoint presentations.

AFTER: Small multiple horizontal bar chart

This is my redesign as small multiple horizontal bars.

What have I done?

I’ve made two horizontal bars sitting next to each other with the exact same dimensions (scale, height and width). The bars are bit thicker too. I’ve kept with my client’s chosen colours for male and female (and not conformed to the old pink and blue stereotypes) and added an icon next to the heading to aid in comprehension. The first category (female), I have listed from biggest to smallest. It makes the chart easier to read. I’ve then matched the categories for the male column for easier comparisons. Like the original, I have the data labels in there but have made them that little bit bigger. There is a big difference in the number of female and male participants, so I have kept those numbers in but subtly at the top.

A few easy changes and the chart is a whole lot easier to digest.

Let’s look at another slide before and after.

I can hear you asking, “Why have you been boring and done it in the exact same way”? Good question!

Remember: time is not our friend in a PowerPoint presentation. Even if the slide was up on screen for a while, we still want our audience to process the information as quickly as possible and then focus their attention back to us as the presenter. So, keeping the same type of chart and the same layout allows our audience a quicker processing time as they are already familiar with the chart and how to read it.

Other key things to remember when designing charts for PowerPoint presentations:

Remove unnecessary clutter from your charts, like gridlines, background colour, and borders.
Always label data directly to reduce any ambiguity. It’s harder for our eyes to scroll from the end of the bar to the X or Y axis to see the exact value.
Use the graphic design principle of hierarchy to order your chart. In Western culture we read from top left to bottom right, so lead your audience through with a large title on the top left.
Add icons where you can to aid in readability. Remember PowerPoint now has its own icons.
Use the real estate on your slide! Use the space you have been given. Don’t cram it into one corner.
Use data storytelling to focus your audience’s attention on a certain part of your chart and tell the story behind it.

Happy designing!

Many moons ago, when I first started working at the University, a fellow colleague was giving a presentation on her research. We were in a medium sized seminar room with the lights slightly dim. The room was half full of academics from all different disciplines, eager to hear about her study. She was engaging and well prepared. Then out of nowhere, we heard this noise. The room stopped and turned. The presenter, professional as ever, kept going, but was visibly distracted. What had happened? Another colleague had fallen asleep and started snoring! Yes, a lunch time session, with the lights slightly dim, had put this poor man to sleep.

We’ve all been to those seminars where the presenter starts talking and the slides are full of dot points. Do you read the dot points, or listen to the presentation? You decide to read, tuning out the speaker and then they change the slide! The next slide appears and besides it’s six multi-level dot points and two different fonts, your attention is competing with the unnecessary clip art, the four different organisational logos and a heading that’s two sentences long with a distorted photo in the background. What is going on?! Time to check emails or even see what’s happening on your social’s news feed.

I have a love-hate relationship with PowerPoint. On the one hand, it’s a great tool to use for your presentations, but the majority of people are using it incorrectly.

What’s my issue with PowerPoint? The minute you open the program, it guides us into bad habits. The first slide prompts you to “click to add title”, and then “click to add subtitle”. The next slide “click to add title”, “click to add text”. But what format are you adding the text in? The evil dot points (or bullets)!

Please don’t get me started on the horrible templates they supply either.

The majority of people put the information in and never go back to reformat it, so pages and pages of dot points remain (probably copied and pasted from another document).

Here is my first take away point:

Your presentation is not a 50/50 split between you as the presenter and your PowerPoint presentation. You are the presentation and PowerPoint is your visual aid. Your slides shouldn’t make a lot of sense without you there talking to them. If they do, you probably have too much information on them.

For the majority of us, presentations are challenging. You have a set amount of time to not only condense your topic but also present it in a way that’s engaging and easy to understand. So naturally we start going through and planning what we are going to talk about on each slide, succumbing to the evil dot point format.

That’s fine and a good way to start planning, but it’s only half the job. Don’t stop there.

Second take away point:

Once you have planned what you are going to speak about on each slide, move ALL this information into the notes section below. Now you can start to design your slides.

When you start designing, make sure you start with a blank slide. This way you won’t succumb to PowerPoint’s nasty dot point trap.

Add an image, a few words or icons that illustrate the point you are talking about. Don’t be scared to stretch what you originally had on one slide over three or four. Each slide should cover one main message.

Use images. People connect to images, especially images of other people’s faces.

Why is this so important?

In his brilliant book Brain Rules, John Medina tells us that if you show someone a chunk of text, they are likely to recall 10% of that information three days later. If you combine that text with a relevant image, they are likely to recall 65% of that information three days later.

Third take away point:

Move away from dot points.

My challenge to you: create a presentation that has no dot points in it at all. It is possible! My one-day short course has over 500 slides with only one slide with dot points – and that’s an example of a ‘before’ slide. Dot points are the biggest mistake people make.

My last take away point:

Make a great first impression on your first slide.

At a conference or presentation, your first slide is likely to be on display for a while. It will be on screen while people walk into the room and wait for you to start. Make them excited about your presentation the minute they see that slide. Don’t clutter it with unnecessary information or clip art.

There are the ONLY five elements I believe should be on your first slide.

Title – a short, sharp title is better than 2 whole sentences.
Image/photo – use a high quality stock image. There are many sites like pixabay where you can get these royalty free.
Name of the presenter ONLY. You can name all your collaborators on the next slide. People want to know who is presenting in this instance.
Your institution
Your institution’s logo. This should be on your first and last slide only. If you are engaging enough, people will remember where you are from. You don’t need to remind them on every slide.

Here are some examples.

I could write a book on designing PowerPoint presentations. There is so much more you can do than jotting some dot points on a page.

Design something that’s exciting. Design something that’s engaging. Design something that wouldn’t make much sense without you there to talk to it. Don’t be scared of white space. As the famous saying goes, “less is more”.

Take your time designing. People often don’t realise how time consuming putting together a well-designed PowerPoint actually is.

And remember not to use dot points!