21 | Tips for Delivering Effective Presentations

Best Practices

Many of us begin planning a presentation by asking ourselves what we want to say and how best to organize that information. In practice, however, broadening your mindset to include both what you want to say and what your audience will find the most helpful to hear can be instrumental for delivering highly effective presentations. Below are a few tips that may help.^[1]

1. Minimize jargon. Are you presenting to your lab group where everyone is well acquainted with the research topic, or are you presenting to a larger group of scientists at a departmental seminar or conference where people have only a broad understanding of the research topic? Perhaps there are members of the news media or patient advocates in your audience. Knowing your audience can help you to gauge how many technical terms and acronyms are reasonable to use. In general, minimize use of highly technical terminology to promote broad understanding of the topic.
2. Provide context. Take time upfront to explain why the topic is important to you and your audience. While all audience members will benefit from some sort of framing, certain people will clearly require more background information at the outset than others to truly understand what is being communicated. If instead you dive right into the details of the scientific research, you risk losing their attention.
3. Use large font sizes. Nothing is worse than settling in to enjoy a presentation and being barely able to read the slides. Hence, make sure the content is readable from a reasonable distance, and don’t cram too much information on any one slide. The Association of Research Libraries recommends a minimum font size of 24 points.^[2]
4. Focus on a limited number of essential messages. You will be lucky if your audience can recall more than one or two key points after some time has passed following the presentation. Thus, distill down the information you want to present, and keep the key points simple and easy to remember. The essential messages should be of value to your audience in some way. Repeat your most important messages more than once, such as in the results and summary.
5. Stay within the time limit. Any information presented in rush mode will not be retained well. Therefore, it is critical to time your talk beforehand and trim the content down if necessary. Leave time for questions.
6. Engage the audience. Audiences largely do not like it when presenters read directly from their presentation notes. A better strategy is to create bullets of your talking points as a guide and memorize only the transitions; then, discuss the content in a clear, conversational manner. Alternatively, if the presentation is very important and you have ample time to practice, you can memorize the presentation (though practice enough to not sound stilted and lose your place if there are interruptions). In terms of delivery, it is important to make eye contact often and use hand gestures to convey enthusiasm.

The adage “know your audience” is crucial for delivering effective presentations. If you are not following the above tips already, test them out for your next talk—your audience will thank you for it.