E-Book Overview
Giving good presentations is not just common sense. Cognitive neuroscientist Stephen M. Kosslyn shows how to make presentations work better based on how our brains work. Where many books focus on how to create a first draft, Better PowerPoint gives you quick steps to improve one you already have. · 8 key rules that are easy to remember and use · Clear principles about how to design effective slides based on well-established scientific data · Quick steps to sharpen and strengthen your presentation · Easy-to-use checklists guide you through each aspect of your presentation · Chapters are structured to help you prioritize the most effective edits · Memorable examples and illustrations to show what works, and what doesn't · Lessons in what to fix can also help you create better first drafts faster. If you have a PowerPoint presentation that is not giving you the results you want, take advantage of what scientific research can tell you about how your audience is seeing and thinking about what you have to say.
E-Book Content
Better PowerPoint ®
STEPHEN M. KOSSLYN
Better PowerPoint Quick Fixes Based on How Your Audience Thinks
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1 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University´s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam
Copyright 2011 by Stephen M. Kosslyn Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kosslyn, Stephen Michael, 1948– Better PowerPoint : quick fixes based on how your audience thinks / Stephen M. Kosslyn. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-0-19-537675-3 1. Business presentations—Graphic methods—Computer programs. 2. Microsoft PowerPoint (Computer file) 3. Presentation graphics software. I. Title. HF5718.22.K67 2010 658.40 520285558—dc22 2009030696 9
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Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
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Preface Presentations: We´ve all sat through them, wondering why we´re there; or we´ve given them, wondering whether the audience cares. This is a book about how to make presentations effective and therefore more interesting to the audience members. Years ago, I was at a conference where one of the most distinguished cognitive scientists in the world, an expert in how the mind processes information, was wandering though a PowerPoint® presentation and losing the audience in the process. I thought about the number of presentations I had heard where the presenters did not accommodate their audience members´ short attention spans, difficulty reading small type, need for organization, and other strengths and weaknesses. As a scientist, I started thinking about how to use well-known laboratory findings to improve presentations. And then I wrote a book. My book Clear and to the Point addressed all aspects of presentations and discussed eight ``rules´´ about how our minds work: the same eight rules discussed in this guide. In that b