Data Science Presentations: Storytelling through Slide Shows
The amount of time that it takes to thoroughly dig through data, clean it, organize it, restructure it so that you can view it from a different side- all of that work isn’t done just so that one person can understand the scope of a problem and solve it. It’s done to share the insights with a crowd of people. Typically those people are C-level executives that need succinct information delivered in a well wrapped presentation.
Let’s walk through the steps to creating a professional, clean and effective slide show presentation by drawing attention to the main point.
The theme that I used for this project can be found at SlidesGo
Visually:
A slide show presentation is centrally themed around effectively conveying a series of thoughts and ideas. It should never contain full sentences unless it’s a quote or definition relevant to the point of the slide.
A balanced form of presentation between written bullet points and maps or graphs should be found for visual interest and to respect the fact that everyone in your audience needs to be captivated in order to learn and not every one learns the same way
Don’t be afraid to use a minimalist template in place of doing all of the design work yourself. Some of us don’t really enjoy the graphic design process but respect the power of a clean and organized background, and that’s totally okay.
Don’t use loud color schemes
Use complementary and contrasting colors to draw attention to and from different key points
Stagger visual points
Audibly:
Memorizing the actual content of your ideas; not the content of the slides. Slides are note cards that have easily digestible graphics
Practice giving presentations generally, but also practice giving this presentation so that you are comfortable with the flow of the information and look more confident.
Also rehearsing out loud gives you the chance to know if you need more or less information to convey the idea as a whole
Technically:
Quantitative measures give the audience more to hold on to and are more often remembered after the presentation (make a bigger impact)
Don’t use technical terms unless absolutely necessary or giving a technical presentation
Compare large numbers to something more familiar i.e. the size of a state, or the length of a car
Cite your supportive sources!
Working:
Make each presentation a little better than the previous one; and build upon your own personal brand
Wrap it up, sleep on it, give it a second (or third) go- to polish the edges.
