We tend to like presentations that:
- Are professional and are delivered by someone who is credible and confident
- Look like they were prepared specifically for us and make immediately clear why would be interested
- Have clear slides, with minimal detail and helpful and or/entertaining images
- Tell us interesting, curious, and counterintuitive things
- Don’t make us work too hard to follow what is being said – two or three main points, lots of examples, and not too much theory
- Are delivered in a friendly, enthusiastic, and relatively informal way
- Entertain us and interact with us
We tend NOT to like presentations where the speaker:
- Has clearly not practiced the presentation
- Has no clear introduction, a confused structure, and no conclusions
- Appears to be talking to himself/herself rather than engaging with the audience
- Reads the slides
- Has a series of similar slides full of t e x t and diagrams
- Relies on animation
- Fails to address the audience's interest and only sees things from his/her point of view
- Is too technical, too detailed
- Speaks too fast, speaks with a monotone, speaks for two long
- Shows little interest in his/her topic
