Visual Annotation

Presentation Zen: Gates, Jobs, & the Zen aesthetic

I thought it would be useful to examine briefly the two contrasting visual approaches employed by Gates and Jobs in their presentations while keeping key aesthetic concepts found in Zen in mind. I believe we can use many of the concepts in Zen and Zen aesthetics to help us compare their presentation visuals as well as help us improve our own visuals.

A really interesting comparison of two presentation styles.

Creating Passionate Users: Crash course in learning theory

[H]ere’s a crash course on some of our favorite learning techniques gleaned from cognitive science, learning theory, neuroscience, psychology, and entertainment (including game design). Much of it is based around courses I designed and taught at UCLA Extension’s New Media/Entertainment Studies department.

Well worth checking out.

Rands In Repose: Out Loud

My best piece of advice is a threat: an audience can smell an immature presentation on the very first slide. It has nothing to do with the quality of the content; it’s you standing lamely in front of your slide and silently conveying the “Ok, what I am going to talk about here?” vibe, and it’s presentation death.

A series of interesting presentation tips. This post is focused on the process of presentation creation and there’s some good advice in it.

Virtual Hosting Blog » Scientific Web Design: 23 Actionable Lessons from Eye-Tracking Studies

Eye-tracking studies are hot in the web design world, but it can be hard to figure out how to translate the results of these studies into real design implementations. These are a few tips from eye-tracking studies that you can use to improve the design of your webpage.

While focused on web design a lot of these points can easily apply to presentation slides as well.

Presentation Zen: Ira Glass:Tips on storytelling

Ira Glass, a veteran radio personality and host of This American Life, giving advice to those making short stories such as vloggers. There are good pieces of wisdom in there we can apply to presentation in the broader sense as well. I strongly encourage you to watch this clip below and the three clips from the same interview that follow.

TED | Talks | Hans Rosling: New insights on poverty and life around the world (video)

In a follow-up to his now-legendary TED2006 presentation, Hans Rosling demonstrates how developing countries are pulling themselves out of poverty. He shows us the next generation of his Trendalyzer software — which analyzes and displays data in amazingly accessible ways, allowing people to see patterns previously hidden behind mountains of stats.

An older article but it stresses some important studies of attention span.

After three to five minutes of “settling down” at the start of class, one study found that “the next lapse of attention usually occurred some 10 to 18 minutes later, and as the lecture proceeded the attention span became shorter and often fell to three or four minutes towards the end of a standard lecture.”

This is video of an MIT professor lecturing at Harvard on lecturing. The videos are nicely broken up into small chunks.

In this skillful lecture, Professor Patrick Winston of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers tips on how to give an effective talk, cleverly illustrating his suggestions by using them himself. He emphasizes how to start a lecture, cycling in on the material, using verbal punctuation to indicate transitions, describing “near misses” that strengthen the intended concept, and asking questions. He also talks about using the blackboard, overhead projections, props, and “how to stop.”

See the videos.

A summary of a talk given by Harvard cognitive scientist Stephen M. Kosslyn regarding his recent book, Clear and to the Point, which deals with 8 psychological principles for compelling PowerPoints.

A great slide deck on presentation tips dealing directly with education.

Tips on design, font, and overall presentation concept.