In our fourth and final excerpt from our latest white paper, How SmartDraw VP Reinvents PowerPoint®, we examine how SmartDraw VP significantly eases the planning and composition of your presentation – without even launching PowerPoint®.
Effectively Presenting Visuals
Even the best visual can be ineffective if displayed in the wrong way in your presentation.
As presentation expert Rick Altman explains in his excellent book, Why Most PowerPoint® Presentations Suck and How to Make them Better, showing a visual to your audience all at once can be overwhelming. They will be too busy trying to absorb all the information to focus on the specific point you are trying to make. Rick calls this “drinking from the fire hose.” Instead, it’s better to reveal the visual in a series of steps. Rick calls this “sequencing”. Here’s an example.
We can show this graph in its entirety:
Or we can show it in a series of steps with commentary:
“As you can see we have seen a steady growth of smart phone sales over the past four years.”
“But it’s important to note that sales of normal phones have fallen off just as quickly.”
“We see clearly that total sales of all phones have actually grown quite slowly during this period. Smart phone sales have largely replaced regular phone sales.”
By stepping through the graph, your audience can follow the argument with much greater comprehension than just putting the whole graph in front of them in one pass.
Sequencing is especially powerful when used with mind maps. A slide with a single mind map can always be used to replace a list of bullets. Mind maps group your points around topics, so not only will your audience absorb the information faster, they will also see how the points relate to each other and to your overall message.
Here’s an example:
The second slide with the mind map contains the same information as the first but with an extra layer of meaning—it communicates visually how the topics interrelate.
When you present the mind map in sections using sequencing, the result is even more powerful. In fact, in some cases your entire presentation can consist of a single slide with a sequenced mind map. And the result is more dynamic and effective than slide after slide of monotonous bullets.
“We need a new strategy because we want to increase growth in acquisitions, areas, people, and products.”
“A new strategy could also change our corporate culture, giving us a new style that is more in-line with new trends.”
“We need to adapt to these external environmental factors.”
“The other benefit of a new corporate strategy is increased efficiency in HR and process management, which will lower our costs.”
Sequencing works with virtually every type of visual. Timelines to explain history or plans:
“In 2002 PSA Releases their first report on the uses on green fuel and the advantages of solar power.”
“In 2003 the US Navy Contracts PSA to develop new green technology for their mobile land transports.”
“Based on the worked provided for the US Navy, PSA is awarded a full Department of Defense contract in 2004.”
“In 2005, PSA celebrates their 200th contract nationwide.”
Flowcharts to explain processes:
“Let’s look at the postcard design process.”
“The first step is to determine if a template will be used.”
“If the design is template-based then it’s a matter of selecting the template, modifying it, and submitting for approval.”
“If not, then the designer should draft a new design based on best practices, include the specified offer and copy, then submit for approval.”
Using the animation features in PowerPoint® to sequence a visual, even a visual created with PowerPoint® itself, is difficult and painstaking. However SmartDraw not only makes it possible for you to create visuals like these in minutes, it also makes using sequencing effortless.
SmartDraw sequences all graphs automatically. Simply select the preset order that works best for your presentation:
You can easily assign custom sequencing to any SmartDraw visual using the intuitive controls:
A SmartDraw visual can be inserted into an existing PowerPoint® presentation as a new slide with a single click, with all the sequencing information included:
When you build your PowerPoint® deck with the SmartDraw PowerPoint® builder, all the sequencing for each visual is preserved in PowerPoint®.
Reinventing PowerPoint® with SmartDraw
SmartDraw’s presentation features totally reinvent the way you use PowerPoint®. Not only does SmartDraw make it easy to replace boring bullets with powerful visuals, it gives you a better way to compose, build, and manage all your presentations. The result is better, more effective presentations that are even easier to create and edit. Make your next presentation impactful and memorable by making it visual, with SmartDraw, the world’s first visual processor.
Be sure to download and read the full white paper, How SmartDraw VP Reinvents PowerPoint®.
If you don't own SmartDraw VP, you can either buy SmartDraw or upgrade to the latest version.
