Presentation Mistakes — Are You Guilty of These?

If you have some experience with preparing presentation slides, chances are that you’ve already come across the most common mistakes. These include things like using a font size too small to be easily readable, choosing poor color combinations, et cetera. In this article I discuss four mistakes which are less obvious, but just as important to avoid, in my opinion. The images I included compare poor slides (left side, red markers) in which the respective mistake was made to better versions (right side, green markers) in which the mistake was avoided.

Mistake 1: Generic outline

I have a background in experimental physics, and I have seen the outline (and slight variations of it) shown in the left image below literally hundreds of times. It can be quite annoying when you hear the seventh presenter in a row saying, “I will start with an introduction, then talk about our experiments, then I will discuss the results, and finally I’ll give you some conclusions.” Boring! Sure, it’s often hard to avoid that your presentation has the same basic structure as everyone else’s (in particular at conferences). But if that is the case, at least spare your audience the boredom that comes from hearing the same thing over and over again.