1. Making Your Powerpoint Presentation
COSC 4345

2. Keep It Simple Slides should not be the “Star Of The Show”
Slides are meant to support the speaker
People came to hear you, not read the slides
Don’t make the slides wordy, complicated, busy or full of “chart junk”
Less clutter means people will focus on you
Always introduce your team first
Give the project a name

3. Limit Bullet Points & Text
Slides are meant to support your narration
Each slide – four to five bullets, each with less than ten words (four to five words is best)
Images are great; images with text are better
Avoid using Powerpoint templates
Your audience has seen them 100 times
Ok to make your own unique template
Images and diagrams are great – Helps to facilitate discussions

4. Pay Attention To Design
Use a sans serif font for body text
Decorative fonts for slide headers if they are easy to read
Put dark text on light background
Align text left or right. Centered is too hard to read

5. Images Diagrams with text are great Appropriate fonts and font sizes
Labels
Arrow labels (What data is flowing between subsystems)
Label data stores (Don’t put labels such as MySQL, tell the audience what is in the database!)
Images with text sequences are very helpful

6. Write An Outline And Practice
A little planning goes a long way
You are story telling – Give it a beginning, middle and end
Have a clear arc that makes your audience anxious to find out what is next
One thing at a time
No paragraphs – Your slides augment what you are saying, your slides are not the presentation

7. Most Important Thing – Describe Your Project
Many students speed past the project description and jump to the technical implementation details
Spend at least 1/3 of your time on the following:
What problem are you trying to solve?
Who is your customer?
Describe the solution (i.e., describe what the project accomplishes)
Why should this be built rather than bought?
Describe “What” the project is before describing “How” you plan to build it

8. Sample Presentation Order
Introductions, project name
Describe your project (problem, customer, proposed solution)
Once Again - This is the most important part!
Use cases
System diagram
Demo
Questions