Slide:ology by Nancy Duarte, Book Summary and Review

Introduction

Slide:ology by Nancy Duarte is a short book, but it doesn’t work well in an e-book format. Despite that, it was very much worth the read. If you deliver presentations at work, this book offers a lot of great tips to use in your next presentation. What the book makes clear, is that the best presentation takes time to prepare. Even in its simplicity, while reading the book, I had to stop a few times to think about what I’d just read.

Presentation skills are critical for success. And in fact, many successful people have said that good communication skills contributed to getting them promotions. That makes a lot of sense, because you have to be able to sell your ideas to others to get their buy-in.

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Summary of Slide:ology by Nancy Duarte

Slide:ology is packed with lots of nuggets of wisdom, and I enjoyed reading it. Applying the ideas from the book, could take my presentations, and yours, to a completely different, and higher level. And they’ll take a lot of time and focus to create. Keep in mind that the amount of time you invest in developing a presentation is directly proportional to how important the presentation is.

Great presentations are about telling stories. Stories help people to relate and understand the world. But most people don’t know how to use their presentation slides to tell a story. As I was thinking about telling a story with my presentation slides to teach leadership reading, it made me realize that I needed to do the presentation from scratch. I needed to map out the story of the course first, before I created the slide deck. This was an epiphany for me.

In the book, Duarte said a few things that made me chuckle. For example, a slide with more than 75 words is a document. Fifty or so words per slide is a teleprompter. Aren’t those worth a chuckle or two? How many PowerPoint presentations have you seen doing exactly that? I’m guessing you’ve seen many. I’ve been guilty of cramming too much information on a slide.

The author wants you to focus on ideas. How do you express invisible ideas? Invest time in generating a lot of ideas, and don’t go with the first one. Better ideas appear after you generate four or five ideas. Choose a few ideas that meet your objectives.

Rule of Thumb: Time Estimate to Develop a 30-Slide, Hour-Long Presentation

I found the following time commitment to create a presentation shocking. I suppose it depends on how you plan to use the presentation.

• 6–20 hours – Research and collect input from the web, colleagues, and the industry.
• 1 hour – Build an audience-needs map.
• 2 hours – Generate ideas via sticky notes.
• 1 hour – Organize the ideas.
• 1 hour – Have colleagues critique or collaborate on the impact the ideas will have on the audience.
• 2 hours – Sketch a structure and/or a storyboard.
• 20–60 hours – Build the slides into a presentation application.
• 3 hours – Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse the presentation
• 36–90 hours total

Seven Questions to Help You Get to Know Your Audience

1. What are they like? – It’s important to connect with them on a deeper level. Try to walk a mile in their shoes. Their demographics and psychographics are also important.
2. Why are they here? – What do they think they’re going to get out of this presentation? Why are they attending? Was it their choice to attend, or did someone tell them they had  to attend?
3. What keeps them up at night? – What are their pain points? Empathize and offer a solution.
4. How can you solve their problem? – It’s always about what’s in it for me? How will you improve their lives?
5. What do you want them to do? – Make sure your audience is clear about what actions you want them to take.
6. How might they resist? – What will likely prevent them from acting on your call to action?
7. How can you best reach them? – People receive information differently. How will you organize the space? Will it be interactive? Will you ask questions to gauge how they’re responding to the presentation? Figure out what the audience wants and give it to them the way they want it.

Five Principles to Present Data

1. Tell the truth. You have to appear credible to your audience.
2. Get to the point. What do you want them to remember? To communicate your data effectively, you have to articulate what you want your audience to adopt.
3. Pick the right tool for the job. What’s the best way to communicate the data? Pie chart? Bar charts? Table? Or other?
4. Highlight what's important. Pay attention to the background, the data, and what you’re emphasizing.
5. Keep it simple. Don’t clutter the slide with too much information.

When displaying data, simplicity is important.

Designing Effective Slides

Slides begin and end with ideas. How can you present an abstract idea in a tangible way? Images should face the content. White space gives you breathing room. Arrange elements to create meaning. Think of the background as a surface on which to place elements. Consider the slide background as premium real estate.

Select images with care, and make sure they complement your color palette. The fewer words on a slide, the better. Avoid sub-bullet points. I'm guilty of using lots of sub-bullets. Have a library of images. I have a lot of photos, but I also use stock images. If you plan to use animation, think of movies. Duarte recommends Cinematic Storytelling by Jennifer Van Sijll.

Conclusion: Slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations by Nancy Duarte

I’ll never develop presentations the same way again. I need to invest more time thinking through the presentation and what I want to communicate before I create the slide deck. Slide:ology has taught me that I haven’t been spending enough time on my presentations. I usually write out what I want to say, and after I add the content to the slides, I look for images.

Next Steps

1. Buy and Read Slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations by Nancy Duarte

2. Join the Art of Learning Membership Site

3. Subscribe to my YouTube Channel

4. Download Unlock Your Genius Power Reading Tips Sheet

5. Buy me a cup of coffee!

If you want access to Bookish Note Slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations by Nancy Duarte, which has more information than the above summary, please consider joining my membership site, the Art of Learning.

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