Whether it's your first time using PowerPoint or you're a presentation professional, there's always a very important question you need to ask yourself when designing a slide series: How many slides should you include? To calculate the right number with good accuracy, consider the amount of time you have and how fast you speak. Learn the best design strategies and learn to consider your presentation as a unique work, so that you don't feel forced to follow the rules on the "right" number of slides.
Steps
Method 1 of 3: Choose the Right Number of Slides Based on the Style
Step 1. Provide the right amount of information
PowerPoint presentations are useful for giving an overview and giving a general description of a topic. Yours shouldn't be encyclopedic. Don't go overboard by including all the little details, quotes, or anecdotes inherent in the problem you are dealing with. Too much information tires the audience and you'll find yourself talking to a group of people who are more interested in going to lunch than listening to you.
You are the main element of the presentation, not the slides. The images are there to support what you have to say. They should be a part of the presentation, not all of it
Step 2. Divide overly complex slides into several simple pages
The most effective and impactful PowerPoint presentations are those with a clean, minimalist style. For example, if the title of a slide is "Habitat", with the three points "Forest", "Desert" and "Ocean" underneath, followed by three descriptions of each habitat, you'd better dedicate three different slides to the habitats, including a summary and a picture of each.
Step 3. Include audiovisual aids only as needed
Your PowerPoint presentation should always be designed to reinforce your spoken explanations with images. In some cases it can be useful to write words on the screen, but in general you should limit the text. Do graphics serve as a starting point to explain specific results, trends, forecasts or outcomes? Are you using visual aids only to engage the audience, to make them laugh or to foster various learning styles? These and other related questions should guide your decision making when choosing how many slides to include in your presentation.
Look at the entire presentation and ask yourself if each slide is essential. If the answer is no, or if you find that you can communicate the same information verbally, make changes
Method 2 of 3: Choose the Right Number of Slides Based on Time
Step 1. Test the presentation in front of the mirror or to a small group of friends and family before actually offering it
If during rehearsals you realize that you have exceeded the time available to you before you can finish the slides, you will understand that there are too many. Go back to the design stage and make the necessary changes.
- If you finished your presentation before the time runs out, try taking a few more seconds to each slide, or add more slides to expose more information.
- Ask friends and family for advice during rehearsals. If they feel that the slides are too many or too few, or if they feel that some sections are slow or seem rushed, make the necessary corrections to fix those problems.
Step 2. Think about the speed at which you speak
If you do this rather quickly, you will be able to show more slides. Conversely, if you express yourself slowly, you probably need to reduce the number of slides. Consider the exposure pace to figure out how many slides you can insert.
Step 3. Don't add too many slides
If you have ten minutes, you might need up to 60 slides, or you might need ten. Whichever number you choose, make sure you can describe them all in the time allotted to you.
Step 4. Don't use too few slides
If you can put a lot of useful information into your presentation, do it. You shouldn't add so many slides that you won't be able to show them all in your time, but you shouldn't limit yourself to the point of not talking about valuable information or graphics.
Method 3 of 3: Go Beyond Traditional Strategies to Find the Right Number of Slides
Step 1. Don't listen to the experts
Everyone seems to have an idea of how many slides are enough. Some people find that five is enough for thirty minutes, others ten for twenty minutes, while still others use 90 for 20 minutes. In fact, every presentation is different and must be considered for its unique characteristics.
- A widely used formula for PowerPoint presentations is 10/20/30. This rule indicates that you should use about ten slides for a twenty-minute presentation, each with a 30-point font. In other words, each slide should stay on screen for about two minutes. Maybe the 10/20/30 formula is for you. If not, don't feel like you're using the wrong number of slides.
- Others argue that on average slides shouldn't stay on screen for more than two minutes and no less than 15 seconds.
Step 2. Choose the number of slides according to the topic
Some topics require few pictures and many explanations, while others the opposite. For example, if your presentation is about a particular product or a single beautiful geographic area, many slides filled with photos are more useful than a few filled with text. Think about how you can combine a series of slides with images with others that contain text and vice versa.
Step 3. Customize the presentation according to the audience
If you need to illustrate very detailed or technical information to a group of people who are well versed in the jargon of the industry and the topics you are talking about, you can include many slides that you will tackle rather quickly, but which are necessary to support your thesis and demonstrate that you know that. what do you say. If you need to present the same information to high school students, you will probably need to reduce the number of slides and modify the presentation so that you can explain the concepts in terms that everyone can understand.
Step 4. Think about where you will be presenting
If you are in a large auditorium, but only have a small projector available for your slides, you should minimize the importance and number of slides and instead focus on the verbal aspects of the presentation. Likewise, insert a few slides if you are outdoors or in a very bright environment, as it would be difficult to observe them with reflections.
If, on the other hand, you are in a smaller room where you have the possibility to control the lighting, you can decide to insert more slides. However, even then don't feel pressured to use multiple slides just because you can
Advice
- Consider each slide individually. If it has to stay on the screen for two minutes, that's not a problem. The same if you want to change it after ten seconds.
- If you've written a slide with no images but with many bullet points that you want to talk about for 15-20 seconds each, you could spend well over a minute on that slide.
- If a slide contains video, or if you aren't using a slide for each point in your presentation, you can spend more time on each one.
- Remember to test the audio / video equipment before the presentation, so that you can be sure you know how to use it and that it works correctly.
- Visual aids don't always make your presentation better. Ask yourself if you could just give a speech or if you need the slides.
