Presentations are important forms of visual communication that allow us to inform, persuade, instruct, and motivate. In business, presentations can be used to aid decision making, share important progress updates, and be a stepping stone for gaining customers, investors, or project approval. In education and research, presentations are used to provide an insight into our work and ideas for a grade or approval for our next stage. From making a sale to defending a thesis, presentations are an important way we connect with others using both verbal and visual information. But, presentations are more than just information packed slides, and lengthy scripts. You need to engage with the audience and leave them with something to remember.
Features of a Good Presentation
- Your presentation should have a clear aim. Do you want to inform, instruct, motivate, or persuade? This sets the scene for how you choose, organise and present information. You’ll be able to define what you want the audience to take away, and guide them effectively to that end result.
- To produce an engaging presentation, you need to consider the audience. What do they currently know about the presentation topic? Why are they watching your presentation? By knowing this information, you can ensure you tailor information to their understanding. This allows the audience to follow along and remain engaged.
- You can further engage your audience by sticking to a few key, well-developed points. If you have too much content, the audience is more likely to lose focus and disengage. It’s important to be selective with your points to make sure they can easily organise and remember the content you present.
- Before planning your presentation, take note of external presentation requirements. This might be a time limit, or pre-defined presentation structure. You’ll save time having to reorganise the presentation if you follow these requirements from the start. These requirements also allow you to consider the audience. For example, how much time you have with them, and who you’re presenting to, which may be part of a conference or business meeting.
- Your presentation should be easy to follow with a good structure that has some kind of beginning, middle and end. The beginning would outline the core topic in an engaging way and your presentation topics. This prepares your audience for what’s to come. The middle would include those key, well developed points that follow on from each other in a logical way. Finally, your presentation can end with a quick summary and a call to action for the audience. Each section will vary depending on your presentation topic and contents but this is a good outline to follow so that your audience knows what’s going on.
These features allow you to work towards building a presentation that is well-structured, clear, engaging and easy to follow. However, creating such a presentation can be time consuming. You have to gather and keep track of information sources, consider slide design and organisation, and prepare speaker notes. That’s why utilising digital tools can save you time, and allow you to focus on your area of expertise instead. Genei can be used as a tool for structuring, planning and summarising presentation content as you research.
How to Create a Presentation in Genei
Whether you’re starting a presentation from scratch with new background research, or converting a written report or essay into a presentation format, genei can help. In genei, you can organise research notes with ease, plan your presentation structure and begin preparing the content for each slide. Instead of going back and forth between research notes and your presentation, you can instead work directly alongside your research material. Here’s how you can use genei to create a quick presentation:
- Create a new project or folder before uploading your research material. You can import files using web page URLs or PDF files. Alternatively, you can use keywords or topics to search for new material using genei’s search feature.
- Read through each document 70% faster using genei’s document overview. In this section, you can see AI generated summaries for the content, an outline of the document and frequently used keywords. You’ll also be able to see any graphs, tables, figures and images alongside a list of links and references that you can click to read.
- You can also upload your own essays or reports in a PDF format. The AI summaries, outlines and keywords will make it easier for you to begin organising a presentation on the content. You’ll have easy access to any graphs, tables, figures, images, links and references which would be particularly useful for large reports or essays.
Compiling Presentation Notes and Structure
- You can compile notes while reading using the notepad. Notes can be made across an entire project folder or for each document individually. The AI generated summaries and keywords can be added to your notepad with a click. You can also highlight material of interest and add it directly to your notepad. You’ll have the option to summarise this material using genei before adding. The notepad also allows you to record your own notes and thoughts while reading.
- After compiling a rough draft of notes, you can expand the notepad to begin organising this information into a presentation structure. You can start with adding titles that correspond with potential slides, or separate material into beginning, middle and end sections. Your notes will remain linked to their original source, so you can re-organise freely without worrying about losing track of where the information originated from.
Improve Your Presentation Notes
- To improve the compiled research notes, you can use genei’s paraphrasing and summarising features. This can give you a starting point for producing presentation content that is concise but still holds important information. For genei pro members, you can use GPT-3 powered note-taking features that will rephrase, summarise and expand the text in your notepad, making the writing process more efficient.
- If you’re still struggling with presentation structure, or ideas on how to best organise content. You can refer back to each document and use the document outline, and keywords for inspiration. These outlines are likely to be similar in the way they present information on a given topic. Where do they start? In what order are points presented? Keywords can help you identify the core aspects of a topic that can be focused on, or the words that might capture your audience's attention.
5 Ways Genei Improves Your Presentation Process
- You can research and take notes in one place. There is no need for loads of open documents and notes alongside the presentation software. Instead, you can simply add notes with a click, write your own notes, and organise them into the notepad easily. You can then add these notes to PowerPoint, Google Slides or Canva.
- Research, read and compile your notes faster. You can have an in depth overview and summary of content within moments. These summaries, outlines, and keywords can be added to your notepad, removing the need to create your own notes. This allows you to compile the relevant information faster, and refine your notes later.
- Never lose your original information source. When you’re working to a tight deadline or have a lot of material to organise, it’s easy to lose track of where information originated from. You might have summarised multiple sources to add to a slide, but can’t remember which resources you used. In genei, you can organise information in the notepad freely because it will track the information source, allowing you to click back to where it was found.
- Your writing process is made easier. Rewriting notes into concise summaries is often what takes us the longest after research. However using the paraphrasing and summarising features, notepad content can easily be converted into digestible bites perfect for your presentation slides.
Make use of valuable information. If you’re stuck and need inspiration, genei extracts information you wouldn't usually have quick access to if reading on your own. The document outlines and keywords can give you a detailed overview of the topic at hand that you wouldn’t have without using a digital tool. This information can inform your presentation structure, key points, or provide words that get your audience's attention.