Presentation analysis: tips for designing a scientific presentation for the general public

In this post I want to analyze a scientific presentation intended for the general public. Her subject isliquid biopsy' which is a way to detect cancer through a blood test and is quite the forefront of technology today. As a scientific presentation it is not one of the complicated ones, and still...
The first draft includes some classic rookie mistakes along with some not-at-all-trivial advantages.

Presentation design analysis presentation-draft-review-liquid-biopsy

Let's start with the style: the positive things are that the text is short, large and consistent - in fact there is nothing here that will complicate or confuse the speaker and the audience. In terms of the text, the presentation is quite ready for launch as it is, except for slides 3 and 4 which are quite busy.

Another good thing about this style is that most of the slides have pictures, and although I would like more it's a good base to start from. I especially liked the pictures on slides 3 and 4 which are not only the most beautiful but also the most intelligent. We would like more of these.

This brings me to things that require improvement in terms of style: you can easily insert more and much larger and more interesting images. All the images in the presentation should be enlarged by hundreds of percent. They are of sufficient quality to do so without compromising the resolution, and thus it will be possible to understand what is seen in them. Because precisely in favors it is not clear enough.

Another thing is the overly busy slides that I mentioned earlier (3 and 4) both of which should just be split in half, which is a good idea anyway because a. The presentation is too short in terms of slides and b. This will allow the text to be enlarged.

One last thing in terms of style, which is easy to do but critical to the success of the presentation is to change the background. Let's start, it requires a lot of attention without contributing any content and understanding to the slide beyond what we understood the first time we saw it on the first slide.

Analysis of the content in the presentation

And now to the content: the positive side is that the presentation is very accessible and understandable even to people who have no understanding of medicine. There is almost no jargon and the little that is is explained.

In addition, the structure of the presentation is clear and logical and the audience understands at every point in time exactly where we are and where we are going. The speaker using this presentation will also be completely immune from Blackouts.

What to improve in the content:

The most important thing is to put much more visual content into the presentation. Currently only two images contribute to understanding, and the rest is empty (slides 2 and 6) or has no explanatory value for the audience. This is important because the presentation is scientific and without such content it looks superficial and unprofessional. Almost something created by chatgpt What's missing? Do we lack understanding of what growth looks like? What does the test work look like? It was good to show what a biopsy looked like before the invention of the liquid biopsy. The benefits of the liquid biopsy are also not backed by facts and there was also room to show how it contributes to human life and health.

All these things should be shown in pictures and graphs.

One last thing that is very lacking in terms of this content Self marketing and a call to action. The speaker is not present at all in the presentation and we have no way of knowing what is behind this presentation (which reinforces the chatgpt feeling it creates). For this, you need to create a prominent presence for the speaker and a kind of sense of urgency for the presentation.

A sense of urgency will be created from a call to action. For example "go get tested" or make sure your relatives get tested" or even "stop being afraid of biopsies". Something that will make us feel that the speaker cares about the presentation.

Self-marketing will be done both graphically and in text: graphics and text that will explain, both on the first slide and the last (and possibly in the middle too!) the presenter's key questions:

1. who is the speaker
2. How is it related to this topic?
3. Why should we take his knowledge seriously?
4. what does he want from us

The visual way to do this is a picture of the speaker performing tests or wearing a lab coat.