The results are in, and audiences have had enough of bad presentations.
In a recent survey, Dave Paradi of Think Outside the Slide asked respondents what annoys them most during presentations. The biggest offenders were:
1. Presenters who read from the slides (73.8 percent)
2. Slides with full sentences instead of bullet points (51.6 percent)
3. Fonts that are too small to read (48.1 percent)
These top annoyances are the result of information overload, Paradi says. "When a presenter feels that they have to include everything … the slides will be a confusing mass of text and numbers that give the audience no clue on what the important takeaway should be," he explains.
Other presentation mistakes that annoy audiences are slides that are hard to read because of poor color choices and overly complex diagrams and charts.
"… Presentations are becoming a more important vehicle for communicating, but presenters aren't really getting any better at effectively using this important vehicle to get their message understood," Paradi says.
Do your presentations annoy your audience?
Read the rest of the survey's results.