Another consideration if you’re trying to present inclusively is how to maintain your audience’s attention and focus. There are several factors that could influence your audience members’ focus including conditions like ADHD or anxiety, and situational factors like being in a hot conference room for too long. Regardless of what might impact our ability to focus, generally most adults are unable to sustain attention on one thing for more than 20 minutes. However, we do have the ability to ‘refocus’ on the same thing. The key with presentations is to keep providing stimuli so people keep refocusing on what you’re saying.
Firstly, keep your presentation content phone number denmark focused. It’s easy to cram loads of information into a presentation, especially if you’re passionate about the topic. However, you should review your slides to see if there’s any content you could reduce or cut out completely. The less content you have, the easier it is for everyone to pay attention! Consider what key points you want your audience to take away with them and try to simplify complex ideas into bitesize chunks. Remember you can always provide material or links for further reading after the presentation for people who want to learn more. A good question to ask is ‘Is this essential or is it just nice to know?’. Only essential info makes it into the deck!
Once you’ve focused your presentation content, you can use animation to draw your audiences’ attention to information as you present. By introducing separate ideas on individual mouse clicks, you make sure that the audience doesn’t get distracted by reading ahead, and stays focused on you as the presenter and what you’re saying. Animation can be a powerful tool to bring visuals to life or demonstrate concepts or processes. But if you’re going to use animation, make sure it’s purposeful and not an unnecessary distraction. You should also consider the speed of your animations. If they are too fast or too subtle, the audience could miss it entirely, especially if they have a slower internet connection. Make sure your visuals still tell the story when static after the animation has finished playing.