research-slide-design

Research Slide Design

Purpose

Make technical presentations easy to follow and visually calm. A listener should be able to anticipate the reason for slide N+1 from slide N, while the presenter supplies the interpretation that the slide does not repeat.

Route To Reference

Read references/presentation-slides.md before building an outline, editing slides, creating speaker notes, designing a poster, or planning animations and videos.

Design Rules

• Establish one claim, question, or transition per slide; use section transitions when the logic changes.
• Treat every visual group as having its own rectangle of space. Maintain clear separation between title, figure, annotation, legend, takeaway, and navigation elements.
• Prefer figures, diagrams, sequences, video, and purposeful animation over paragraphs. Keep only information that cannot be conveyed clearly by the visual.
• Use display text for the take-home message, a necessary qualifier, a key number, or labels required to decode the figure.
• Speaker notes should explain the slide's evidence and transition, not recite its visible text.

Research Figure Handling

Use source figures only after checking readability at presentation size. Simplify legends, emphasize the comparison relevant to the claim, and label data provenance. Do not crop away axes, units, uncertainty, or conditions that affect interpretation.

For a publication schematic, graphical abstract, facility, workflow, or system diagram, use research-schematic-design to preserve editable geometry and verify the physical meaning of every label and arrow.

Final Check

Review the slide sequence in presentation mode. Check that text fits, graphics are legible at distance, no objects overlap, animations clarify rather than distract, and a viewer can recover the narrative from slide titles and visual claims alone.