Seeking Tips for Effective Data-Driven Technical Presentations

[adztesla]

Hi everyone,

I work in the medical devices field and I have a question about the best ways to present information, particularly in technical, data-driven presentations. I conduct a lot of experiments, some of which yield significant insights while others are more about learning or problem-solving.

Given the wealth of experience and great mentors in this group, I'd love to hear your tips on how to effectively present this information. Can anyone share some samples or best practices? From my experience, conducting the study is one thing, but communicating the results to others is another challenge altogether.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Bev D]

I have done this for decades.

1. What is the Problem?
2. What question are you asking?
3. What is the baseline for the process you are investigating? Use a graph.
4. What is the Y? The characteristic to be assessed
5. How will it be measured? did it pass a real MSA?
6. Outline the structure of your experiment. The slide should have more pictures than words. (Sample size and rational for the sample size, conditions, direct, indirect and uncontrolled factors, replication, etc.) The experiment should challenge the assumptions not seek to confirm them.
7. How will this experiment answer the question.
8. Show the results graphically (raw data NOT averages and standard deviations or incomprehensible statistical output - management doesn’t get it and their eyes will only glaze over). The visual certainty of the data will preclude logical debate...
9. State the answer
10. What is the next question….

You can look at a few of my presentations in the resource section to see how I lay it out.

 

[adztesla]

Thank you!

 

[Tidge]

I was educated in a scientific field that required regular presentation of information in two primary ways:

1. Relatively short peer-reviewed papers (think "for those in the field" who don't need everything from "first principles")
2. Less-than-an-hour presentations (think academic "seminar", for those who can follow something new to them)

When I came to work in the medical device industry, I found that almost none of the people I worked with/for could digest either approach. This is not intended to be cruel: I encountered very few people had the bandwidth or internal curiosity to fully engage with anything that wasn't 100% assigned to them. I can only think of one manager I worked for who eventually admitted that he couldn't understand a particular problem as well as someone else. This was a huge admission (for him) because always wanted to be seen as "knowing the answer" to whatever, with only a casual amount of C from a PDCA cycle.

What I can to do is the following: I'd state the questions and then show my answer(s). I'd have the method of analysis, data collection, and data analysis as backup information.

My experience was almost universally that if I tried to start with the method of analysis, that I'd get a huge number of off-the-cuff suggestions about how to do the experiment, and it would be necessary to discuss whatever random idea popped into people's heads... this isn't to say that everyone else would always have a bad point, but it was typical that most of these types of suggestions weren't going to speak to the question. I found it better to "give the answer" and if they didn't like it, they could then see how the answer was derived rather than simply suggest other approaches to get a more palatable answer. It always looks like I'm skipping steps, but for presentation purposes to only-partially-engaged folks, every step is a place to fall off the path.

 

[Sidney Vianna]

but communicating the results to others is another challenge altogether.

Who is in the audience? If you only have technical people only, your peers, the approach is different, compared to a scenario you might have people with a different background, e.g., upper management who might fund continued R&D. You don’t want to lose their attention with excruciatingly technical data.

 

[Ed Panek]

I’d include a real life example of the topic in action. People learn with stories and analogies. “This new thing is like this old thing like this” draft a made up example to show the power of the new information

 

[Tidge]

I've had mixed results when trying to analogize for folks. I used to try to do this quite a lot!

I believe most of the negative reactions have been because of the sort of non-engagement/disinterest on the part of the recipients I mentioned above. There are also a fraction of recipients who get easily distracted by the analogy and don't focus on the the actual issue.

 

[Bev D]

And then there are those who need to be the smartest guy in the room and will always second ‘guess’ you and insist that their theory is the correct one and that you did the experiment wrong. This is worst when the smart @$$ is an executive VP who has a PhD and a big ring from a prestigious university.

I once had to listen quietly for over an hour while one of these ring-knockers man-splained to me that his idea of what the cause of a problem was should be aggressively pursued as he would accept no other result. We had incontrovertible results* that pointed to a completely different component as the cause and completely ruled out the two components he just knew were the cause.

* we took 3 pairs of lots, with each pair consisting of really good assemblies and really bad assemblies. We swapped each component one at a tiem within each each pair, returning the components to their ‘home’ assembly. Only one component made the good assemblies bad and the bad assemblies good. This was the component that the ring-knocker said couldn’t possibly be the cause.

 

[Ed Panek]

Not invented here - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

That?