Susan Weishenk is a PhD in Psychology, author of the popular book 100 Essential Design Principles. Over the course of her life, she has held hundreds of presentations in front of a wide variety of audiences: bored students, anti-all programmers, managers and accountants cut off from their favorite work, designers and art directors, and many, many others. But all these people have one thing in common: 10 seconds after the start of the presentation, they listen carefully to Susan, although initially they went to the lecture as a break. How exactly she manages to get 100% of the audience’s attention, she tells in her book “100 main principles of presentation. What a speaker should know about people ”…

Both books by Susan Waynshank (“100 Main Principles of Presentation” and “100 Main Principles of Design”) complement each other very well, because it is impossible to unambiguously separate the concept of “design” (no matter what) and the concept of “perception” (or rather, as a person perceives the surrounding world). That is why some of the chapters in both books are duplicated, so that even in one book, as much information as possible useful for the reader in the area of ​​interest to him is collected: either as a designer or as a speaker.

Who is this book for

This book is primarily for aspiring speakers who want to gain a basic knowledge of presentations. After reading the book, you will have complete and comprehensive instructions on what to say and what to do in certain unforeseen situations, such as the one when the audience is not interested in your presentation, because they were forced to come to your lecture, and you need to get positive feedback from them. … Yes, the task is not easy, but it can be solved. How exactly? Answers in the book;)

In addition to the above, the book “100 Main Principles of Presentation” will also be useful for speakers who have already mastered the field of presentations, who easily give their lectures in front of any audience, but still are not yet completely satisfied with the reviews or the presence of bored listeners in their speeches. I am sure that a lot of the book will be useful to remember and repeat, but I am also sure that at least a little, but useful they will learn.

How This Book Works

Similar to the last book “100 Main Design Principles” in this Susan leads a large number of experiments set up by scientists, proving certain patterns of human behavior: in groups and separately. I can definitely say that reading about these studies and experiments is very interesting, because sometimes there are funny and funny descriptions that can then be used as examples at meetings or even at the same presentations.

However, it should be noted that in the new book Susan relies more and more on other people’s research than on her own experience, although in the first book “100 Main Design Principles” she also told some design techniques that she herself invented and successfully used at work. I do not want to say that this is a drawback, however, one cannot but pay attention to this.

What is this book about

In short, it is about human behavior. Yes, you may have been waiting for me to write something like “a book about how to conduct a presentation, successfully conclude a contract and be happy”. In fact, Susan gives a much broader definition of the concept of “presentation”, including not only banal preparation of slides (although there are presentations without them), but also the behavior of the speaker, his gestures, facial expressions, phrases and much more. It is also very important for the speaker to prepare for the presentation and try to study as much as possible each of the audience present, if there are not many of them. Because if you know everything about a person’s behavior, then you can always find a common language with him, even if he does not guess that you “studied” him in advance.

It is about all of the above that Susan Weishank writes in her book, so that you understand that a presentation is not only a set of slides and a speaker’s speech, but it is a much broader concept.

The important thing is that all the tips are divided into chapters:

• How a person thinks and learns. In this chapter, the author provides a general description of the characteristics of the audience’s behavior when listening to a lecture or presentation, describes what factors prevent people from remembering what you say better, or, on the contrary, help.
• How to keep the audience’s attention.
• How to motivate a person.
• How a person hears and sees. If you are purposefully looking for something in the book about the principle of creating slides, then this chapter is what you need. Although, I would not say that the author has provided comprehensive information on this issue – rather, this is an “introductory course” to the topic of creating slides for a presentation.
• How a person reacts to the environment.
• Emotional reaction of a person.
• How people react to you. The author describes various gestures and postures of the speaker, which are subconsciously interpreted by the audience in one way or another.
• How a person decides to act.

How to prepare a presentation

At the end of the book, you can find step-by-step instructions on how to select and structure material for your presentation. There is nothing in this instruction about the amount of information on the slide, about the colors or fonts that can be used. It only contains working tips on how to properly deal with the information you want to convey to your audience.

The book can be purchased from the publisher Piter.com or from the Ozon.ru online store.