Use this skill for creating or refining an academic slide deck and the talk built around it: structuring a conference talk, thesis defense, lab meeting, or paper-to-slides deck; deciding the narrative arc and slide breakdown; improving slide design and visual hierarchy; planning rehearsal, timing, Q&A, and backup slides; or generating the .pptx. Reach for it when the user is shaping the presentation itself. Do not use for writing the paper, producing standalone speaker notes/scripts/transcripts, making posters, creating isolated figures/charts outside a slide deck, or building non-academic presentations.
A structured approach to creating academic presentation slides and preparing research talks. Covers narrative structure, slide design, visual hierarchy, delivery technique, and Q&A preparation.
Before designing any slides, answer these questions clearly:
What works are you presenting? They must share a coherent research direction. If presenting multiple works, they should form a narrative arc — not a disconnected list.
What problems do these works solve in that direction? Each work should map to a specific problem. If you cannot articulate the problem in one sentence, you are not ready to present.
How do you use related work to naturally introduce these problems? Related work is not citation duty. It builds the motivation for YOUR problem. Each related work you mention should advance the audience toward understanding why your approach is needed.
Step 1: Define scope and audience
Step 2: Draft narrative arc (outline)
Step 3: Design slide structure (section breakdown)
Step 4: Create individual slides (one idea per slide)
Step 5: Add visual elements (figures, diagrams, animations)
Step 6: Rehearse and time
Step 7: Prepare backup / Q&A slides
| Audience | Adjust |
|---|---|
| Domain experts | Skip basics, go deep on method and results |
| Broad CS / engineering | Explain task context, moderate technical depth |
| Interdisciplinary | Start from the application, minimize jargon |
| Industry | Lead with impact and demo, light on theory |
Rule of thumb: Duration in minutes = approximate slide count. A 20-minute talk needs about 20 slides.
Use the outline template at assets/talk-outline-template.md to plan your talk before making any slides. The outline forces you to articulate your key takeaway and narrative arc.
Break your outline into sections with claim-style headers. See talk-structure.md for two complete talk structures and section-by-section guidance.
One idea per slide. Follow the 10 design rules in slide-design.md for visual hierarchy and layout.
Use slide-creation.md for practical .pptx creation — color palettes, layout code, charts, tables, figures, and QA workflow.
See references/delivery-and-qa.md for the rehearsal protocol, delivery principles, and Q&A preparation.
Backup slides go after your "Thank You" slide. They are not part of the talk — they are your safety net for Q&A:
If you used other EvoSkills earlier in the pipeline, pull these artifacts directly:
| Source Skill | Artifact | Use In Slides |
|---|---|---|
paper-planning | Story summary (task → challenge → insight) | Motivation slides |
paper-planning | Pipeline figure sketch | Method overview slide |
paper-planning | Experiment plan | Results structure |
paper-writing | Finalized figures and tables | Method + results slides |
paper-review | Anticipated reviewer concerns | Backup Q&A slides |
See slide-creation.md for detailed layout patterns using each artifact.
For the 10 design rules (one idea per slide, claim-style titles, max 6 elements, etc.), see slide-design.md. The rules below are higher-level mindset shifts.
A talk is an advertisement, not a lecture. Your goal is to make the audience interested enough to read the paper. Cut 80% of your paper's content. If someone can reconstruct your paper from your slides alone, your slides have too much.
Text-heavy slides force the audience to choose between reading your slides and listening to you. They will read — and stop hearing you. When you put text on a slide, you are choosing to be ignored.
A passionate speaker with rough slides beats a bored speaker with beautiful slides. The audience remembers your energy and clarity, not your color scheme. If you only have time to improve one thing, rehearse more — don't redesign slides.
Use related work to BUILD your problem motivation, not to show you have read papers. Each related work slide should advance the narrative: "This approach solved X, but Y remains open — which is exactly what we address."
| Topic | Reference File | When to Use |
|---|---|---|
| Talk structures | talk-structure.md | Organizing the narrative arc |
| Slide design | slide-design.md | Visual design and layout rules |
| Slide creation | slide-creation.md | Building .pptx files with code |
| Delivery and Q&A | delivery-and-qa.md | Rehearsal, timing, Q&A preparation |
| Talk outline template | talk-outline-template.md | Starting a new presentation |