I've been thinking lately about how to add depth to a presentation and the concept of layers or levels. Many people eliminate all extraneous information from a presentation, whether to save time or to keep a narrow focus.
However, you need to provide context to your message and explain how your points relate to your audience, their organization, or even to the country, and the world. People also want access to supplemental data. From the experience of surfing Web sites, they are used to gaining knowledge in a hierarchical, rather than a linear, structure.
Let’s say you’re selling software. You'll make your potential clients happier if you explain how your software can meet their company's needs, including meeting the competition, keeping costs down, saving time, and so on. How can technology advance the future of their product or service?
A presentation needs to be relevant to the listerner and offer a broader context. This means including more expanded, general levels of information. On the other hand, you may also need to provide supplementary data that is more specific, which you can do via the use of hyperlinks. If you are orienting new employees, they want to know why the point are important to them as well as to the company. They may also have specific questions that you didn't address in the presentation.
In a sense, you need to create two or three layers in a presentations—one explaining "just the facts, Ma'am" and a second, explaining the benefits and relevance. A third might simply involve having details and specifications available at the click of a button, to allow you to go off on a detour that a listener suggests.
There are several mechanisms that you can use to create multi-level content.
One way is to organize the presentation into sections based on categories. For example, you can organize your discussion of the software's features by their benefits — first cover the features that reduce costs, then those that increase ease of use, and so on. Clearly mark each section with a title slide at the beginning of the section so that the audience will automatically connect each feature with its benefits.
A second method is to use color coding or icons for each category. At the beginning of the presentation, when explaining the various benefits, introduce a color or icon for each item. Point out this mechanism to make the connection clear to the audience. From then on, the presentation can display the appropriate color or icon next to the point being discussed and the audience will understand the connection instantly. These mechanisms allow people to get the point as well as the point's purpose, all at the same time.
As I mentioned earlier, you can use hyperlinks to provide a way to go to additional content, if appropriate. The hyperlinks can link to a Web site or other documents.
You may decide to leave the level of the big picture to the beginning and the conclusion of your presentation. If you can integrate one level of meaning throughout the presentation and another during the overview and summary, even that will add a great deal of depth.
Using these techniques helps you swim around on the surface — describe all the details—but also dive deep into related values of meaning. When you are writing your content—creating your information architecture—investigate all the levels and consequences connected to your presentation. Offer your audience multiple levels of understanding and your presentation will be significantly more valuable to them.
