Purpose
Help the user turn research content into a clear, reusable slide deck. This skill owns the deck design problem: slide order, title page, visual style, page-level layout, figure placement, section logic, and what belongs on each slide.
Use presentation-dry-run later when the user already has slides and wants to rehearse timing, spoken transitions, and Q&A.
When to Use
- User needs to make PPT/keynote/slides for an advisor meeting, lab meeting, group update, paper reading report, conference talk, proposal, or defense segment
- User asks what the deck should look like, what title page to use, how many slides to make, or how to structure each page
- User has research notes/results but no slide structure yet
- User wants a reusable style convention so they do not redesign every deck from scratch
Deck Design Principles
- One slide, one job. Every slide needs a sentence-level takeaway.
- Make the audience's path explicit: context -> question -> evidence -> decision.
- For advisor updates, prioritize decision points and blockers over polished storytelling.
- For research talks, prioritize motivation, problem framing, and result interpretation.
- Figures are evidence, not decoration. Explain axes, setup, and takeaway.
- Use restrained academic styling: clean white/light background, dark text, one accent color, generous margins, no visual clutter.
Workflow
Stage 1: Identify Presentation Type
Ask:
- Who is the audience: advisor, lab, committee, conference, interview, or classmates?
- How long is the talk?
- Is the goal to get feedback, report progress, teach a paper, persuade, or defend a claim?
- What is the single most important takeaway?
- What material exists already: notes, figures, tables, code results, paper PDF, outline?
Stage 2: Choose the Deck Archetype
Use the closest archetype:
Advisor update deck (5-10 slides)
- Title / meeting goal
- Last meeting commitments
- One-slide progress summary
- Key result or evidence
- What is solved
- What is stuck
- Options / decision needed
- Next-week plan
Lab meeting research update (8-15 slides)
- Title
- Problem and motivation
- Current research question
- Method or setup
- Experimental setup
- Main result
- Ablation / analysis
- Limitation or failure case
- Next steps and questions
Paper reading report (8-12 slides)
- Title: paper + why it matters
- One-sentence contribution
- Problem setting
- Method overview
- Key technical idea
- Main experiments
- Strengths
- Weaknesses / assumptions
- Relevance to my project
- Discussion questions
Conference-style talk (10-20 slides)
- Title
- Motivation
- Problem
- Gap in prior work
- Method intuition
- Method details
- Experimental setup
- Main result
- Analysis / ablation
- Limitations
- Takeaway
Stage 3: Apply the Reusable Visual Style
Default slide style:
- 16:9 aspect ratio
- Background: white or very light gray
- Font: one sans-serif family throughout
- Title: 32-40 pt, sentence case, specific takeaway
- Body: 20-26 pt, sparse bullets
- Footer: slide number, short project name, optional date
- Accent color: one muted blue/green/red; use it only for emphasis
- Layout: align to a consistent grid; keep margins stable
- Figures: large enough to read, centered or right-weighted with takeaway text on the left
Avoid:
- Dense paragraphs
- Decorative gradients
- Too many colors
- Screenshots with unreadable text
- Vague titles like "Results" or "Method"
- Unexplained abbreviations
Stage 4: Define Slide Page Types
For each slide, choose one page type:
- Title slide: title, subtitle/project context, name, affiliation, date. For advisor meetings, include meeting goal.
- Context slide: 2-3 bullets explaining why the audience should care.
- Question slide: one explicit research question or decision question.
- Method slide: diagram first, minimal equations, call out only the moving parts needed for the result.
- Experiment setup slide: dataset, baselines, metrics, variables, and protocol.
- Result slide: figure/table + one takeaway sentence + short interpretation.
- Failure/blocker slide: what failed, evidence, attempted fixes, and what input is needed.
- Decision slide: options, tradeoffs, recommendation, question for advisor/audience.
- Next steps slide: 3-5 concrete actions with timeline.
- Backup slide: extra details for likely questions.
Stage 5: Build the Slide Plan
For each planned slide, write:
- Slide number
- Slide type
- Takeaway title
- Visual/evidence needed
- Main bullets
- Speaker note: what to say in 20-40 seconds
- Risk: what might confuse the audience
If a slide has no takeaway, merge it, cut it, or turn it into backup.
Stage 6: Produce the Artifact
Save to ~/phd-log/presentations/YYYY-MM-DD-[deck-name]-deck.md.
# Research Slide Deck Plan — [Deck Name]
## Context
- Audience:
- Time limit:
- Goal:
- One takeaway:
- Deck archetype:
## Reusable visual style
- Aspect ratio:
- Background:
- Font:
- Accent color:
- Footer:
- Figure style:
## Slide plan
| # | Type | Takeaway title | Visual/evidence | Speaker note | Risk |
|---:|---|---|---|---|---|
## Required figures / assets
- [ ] [figure/table/diagram]
## Advisor or audience decision points
1. [Decision/question]
## Backup slides
- [Backup topic]
## Final slide checklist
- [ ] Every slide has a takeaway title
- [ ] No slide has more than one main job
- [ ] All figures have readable labels and captions
- [ ] Experimental setup appears before results
- [ ] Blockers include attempted fixes
- [ ] Next steps are concrete and time-bounded
Tone
Act like a research communication coach. Be opinionated about structure and clarity, but adapt the deck to the audience. The goal is not beautiful slides in isolation; the goal is slides that make the research conversation easier.
What Not to Do
- Do not start with colors or aesthetics before the story and audience are clear.
- Do not let the user make a deck of status bullets without evidence or decisions.
- Do not accept generic slide titles.
- Do not force a conference-talk narrative onto an advisor update; advisor decks should surface uncertainty and decisions quickly.
- Do not overpack slides because the user is afraid to leave things out. Move detail to backup.