what is definition of electronic presentation

What is an Electronic Presentation?

A Electronic submission Is a presentation that uses a multimedia tool such as images, audio, electronic files, etc., which Are transmitted through the internet by some electronic device (mobile, computer, etc). They are the opposite of a personal presentation.

The digital technology that is currently available can help create presentations that are not only informative but also reusable.

Many of the electronic presentations are created with popular software like Power Point, Freelance, Corel Presentations, Astound or Prezi, among others.

These programs offer a common method of presenting information to a variety of audiences in the field of business, government, education, etc.

Its use is becoming commonplace in school classrooms, both for students and for teachers.

Electronic presentation software is a powerful tool for creating and displaying electronic presentations that can include a variety of effects like animation, sound and clipboard.

Electronic presentations are generally more effective when using a projector and an LCD screen that provides proper visibility for the audience.

Electronic presentations

Creating an effective electronic presentation generally consists of the same important elements that are part of any presentation: content, visual effects, and the act of presentation.

The content is generally a summary of the research that has been conducted independently of the creation of the electronic presentation.

Copyright considerations apply to electronic presentations as well as to any form of research and literature.

The storyboard technique of creating a slide diagram next to each other in the presentation, ensures better planning and sequencing of the electronic presentation.

Before creating a presentation you must have clear knowledge of the audience to be presented and the general purpose of the presentation. This way you can get a better reach of the message you want to convey.

Tips for creating a good electronic presentation

A home page should be created that includes the project title, author's name, course information and teacher's name (if applicable), date, and appropriate graphics. A table of contents should also be included.

In addition, appropriate use should be made of headlines and subheadings. The text should include only the most important points of the work, grouped appropriately.

Ideally, phrases identified by bullets should be used instead of complete sentences.

Also, the use of data tables should be avoided. The relevant information should be selected and displayed in a graphical format if possible.

You should also limit the amount of text per slide, a maximum of seven lines is generally appropriate.

Some form of transition from slide to slide should be provided to mark the continuity of the presentation.

Appropriate graphics should be carefully selected to integrate with the text. The final slide should leave a strong impression on the audience; The most common is that it is a summary of the information or a call to action.

Finally, copyright laws should be respected for all text and graphics used. The presentation should also include a bibliography and credits.

Visual effects

You should create or select a format to use for all slides. You select a background and text colors that provide a contrast so that the audience does not have problems viewing the presentation. The incorporation of a font style that is clear to read is indispensable.

Usually, the font size should be at least 24 points so it can be read by all the people in a room; Sizes up to 44 points are often accepted. If you want to emphasize, you should use italics or bold instead of changing the font size.

The selection of graphics should be careful so that it can be used in moderation. The determination of the size of the graphs should be done based on their visibility. The graphics should be integrated with the text for a greater benefit of the presentation.

Do not abuse special effects; Should be used sparingly. It should be remembered that effects should not compete for attention with the content of the presentation as such.

It is advisable to add any image, audio, or animation only if it increases or complements the message to be transmitted.

In general, various techniques, such as formatting, colors, letters, vignettes, layout, graphics, and special effects should be used to create a sense of unity and continuity throughout the entire electronic presentation.

Presentation

Before the presentation, a review should be conducted to have a greater impact on the audience. It is always a good idea to have a colleague see the presentation and feedback .

You should also perform a test with all equipment, including computer and projector or screen, before making the presentation. This way you can make any adjustments before the final presentation.

The presenter should be facing the audience, preferably standing in front of the room near the screen. You may consider using an assistant to operate the computer and advance the slides.

The presenter can use notes prepared to expand at the key points identified on the slides. This way you can prevent the author from reading the text of the slides.

It should be noted that as in a conventional presentation, volume and clarity are important. Visual contact with the audience should be maintained and the pace should allow questions from the audience.

• Top 10 electronic presentation tips (2011). Retrieved from prezi.com.
• What is an electronic presentation? Retrieved from answers.com.
• What is an electronic presentation? (2012). Recovered from slideshare.com.
• Creating an electronic presentation. Retrieved from edu.gov.mb.ca.
• Electronic presentations. Retrieved from msnucleus.org.

Recent Posts

What Is a Digital Presentation & How to Get Good At It

Learn the basics of presentation decks and how to create one. Explore examples and tips to make your own deck more effective and engaging.

Dominika Krukowska

16 minute read

Short answer

What is a presentation.

A presentation is a slide-based visual storytelling aid. It’s used for transferring information and emotion to an audience with visual, vocal, and textual communication.

The purpose of a presentation is to help the audience understand a subject matter. Presentations are used in business, academics, and entertainment. They can be made in PowerPoint, PDF, or webpage format.

You will lose your audience with static presentations.

Have you ever sat through a digital presentation that felt like it was dragging on forever? Or worse, have you been the one giving the presentation when people’s eyes glazed over? This feeling of agonizing boredom is called Death by PowerPoint.

Failing to give an engaging presentation will make you lose your audience's attention , and as a result, their ability to remember anything you have to say.

If you’re wondering how exactly you avoid this fate, you’re not alone. Everyone struggles with this. It’s not you - it’s PowerPoint.

The solution? I’m going to show you how to never again suffer from Death by PowerPoint by avoiding the common PowerPoint pitfalls and much much more.

By the end of this blog post, you’ll learn to create digital presentations that immediately engage your audience, capture their interest, and make them care.

Spoiler - the key is to ditch your static slides for interactive experiences.

Let's dive in!

What is the main purpose of a presentation?

The purpose of a presentation is to communicate information or ideas to an audience in a clear and effective manner. The reasons for making a presentation can be to inform, persuade, motivate, educate, entertain, or simply share knowledge or experiences.

The goal of a presentation can be to help your audience understand complex concepts, make informed decisions, or take action based on the information you present.

In business settings, presentations are often used to pitch products or services, report on progress or performance, or make recommendations to stakeholders.

What are the 2 main types of presentations?

When it comes to creating a presentation, there are 2 primary types: (1) speech presentations and (2) digital presentations (made for reading). There are key takeaways for nailing each presentation type. Take note of them if you intend to get good at both.

Reading presentations

Speech presentations

Digital presentations (Reading presentations)

Digital presentations, on the other hand, are presentations that the audience can access on their own computer or phone without the presenter being physically present. These presentations require a different set of skills and techniques to keep the audience engaged.

Essentials for improving your digital presentations:

• Written clarity is critical: Since your audience will be reading your presentation, it's essential to keep your content clear and concise. Say more with less.
• Show, don't tell: Use supporting visuals to help illustrate your points and make your presentation more engaging.
• Animation and annotation: Use animations and annotations to direct your audience's attention to the right place at the right time, keeping them engaged throughout. there are plenty of free animation software to help you create these.
• Personalization: Make your audience feel like you're speaking directly to them by personalizing your presentation. Use inclusive language and address their pain points, needs, and interests.

Speech presentations (Face to face)

Speech presentations are the classic type of presentation where a speaker presents to an audience in person. These presentations are usually given at conferences or meetings, and can now also take place virtually through platforms like Zoom, Google Meet, or Skype.

Essentials for improving your speech presentations:

• Less written, more spoken: Speech presentations are all about the spoken word, so it's crucial to avoid cramming too much text onto your slides. Focus on speaking to your audience instead.
• Body language and voice: In a speech presentation, your body language and tone of voice are essential to engaging your audience. Use humor, sarcasm, or suspense to keep your listeners interested.
• Rapport: Making eye contact and using real-time communication can help you build rapport with your audience and make them feel involved in your presentation.

What are the main types of digital presentations?

Digital presentations come in all shapes and sizes, but understanding the main types can help you choose the right format for your message.

Business presentations

Marketing presentations, sales presentations, education and training presentations, personal presentations.

Education & training

Business presentations are used for showcasing company performance updates, introducing new products or services, discussing future plans with clients and partners, or briefing investors.

Whether it's an internal meeting or an external one with stakeholders, business presentations are all about delivering a clear and compelling message that drives the company forward.

Marketing presentations are visual decks used to present your target audience, marketing strategies, and campaign outcomes to prospective clients, ad agencies, or stakeholders.

Sales presentations are decks that contain details about the features, pricing, and main benefits of your offering, and are used during in-person meetings or online sales calls. They’re designed to help sales reps close deals or land new clients.

Education and training presentations are slide decks designed to teach new concepts and best practices to a variety of audiences, including students, employees, or clients.

A personal presentation is used during networking events, business conferences, or public speaking engagements. It’s used to share your key accomplishments and demonstrate your passion and the main values you stand for.

What makes a good presentation?

A good presentation captivates by establishing trust, engaging the audience with interactive elements, and weaving data into an enthralling narrative that sparks emotions and inspires, leaving a lasting impact.

There are 3 things any good presentation must do:

1. Establish trust and credibility

Without your audience trusting you and your authority you will never get them to listen. And to really listen, some say, they have to like you.

To establish yourself as a credible source of information, use relevant visuals, stories, and examples that showcase your expertise and experience, earning the trust of your audience.

2. Interact with the audience

Static PowerPoint slides are no longer enough to engage anyone. Presentations need to be informative but also entertaining.

Therefore, incorporating interactive elements into your presentations like animations, videos, calculators, quizzes , polls, and live infographics is now essential to grab attention and keep your audience engaged start-to-finish .

3. Tell a good story

When it comes to digital presentations, it's not just about the information you share, but how you share it. That's where storytelling comes in! It's all about weaving a relatable narrative that resonates with your viewers, leaving them eager for more.

By blending your data and facts into an enthralling tale, you're not only dishing out knowledge but also sparking emotions and inspiration. It's a game-changer for grabbing your audience's attention and getting your message across effectively.example

How to create a good digital presentation?

To create a great digital presentation, you need to think beyond the slides and consider the experience you want your audience to have.

Think of your presentation as a journey that takes your audience from point A to point B - you need to ensure that every step of the way is memorable and captivating.

When creating a digital presentation, there's more to it than just putting together a few slides.

You can make it real-pretty, but to make it truly effective you need to have a clear understanding of where you want to take your audience, and tailor your content accordingly.

Good presentation example

This example shows how interactive content can make a presentation that pulls you in and makes you feel part of the journey.

What should a presentation include?

Most decks contain the following 3 elements:

• Introduction (the objectives and agenda of your presentation)
• Main body (key talking points that you want to cover)
• Conclusion (followed by a single, actionable call to action)

The specific outline of your presentation will depend on your particular use case.

Check out our dedicated guides for particular business presentations:

• What to Include in a Pitch Deck (Slides 99% of Investors Want)
• 7 elements of a great sales deck structure
• What should a one-pager include?
• What does a marketing deck include?

How to start and how to end a presentation?

Start your presentation with a strong hook that captures your audience's attention and makes them interested in what you have to say.

You can end your presentation with a thank you slide, but that would be too bad. For your words to carry beyond the last slide you’ll need to give your audience the next step.

And so, you should end your presentation with a singular, clear call to action that inspires your audience to follow through on your message.

What are the essential building blocks of a successful presentation?

Almost everyone nowadays makes beautiful presentations. But that’s not enough to make them successful.

5 key elements that every successful presentation includes:

1. Compelling (human) story: Your presentation should tell a story that connects with your audience on a personal and emotional level, making your message relatable and memorable.

Here are 5 quick storytelling tips to deliver engaging presentations:

2. Clear structure: A clear structure helps your audience follow along and understand the flow of your presentation. This can be chronological, sequential, before-after, problem-solution-resolution, or any other simple and easy-to-follow structure.

3. Problem and solution: Your presentation should address a problem that your audience faces and offer a solution that your product or service can provide.

4. Actionable takeaways: Your presentation should leave your audience with actionable steps or insights that they can use to apply the information you've presented.

5. Supporting visuals (product demo) and data visualization (graphs, charts, and infographics): Using visuals to support your presentation can reinforce your message and help your audience retain the information you presented.

6 biggest mistakes to avoid when creating a presentation

It’s easy to forget that the presentation is for your audience rather than for you. You may want to tell them everything from A to Z, but they may only want to know ABC.

It’s even easier to take for granted that the things you understand are clear to others. But for them, these things are horribly complex (look up the curse of knowledge).

1. Using too much text: Overloading your slides with text can cause your audience to lose interest and detract from your main points. Keep your text to a minimum and use visuals to reinforce your key takeaways.

2. Going too much into detail: attention is a limited resource so you can’t fit everything in a single presentation. Tell your audience only what they really want (and need) to know. Avoid any technical details or complex jargon that does not contribute to the core of your message.

3. Neglecting interactivity: Failing to include interactive elements can cause your audience to disengage. Use polls, quizzes, and other interactive tools to keep your audience engaged.

4. Ignoring the power of storytelling: Telling a compelling story is critical to capturing your audience's attention and leaving a lasting impression. Use relatable stories and examples that support your key points.

5. Poor use of visuals: Using low-quality visuals, irrelevant images, or poorly designed charts and graphs can detract from your presentation and cause confusion. Use high-quality visuals that reinforce your key ideas and are easy to understand.

6. Lack of personalization: If you don’t tailor your presentation to your audience's needs, interests, and level of understanding, your message will fall flat. Make sure to consider your audience's perspective and adjust your deck accordingly.

You don't want your presentation to end up looking like this:

How to design a presentation?

Designing a presentation is a bit like decorating a cake - you want it to be visually appealing but also yummy to consume. You want it to leave your audience with a taste for more rather than a bad taste in their mouth.

Lucky for you there are practical steps for designing a presentation that truly wows your audience every time.

Practical presentation design tips:

1. Choose a color scheme: Just like choosing the perfect icing color for your cake, selecting a color scheme that complements your brand can make your presentation feel more coherent. Or, if you’re pitching to a client, you can use their brand colors instead in order to impress them.

2. Use high-quality images: Using high-quality images is like adding a layer of delicious, rich frosting to your cake. It makes your presentation more visually interesting and helps support your key message.

3. Use consistent fonts: Using consistent fonts throughout your presentation can make it easier to read. Stick to two or three fonts that complement each other and use them consistently.

4. Incorporate visual aids: Visual aids like colorful sprinkles and creative cake toppers can take your cake to the next level. Similarly, graphs, charts, and infographics can help break text patterns and, therefore, make your presentation more memorable.

Check out our use-ready slide design with every type of slide you can think of designed according to our tips and best practices.

Where to find presentation templates?

Scouring the web for presentation templates can be a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack - it's time-consuming, frustrating, and can leave you feeling a bit lost. Most designs available look dull and samey, and are not optimized for engagement.

But don't worry, we've got you covered! Here are the best interactive presentation templates for different use cases:

Choose template by:

What tools to use to create presentations?

Unfortunately, there's no one-size-fits-all tool for creating a digital presentation. And with so many presentation tools out there, it can be hard to know where to start looking.

That’s why we've done the research for you - check out our article rounding up the best presentation software to pick the right one for your needs!

And, if you want to learn more about creating effective digital presentations, check out these posts:

• How to Make Effective & Impactful Presentations (12 Steps)
• How to Make a Multimedia Presentation (5 Easy Steps)

How to give a presentation?

Giving a presentation can be intimidating, but it's an excellent opportunity to showcase your knowledge and expertise. To deliver a successful presentation, you need to focus on engaging your audience, keeping their attention, and providing valuable information.

9 tips to help you give a memorable presentation:

1. Start with a strong hook

A strong opening is crucial to grab your audience's attention and pique their interest. Begin with a bold statement, a surprising fact, or a personal anecdote that relates to the topic of your presentation. This will immediately grab the audience's attention and make them want to listen to what you have to say.

2. Make your objectives and agenda clear

Engage your audience right from the start by letting them know what's in store for them. Outlining your objectives and agenda early on will keep your audience focused and ensure that they don't miss out on any crucial information. Let them know why it's important to pay attention to your presentation and what they can expect to learn from it. By doing this, you'll build anticipation and get them excited about what's to come!

3. Leverage storytelling

People love stories, and they are an effective way to connect with your audience. Use anecdotes, metaphors, and examples to illustrate your points and make your presentation more relatable. This will help the audience understand the concepts you're presenting and retain the information up to 60-70% better .

4. Ask questions, use humor, give simple directions that prove a point

Engage your audience by asking questions, using humor, and giving them simple tasks to perform that illustrate your point. This will keep their attention and make the presentation more interactive.

5. Direct the audience's attention

Use a pointer or built-in animation to draw the audience's attention to critical information. This will help them focus on what you're saying and avoid distractions.

6. Work on the delivery

Speak slowly and clearly, use positive language, and avoid reading from notes as much as possible. Use humor and engage with your audience to make the presentation more enjoyable. Ensure your body language is confident and relaxed, and maintain eye contact with your audience.

7. Add interactive elements

Incorporate interactive elements like polls, quizzes, or surveys to involve your audience and gather valuable feedback. This will make your presentation more engaging and ensure your audience retains the information presented.

8. Close with a CTA

End your presentation with a strong call to action (CTA). Inspire your audience to take the next step, whether it's signing up for a newsletter, buying a product, or visiting your website. Make it clear what you want your audience to do after the presentation.

9. Leave time for a Q&A session

Finally, leave ample time for a Q&A session. This will allow your audience to clarify any doubts and ask questions. It's also an excellent opportunity for you to engage with your audience and get valuable feedback on your presentation.

Create amazing digital presentations from templates

Creating a digital presentation that grabs your audience's attention and drives results may feel like a daunting task.

After all, a strong digital presentation can be the difference between leaving a lasting impression on your audience or falling flat and losing their attention.

It's like trying to teach a class without proper preparation - you're not giving your knowledge and expertise a chance to shine, and your audience might not retain the information you're presenting.

To make things easier, try using our customizable digital presentation templates that will help you create an engaging and impactful digital presentation in no time!

Where can I see examples of good presentations?

If you’re looking for real-life examples that drove results for other companies from different industry sectors, check out highly effective presentation examples by our clients .

Alternatively, if you want to see the best presentation examples that you can replicate to create your own, here are our dedicated guides:

• 10 Perfect Presentation Examples That Win Over Anyone
• 9 Unique Sales Deck Examples that Outsell the Rest
• 10 Top Pitch Deck Examples to Inspire Your Fundraising Efforts
• Top Product Presentation Examples That Wow Everyone
• Marketing Deck: What It Is & How to Make It Win (Examples)
• 6 Elevator Pitch Examples for Any Scenario (Ready for Use)

Where can I find good presentation templates?

If you’re looking for snazzy presentation templates, Storydoc should be your go-to place. We offer a fantastic selection of visually stunning designs to make your digital presentation pop.

All components have been designed with best practices in mind and optimized for engagement. Thanks to the built-in analytics panel, you can also check how your presentations perform in real-time.

Click on any of these categories to see the best presentation templates for your specific use case:

• One-pager templates
• Sales deck templates
• Pitch deck templates
• Business proposal deck templates
• Marketing decks templates
• Case studies templates
• Report templates
• White paper templates

What are common types of business presentations?

The most common types of business presentations are:

• Sales decks
• Pitch decks
• Business proposal decks
• Marketing decks
• Case studies

Is a presentation the same as a slideshow?

Technically, a slideshow is a type of presentation, but not all presentations are slideshows.

A presentation can take many different forms, from a speech to a product demonstration, and can use various tools, including slideshows, to deliver the message. So while a slideshow is certainly a popular choice for presentations, it's not the only option out there.

What is death by PowerPoint?

Death by PowerPoint is the phenomenon of boring, uninspired, and ineffective presentations that use an overabundance of bullet points, text-heavy slides, and monotonous delivery. It's a surefire way to put your audience to sleep and leave them counting down the minutes until your presentation is over.

To avoid death by PowerPoint, aim to create presentations that are visually engaging, incorporate storytelling, and use multimedia elements like images, videos, and interactive features. Remember, a presentation should be a tool to enhance your message, not a crutch to lean on.

What are common types of presentation delivery formats?

There are 5 popular types of presentation delivery formats to choose from:

• Powerpoint: A classic choice, PowerPoint offers a range of design and animation options to create static slide-based presentations.
• Google Slides : As a cloud-based tool, Google Slides makes it easy to collaborate with others in real-time. It's an excellent option for static team presentations and remote work situations.
• Keynote : Exclusive to Apple devices, Keynote is known for its sleek and elegant design options. It's an ideal choice for visually appealing presentations on Mac or iOS devices.
• PDF: For a simple, static, and easily shareable format, PDF presentations are a reliable option. They ensure consistent formatting across different devices and platforms.
• Storydoc : Taking presentations to the next level, Storydoc provides immersive and interactive templates that are sure to captivate your audience and leave a lasting impression.

What are common types of presentation speech formats?

There are 4 common types of presentation delivery formats:

• Memorized: In a memorized delivery, the presenter memorizes the entire presentation word-for-word and delivers it without notes. This format can be effective for short presentations or speeches but can be challenging to execute for longer presentations.
• Manuscript: In a manuscript delivery, the presenter reads from a written script or teleprompter. This format is great for delivering complex or technical information but can come across as less engaging.
• Impromptu: In an impromptu delivery, the presenter delivers a presentation without prior preparation or planning. This format is often used in situations like interviews or meetings and requires quick thinking and adaptability.
• Extemporaneous: In an extemporaneous delivery, the presenter delivers a presentation using notes or an outline, but not a fully scripted presentation. This format allows for flexibility and engagement with the audience while still maintaining structure.

Why is a presentation important for my business?

Here are the main reasons why presentations are essential for your business:

• Be the expert: Presentations provide a platform to showcase your expertise and share your unique perspectives with your audience, establishing you as a thought leader in your industry.
• Build connections: Presentations provide an opportunity to connect with your audience, building relationships that can lead to future business opportunities.
• Leave a lasting impression: An engaging and memorable presentation can leave a lasting impact on your audience, increasing brand awareness and improving message retention.
• Achieve your goals: Presentations can be used to achieve business goals, from generating leads to securing funding or closing deals.

How to measure the effectiveness of a presentation?

Measuring the effectiveness of a presentation is crucial to ensure it hits the mark with your audience and achieves its goals. Here are some ways to measure the effectiveness of a presentation:

Ask for feedback: Don't be afraid to ask your audience for feedback after the presentation, either through surveys or live feedback. This feedback can provide valuable insights into what worked well and what could be improved, helping you refine your approach for future presentations.

Monitor engagement: Keep a pulse on engagement metrics such as views, shares, or the average reading time if the presentation is delivered online. These metrics can give you a sense of the level of interest generated by the presentation and which parts resonated with your audience. Our own presentation maker comes with built-in analytics tracking and reporting .

Track business outcomes: If your presentation is designed to drive business results, track metrics such as lead generation, sales, or conversion rates to assess its effectiveness in achieving these goals.

Hi, I'm Dominika, Content Specialist at Storydoc. As a creative professional with experience in fashion, I'm here to show you how to amplify your brand message through the power of storytelling and eye-catching visuals.

Perfect Presentation Examples That Win Over Anyone

Top Product Presentation Examples That Wow Everyone Sales and Marketing Presentations Statistics Marketing Presentation Examples that Engage & Convert

Found this post useful?

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter.

Get notified as more awesome content goes live.

(No spam, no ads, opt-out whenever)

You've just joined an elite group of people that make the top performing 1% of sales and marketing collateral.

Create your best digital presentation to date

Try Storydoc interactive presentation maker for 14 days free (keep any presentation you make forever!)

• Quarterly Business Review
• Employee Engagement
• Employee Onboarding
• Product Training
• Virtual Team Trivia
• Team Happy Hour
• Virtual Holiday Party
• Help Center

A Deep Dive Into Virtual Presentations

Head of Product at Gloww

• Published on November 1, 2023

Virtual presentations are becoming increasingly common. With more businesses now embracing remote work, they’re an unavoidable adaptation that is essential for onboarding , employee development , and more. However, it’s not as straightforward as transplanting in-person presentation scripts into the virtual world. If you want to host virtual presentations that strike the right note, you need to think carefully about readying your material for online audiences. 

What is a virtual presentation? How can you keep online audiences engaged? These are the questions you should be asking yourself if you want to make effective use of the virtual format. 

How Are Virtual Presentations Different From Regular Presentations?

While the ultimate goal of virtual presentations is the same as in-person presentations, there are a lot of differences between the two formats . For starters, there’s generally less performance involved. When delivering an in-person presentation, a lot of focus is placed on keeping an audience engaged . A good presenter needs to be comfortable with public speaking and a master when it comes to body language. 

When presenting online, there’s far less pressure when it comes to performance. This is despite the fact that a presenter may be broadcasting to dozens, if not hundreds of people. An effective virtual presentation is generally more informal and relaxed. 

However, there are some downsides to delivering a presentation online. One of the biggest issues that presenters face is that they’ll have to contend with more distractions than if they were presenting to an in-person audience. These same distractions are what can render a standard conference call a challenge, and presenters often have to work extra hard to maintain audience engagement. 

What’s more, while the usual presentation skills aren’t always necessary, different proficiencies come into play. Body language doesn’t read as well when presenting online, but a speaker will still need to project a message virtually. Tone of voice is crucial, and a speaker needs to consider pauses carefully. Additionally, it’s important to constantly engage the audience if you want to maintain their interest levels. Relying too heavily on slides or failing to interact with an audience is a surefire way of dooming a virtual presentation to failure. For some inspiration you can find our employee engagement calendar on our blog too.

Why Are Virtual Presentations Important?

If your business operates in the virtual space and your teams are working remotely, you need to be thinking seriously about virtual presentations . It’s simply not practical to bring remote teams together for in-person training and team-building exercises, especially if employees are dispersed across the globe. 

Virtual presentations can be used as a learning tool to develop your workforce and introduce them to new ideas and ways of working. Some businesses utilize digital training documents for this purpose, but there’s little scope for interactivity here. With virtual presentations, you’re giving yourself the chance to connect with remote teams . As well as being a powerful tool for communication and instilling a sense of company culture , a live virtual presentation provides you with the chance to gauge engagement and understanding levels. 

How Do You Create a Virtual Presentation?

Is this your first time staging a virtual presentation ? Adapting your in-person approach to the virtual world might seem like a good idea, but you won’t achieve good results this way. To make your next virtual presentation a success , we’ve put together some handy tips. 

Start with Your Content 

This is the most important thing to consider when readying your presentation material for an online audience . While the bare bones of your in-person presentations can be used, they’ll need to be refined for the virtual space. Are you delivering training content to an online audience? All the key information can be captured here, but make sure it’s accessible and not overbaked. Is your presentation more client-facing? Make sure you’re capturing key selling points and considering what can be shared in other formats. 

Think About Your Slides 

Cramming too many slides into your presentation is a guaranteed way of sending your audience to sleep. If you want to maintain high engagement levels, keep slides sparse . During an in-person presentation, it’s easy to read the room and elaborate on complex slides if you feel the need to. When presenting online, this isn’t always possible. If your presentation has to be slide-heavy, try and stick to a single slide for every minute of speech. Ensure the slides you are using are concise and capture key information. 

Focus On Your Audience 

When presenting to an audience, you need to constantly reaffirm the fact that the information you’re discussing is relevant to them. Reading body language and audience responses can be a little tricky when presenting online, but keeping the focus on participants is crucial if you want to achieve good results. Regular interaction is a good way of keeping presentation material focused on your audience. Make a point of underlining how what you’re talking about applies to them and how it can help them achieve their everyday goals. 

Even if the material you’re covering in a presentation is pretty dense, you need to remain lively and dynamic to capture audience attention. Avoid leaning on your slides too heavily and make sure you’re not bound to a script. A little deviation can work wonders for audience engagement. 

Involve Your Audience to Avoid the Ringelmann Effect 

The Ringelmann Effect is something you might encounter if you’re presenting to a large audience. The bigger an audience gets, the less likely it is that individual participants are going to engage. By constantly involving your audience, you can overcome this. If you need to bring a hypothetical scenario into play , put someone on the spot. This way, everyone’s kept on their toes and constantly braced to interact. 

Remove External Distractions

While there’s not much you can do to ensure participants aren’t dealing with their own distractions, you can eliminate distractions from your presenting environment . Make sure your schedule is completely cleared to avoid any unwanted phone calls or interruptions. Are you presenting from an office location? Let anyone who is sharing your space know you need complete quiet so you can concentrate on delivering the best virtual presentation possible. 

Be Enthusiastic 

Even if the content of your presentation is on the dry side, you need to be able to sell it to your audience . If you’re not animated and engaged with the material, you can’t expect your audience to show an interest. Familiarizing yourself with presentation content will go a long way in ensuring you can deliver a lively and passionate event for participants. 

Professional Surroundings and Backgrounds 

No matter how animated you are during a presentation, you’ll still need to keep things professional . A low-key background will not only eliminate distractions but set the right tone for learning and development. Here’s our list of best backgrounds .

Best Virtual Presentation Tips

Now you’ve created a compelling outline for your virtual presentation , you’ll need to work on your presentation skills and deliver a memorable event. Below are some handy tips to get you started. 

Proper Webcam and Lighting 

Production values count when it comes to virtual presentations. A standard laptop webcam probably isn’t going to cut it if you want to make the right impression. An external webcam is therefore a must. You’ll also want to play around with lighting to make your presentation as effective as possible. 

Check Your Internet Connection 

Technical issues are sometimes unavoidable. However, even the slightest lag can render a virtual presentation pointless. Check your internet connection ahead of time to ensure you’re not going to have to contend with this issue. 

Talk to the Camera

It’s tempting to check the reactions of your online audience, but this isn’t really practical if you’re delivering a presentation to a large number of people. Rather than work overtime in an attempt to make a personal connection, talk to the camera instead. This gives you the best chance of making a connection with everyone who’s watching.  

Use Body Language 

Body language is very important when presenting online. While you won’t be able to make eye contact with individual audience members and use the space around you, you can make use of hand gestures and facial expressions to strengthen your message. However, remember to keep things simple.  

Engage Your Audience Members 

If you’re planning a longer virtual presentation or covering a lot of key topics, you need to make sure your audience is engaged . Constantly reach out to participants to hammer out specifics with examples or use quick-fire quizzes to keep everyone engaged. You can even use one of the 49 icebreakers to spice things up .

Be Yourself 

Authenticity matters when presenting online. It’s particularly important if you’re an employer presenting to remote teams. Make sure the persona you’re projecting is true to the one you’ve already established. The more authentic you are, the more credible your message will seem. 

What is the Optimum Amount of Time You Can Keep People Engaged Online? 

Most people will struggle to remain engaged with a single topic beyond five minutes. Your presentation is going to be longer than this, so avoid dwelling on specific topics for too long. For best results, try and keep your overall presentation no within 45 minutes . 

How Often Should Your Audience Share Their Thoughts?

Reach out to participants once every five minutes or so. You can ask individual participants to reflect on topics you’ve just covered, or break things up with more interactive elements like quizzes and polls. 

How Many Presenters Should There Be in a Virtual Presentation? 

With shorter presentations, it makes sense to keep things simple with a single presenter. If you’re planning a longer event and want to keep things as dynamic as possible, consider using two or three speakers. 

Host Your Next Virtual Presentation with Gloww 

Ready to unlock the potential of virtual presentations? Whether you’re presenting to prospective clients or need to reach out to remote teams, virtual presentations are the way forward . However, you’ll need a reliable video conferencing solution to stage a successful virtual presentation. 

With Gloww, you have everything you need to deliver memorable presentations that strike the right note with audiences. You can adapt your existing presentation material for the virtual space or explore brand-new elements to bring interactivity to your sessions. Add existing slide decks to readymade templates, make things more interesting with polls and quizzes, or integrate multimedia assets to take your presentations to a whole new level. You can get started with Gloww today. If you want to learn about Gloww can help you fine-tune your virtual presentations, explore our pricing plans , and discover more about our premium features. Do you still have questions about Gloww? Get in touch with the team.

Want to learn more? Here’s everything you need to record your meeting , a template for your monthly business review meetings , virtual meeting etiquettte , and all about how video conferencing works .

Ben Aflalo heads Gloww's product team with over two decades of leadership experience. Passionate about leveraging innovative technology, he is committed to building products for the greater good.

Table of Contents

• April 3, 2024
• by Ben Aflalo

• March 19, 2024

• March 11, 2024

• February 22, 2024

• February 1, 2024

• January 4, 2024

• January 2, 2024

• December 28, 2023

• December 26, 2023

• November 1, 2023

• October 4, 2023

• September 21, 2023

• August 24, 2023

• August 23, 2023

• August 1, 2023

• July 31, 2023

• July 13, 2023

• July 6, 2023

• June 29, 2023

• June 9, 2023
• Business Meetings
• Team Building Activities
• Learning and Development
• Employee Engagement Calendar
• Sales inquiries
• © 2024 Gloww video ltd.
• All rights reserved.
• Privacy policy

Privacy Overview

What is Digital Presentation: A-to-Z Guide for Beginners!

‍In this article, I am going to tell you about What is Digital Presentation . so if you want to know about it, then keep reading this article. Because I am going to give you complete information about it, so let’s start.

A digital presentation is a way of sharing information or ideas using digital tools and technology. It involves using software like PowerPoint, Google Slides, or Keynote to create slides that can be shown on a screen.

Digital presentations have benefits like looking good, being flexible, interactive, and easy to share. They can include text, images, videos, and audio to help presenters communicate their message effectively and engage the audience.

Today’s article focuses on the same, i.e., “What is Digital Presentation” The articles entail each bit of information necessary for you to know.

Let’s get started!✨

Table of Contents

What is Digital Presentation

A digital presentation refers to the use of digital tools and technologies to deliver a visual and interactive presentation. It typically involves the use of software applications, such as Microsoft PowerPoint, Google Slides, or Apple Keynote, to create slides or visual content that can be projected or displayed on a screen.

Digital presentations allow presenters to combine text, images, graphics, videos, and audio to convey information and engage their audience. These presentations can be created in advance or developed in real-time during a presentation using presentation software. They are commonly used in various settings, such as business meetings, conferences, educational settings, and sales pitches.

The advantages of digital presentations over traditional methods, such as physical slides or transparencies, include the ability to easily edit and revise content, incorporate multimedia elements, and deliver dynamic and engaging presentations. Additionally, digital presentations can be easily shared and distributed electronically, enabling remote viewing and collaboration.

Digital presentation tools often provide features like slide transitions, animations, embedded multimedia, speaker notes, and the ability to include hyperlinks and interactive elements. These features enhance the visual appeal, interactivity, and overall effectiveness of the presentation.

Overall, digital presentations offer a flexible and multimedia-rich approach to delivering information and ideas, allowing presenters to communicate their message more effectively and captivate their audience.

Types of Digital Presentation

There are several types of digital presentations that can be created using various software tools and techniques. Here are some common types:

• Slideshow Presentation : Slideshow presentations are the most common type and are typically created using software like Microsoft PowerPoint, Google Slides, or Apple Keynote. They consist of a series of slides containing text, images, graphics, and other visual elements. Slideshow presentations are widely used for business meetings, educational lectures, and conferences.
• Interactive Presentation : Interactive presentations involve engaging the audience through interactive elements. This can include clickable buttons, hyperlinks, quizzes, polls, or embedded videos that allow viewers to actively participate and navigate through the presentation at their own pace. Interactive presentations are often used for e-learning, product demos, and sales presentations.
• Video Presentation : A video presentation involves creating a video file that combines audio narration or background music with visuals, such as text, images, and animations. Video presentations are useful for storytelling, marketing campaigns, and online tutorials. Tools like Adobe Premiere Pro, iMovie, or online video editors can be used to create and edit video presentations.
• Web-based Presentation : Web-based presentations are designed to be viewed and interacted with online through a web browser. These presentations are often created using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript or web-based tools like Prezi, Sway, or SlideShare. Web-based presentations allow for seamless sharing, collaboration, and the integration of multimedia content.
• Infographic Presentation : Infographic presentations utilize visually appealing graphics and data visualizations to present information in a concise and easily understandable format. Infographics can be created using specialized software like Adobe Illustrator, Canva, or Piktochart. These presentations are effective for conveying complex information or statistics in a visually appealing manner.
• Storyboard Presentation : Storyboard presentations are commonly used in creative industries such as film, animation, or advertising. They involve presenting a sequence of visual frames or sketches to outline a story or concept. Storyboard presentations are created using software like Adobe Photoshop, Storyboarder, or specialized storyboard software.

These are just a few examples of digital presentations, and there are many other variations and combinations depending on the specific purpose, audience, and content requirements. The choice of presentation type will depend on the goals and preferences of the presenter and the nature of the information being communicated.

Tools for Digital Presentation

There are numerous tools available for creating digital presentations. Here are some popular ones:

• Microsoft PowerPoint : PowerPoint is one of the most widely used presentation software. It offers a wide range of features for creating slideshows, including text formatting, slide transitions, animations, multimedia embedding, and collaboration options.
• Google Slides : Google Slides is a web-based presentation tool that is part of the Google Workspace suite. It allows users to create and collaborate on presentations online. Google Slides offers similar features to PowerPoint and provides easy sharing and real-time collaboration.
• Apple Keynote : Keynote is a presentation software developed by Apple for macOS and iOS devices. It offers a variety of visually stunning templates, animations, and effects. Keynote is known for its smooth transitions and multimedia capabilities.
• Prezi : Prezi is a cloud-based presentation tool that offers a unique zooming and panning interface, allowing for non-linear presentations. It enables users to create dynamic and visually engaging presentations with a focus on the big picture.
• Canva : Canva is a versatile graphic design tool that offers pre-designed templates for presentations. It provides a user-friendly interface with drag-and-drop functionality and allows users to create visually appealing slides with ease.
• Adobe Spark : Adobe Spark is a suite of creative tools that includes Spark Video, Spark Page, and Spark Post. Spark Video allows users to create animated videos with narration, while Spark Page helps create web-based presentations. Spark Post is useful for designing social media graphics and visual content.
• SlideShare : SlideShare is an online platform owned by LinkedIn that allows users to share and discover presentations. It is commonly used for sharing slide decks, infographics, and documents. SlideShare supports various file formats and provides a platform for showcasing and distributing presentations.
• Powtoon : Powtoon is a web-based tool for creating animated presentations and videos. It offers a range of templates, characters, and animations to help create engaging and dynamic content.
• Haiku Deck : Haiku Deck is a presentation tool that focuses on simplicity and visual impact. It offers professionally designed templates and access to a vast library of royalty-free images to enhance presentations.
• Visme : Visme is a versatile visual content creation tool that allows users to create presentations, infographics, reports, and more. It provides a wide range of templates, charts, icons, and multimedia options to create visually appealing and interactive presentations.

These are just a few examples of the many tools available for creating digital presentations. The choice of tool depends on the specific requirements, preferences, and available resources of the presenter.

Pros and Cons of Digital Presentation

Digital presentations offer numerous advantages and disadvantages compared to traditional methods. Here are some pros and cons of digital presentations:

• Visual Appeal : Digital presentations allow for the incorporation of multimedia elements like images, videos, and animations, making them visually appealing and engaging for the audience.
• Flexibility and Interactivity : Digital presentations offer flexibility in terms of editing, rearranging, and adding content. They also enable interactivity through hyperlinks, clickable buttons, quizzes, and other interactive elements, enhancing audience engagement.
• Easy Distribution and Sharing : Digital presentations can be easily shared electronically via email, file-sharing platforms, or online presentation hosting services. This allows for easy distribution to a wide audience and facilitates collaboration.
• Multimedia Integration : Digital presentation tools offer the ability to seamlessly integrate various multimedia elements, such as audio, video, and interactive charts. This enables presenters to convey information in a more dynamic and impactful manner.
• Real-Time Updates : Digital presentations can be updated in real-time, allowing presenters to make changes or add new content during the presentation itself. This is particularly useful for adapting to unexpected circumstances or incorporating audience feedback.
• Remote Presentations : Digital presentations can be delivered remotely, allowing for virtual meetings, webinars, or online conferences. This eliminates the need for physical presence and enables global participation.
• Technical Issues : Digital presentations rely on technology, and technical issues like software glitches, compatibility problems, or connectivity issues can occur. These issues can disrupt the presentation flow and require troubleshooting.
• Dependency on Equipment : Digital presentations require the availability of appropriate equipment, such as computers, projectors, or screens, to display the content. Inadequate or malfunctioning equipment can hinder the presentation.
• Distractions and Overload : The use of multimedia elements in digital presentations can sometimes lead to information overload or distract the audience from the main message. It is essential to balance the use of visuals and ensure clarity of communication.
• Lack of Personal Touch : Digital presentations may lack the personal touch and human interaction that can be experienced in face-to-face presentations. Non-verbal cues and physical presence may be diminished, affecting the overall engagement and connection with the audience.
• Learning Curve : Using digital presentation tools effectively may require a learning curve for presenters who are unfamiliar with the software or lack technical skills. This can lead to difficulties in creating and delivering polished presentations.
• Accessibility Concerns : While digital presentations offer numerous advantages, accessibility can be a challenge for individuals with disabilities. Presenters need to ensure that the content is accessible to all users, including those with visual or hearing impairments.

Overall, digital presentations have revolutionized the way information is conveyed, making it more dynamic, engaging, and accessible. However, it is important to be aware of the potential drawbacks and take necessary measures to mitigate them for a successful presentation experience.

Popular software options for creating digital presentations include Microsoft PowerPoint, Google Slides, Apple Keynote, Prezi, Canva, and Adobe Spark, among others.

You can enhance the visual appeal of your digital presentation by using high-quality images, well-designed templates, consistent color schemes, appropriate font choices , and incorporating visual elements like charts, graphs, and videos.

Yes, digital presentation tools often allow you to add multimedia elements like images, videos, audio, and animations. This can help make your presentation more engaging and dynamic.

You can make your digital presentation interactive by incorporating elements such as hyperlinks, clickable buttons, quizzes, polls, and interactive charts. These features can encourage audience participation and engagement.

Yes, digital presentations can be easily shared with others. You can share them via email, file sharing platforms, or by using online presentation hosting services. This allows others to view and collaborate on your presentation.

Yes, digital presentations can be presented remotely. You can use video conferencing tools, webinar platforms, or screen sharing features to deliver your presentation to remote audiences.

Read also:)

• What is Digital Storytelling Software: A-to-Z Guide for Beginners!
• How to Sell Digital Products Online: A-to-Z Guide for Beginners!
• 10+ Best Tools for Digital Marketing: A-to-Z Guide for Beginners!

So hope you liked this article on What is Digital Presentation . And if you still have any questions or suggestions related to this, then you can tell us in the comment box below. And thank you so much for reading this article.

Subscribe Now

Trending news.

What is Presentation Electronics? – Definition, Preparation, And More

Table of Contents

Definition Presentation Electronics

Presentation Electronics  have useful tools for didactic, which are supported by images and also text. In this way, you can create digital slides containing multimedia resources such as graphics, videos, audios, and animations.

Also read: What are Digital Currencies ? – Definitions, Examples, And More

Electronic Filings

Electronic filings facilitate the transmission of information from visually and attractively, that is why they are useful for making exhibitions of some subject.

Tips for making presentations electronic

Be specific.

Try not to exceed 15 slides.

Use graphics and images

These are useful to support the idea that you are expressing.

Avoid squeaky colors

These make viewing uncomfortable and difficult.

Do not abuse the animations

These take the presentation seriously.

Use legible typography

Use readable and straightforward fonts; this will allow other details are important; for example, the data from a graph.

Be brief and clear

Focus on your topic of exposition, get to the point, and also don’t deviate from the subject.

How is an electronic submission prepared?

For the preparation of an electronic follow the Next steps:

• Mark an objective : define the topic to be developed in the presentation.
• Choose the design template : select the slide that suits the best way to presentation. The first slide indicates the topic to develop and also the person who makes it.
• Divide the information into themes and also subtopics.
• Synthesize the information.
• Illustrate : you can support your presentation by using tools audiovisuals.
• Includes references : at the end of the presentation, add a slide that indicates the sources consulted, for example, bibliographic, demographic, archives historical, etc. These are useful to develop the presentation.

In conclusion, Microsoft PowerPoint is the program that people use most widely, and also it allows expressions by using slides containing information in text, For example, drawing, graphic, or video format. It is an online application that works as a narrative tool; use canvas instead of slides. Let you create a non-linear presentation, where you can use the zoom on the visual map.

Also read: What is SAP Fieldglass ? – Definition, Advantages And More

How The PMP Certification Impacts Your Salary

How can 4g wan help your business to grow.

Kamran Sharief

Related posts, what is a software – definition, features, and types, what is pizza box computer – definition, history, features and more, what is smtp – definition, functions, features, and more, what is hypertext transfer protocol – definition, differences, and more, what is a help desk operator – definition, tasks, and more, what is capp – definition, advantages, disadvantages and more, recent posts.

Why Use Biometrics for Multi-Factor Authentication?

Multi-factor authentication is a valuable addition to any network security system. It is a technological solution that forms various levels…

Elevate Your Phone’s Style: An Essential Guide To Choosing The Perfect Phone Skin

Enhance your cyber fortress with clamav: your ultimate shield against malware.

How Technology has Revolutionised the Gaming Industry

Gaming has been catapulted into a completely new stratosphere since the turn of the century. Thanks to technological advancements developers…

Transformation of Retail Business with IOT

How smart technology is transforming the online casino industry.

Username or Email Address

Remember Me

Registration is closed.

• SUGGESTED TOPICS
• The Magazine
• Newsletters
• Managing Yourself
• Managing Teams
• Work-life Balance
• The Big Idea
• Data & Visuals
• Reading Lists
• Case Selections
• HBR Learning
• Topic Feeds
• Account Settings
• Email Preferences

What It Takes to Give a Great Presentation

• Carmine Gallo

Five tips to set yourself apart.

Never underestimate the power of great communication. It can help you land the job of your dreams, attract investors to back your idea, or elevate your stature within your organization. But while there are plenty of good speakers in the world, you can set yourself apart out by being the person who can deliver something great over and over. Here are a few tips for business professionals who want to move from being good speakers to great ones: be concise (the fewer words, the better); never use bullet points (photos and images paired together are more memorable); don’t underestimate the power of your voice (raise and lower it for emphasis); give your audience something extra (unexpected moments will grab their attention); rehearse (the best speakers are the best because they practice — a lot).

I was sitting across the table from a Silicon Valley CEO who had pioneered a technology that touches many of our lives — the flash memory that stores data on smartphones, digital cameras, and computers. He was a frequent guest on CNBC and had been delivering business presentations for at least 20 years before we met. And yet, the CEO wanted to sharpen his public speaking skills.

• Carmine Gallo is a Harvard University instructor, keynote speaker, and author of 10 books translated into 40 languages. Gallo is the author of The Bezos Blueprint: Communication Secrets of the World’s Greatest Salesman  (St. Martin’s Press).

Partner Center

Presentation

• Written By Gregg Rosenzweig
• Updated: November 8, 2023

We’re here to help you choose the most appropriate content types to fulfill your content strategy. In this series, we’re breaking down the most popular content types to their most basic fundamentals — simple definitions, clarity on formats, and plenty of examples — so you can start with a solid foundation.

What is a Presentation?

A communication device that relays a topic to an audience in the form of a slide show, demonstration, lecture, or speech, where words and pictures complement each other.

Why should you think of presentations as content?

The beauty of content creation is that almost anything can become a compelling piece of content . Just depends on the creativity used to convert it and the story that brings it to life.

The long and short of it

Although the length of a presentation in terms of time can depend on the overall approach (Are you talking a lot? Are you referring to the screen in detail or not?), consider the number of informational content slides when tallying the overall presentation length. For instance, don’t include title slides in your tally when conveying length to a content creator.

A general guide to presentation length:

• Short Form (5 content slides)
• Standard Form (10 content slides)
• Long Form (20+ content slides)

Popular use cases for presentations…

Let’s consider TED Talks for a minute: one of the best examples (bar none) of how words, pictures, and a narrative can make people care about something they otherwise might not.

These “talks” pre-date podcasts and blend a compelling use of language and imagery in presentation format to spread ideas in unique ways.

TED Talks have been viewed a billion-plus times worldwide (and counting) and are worth considering when it comes to how you might use video-presentation content to connect with your customers in creative, cool, new ways.

Business types:

Any company that has a pitch deck, executive summary , sales presentation, or any kind of internal document that can be repurposed into external-facing content pieces — without pain.

Presentation Examples – Short Form

Presentation Examples – Standard Form

Presentation Examples – Long Form

Understanding Content Quality in Examples

Our team has rated content type examples in three degrees of quality ( Good, Better, Best ) to help you better gauge resources needed for your content plan. In general, the degrees of content quality correspond to our three content levels ( General, Qualified, Expert ) based on the criteria below. Please consider there are multiple variables that could determine the cost, completion time, or content level for any content piece with a perceived degree of quality.

Impress your clients, co-workers, and leadership team with exceptional content for your next presentation, product demonstration, and more. If you need help getting your message across in a succinct, attention-grabbing, and persuasive way, talk to one of our content specialists today.

Stay in the know.

We will keep you up-to-date with all the content marketing news and resources. You will be a content expert in no time. Sign up for our free newsletter.

How to Measure Success in Content Distribution: Essential Metrics and KPIs

The Ultimate Spring Cleaning Checklist for Your Freelance Business

The Art of Freelance Pricing: How to Value Your Work and Elevate Your Income

• Content Production
• Build Your SEO
• Amplify Your Content
• For Agencies

Why ClearVoice

• Talent Network
• How It Works
• Freelance For Us
• Statement on AI
• Talk to a Specialist

Get Insights In Your Inbox

• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service
• Intellectual Property Claims
• Data Collection Preferences

We use essential cookies to make Venngage work. By clicking “Accept All Cookies”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts.

Manage Cookies

Cookies and similar technologies collect certain information about how you’re using our website. Some of them are essential, and without them you wouldn’t be able to use Venngage. But others are optional, and you get to choose whether we use them or not.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

These cookies are always on, as they’re essential for making Venngage work, and making it safe. Without these cookies, services you’ve asked for can’t be provided.

Show cookie providers

• Google Login

Functionality Cookies

These cookies help us provide enhanced functionality and personalisation, and remember your settings. They may be set by us or by third party providers.

Performance Cookies

These cookies help us analyze how many people are using Venngage, where they come from and how they're using it. If you opt out of these cookies, we can’t get feedback to make Venngage better for you and all our users.

• Google Analytics

Targeting Cookies

These cookies are set by our advertising partners to track your activity and show you relevant Venngage ads on other sites as you browse the internet.

• Google Tag Manager
• Infographics
• Daily Infographics
• Graphic Design
• Graphs and Charts
• Data Visualization
• Human Resources
• Training and Development
• Beginner Guides

Blog Beginner Guides

How To Make a Good Presentation [A Complete Guide]

By Krystle Wong , Jul 20, 2023

A top-notch presentation possesses the power to drive action. From winning stakeholders over and conveying a powerful message to securing funding — your secret weapon lies within the realm of creating an effective presentation .  

Being an excellent presenter isn’t confined to the boardroom. Whether you’re delivering a presentation at work, pursuing an academic career, involved in a non-profit organization or even a student, nailing the presentation game is a game-changer.

In this article, I’ll cover the top qualities of compelling presentations and walk you through a step-by-step guide on how to give a good presentation. Here’s a little tip to kick things off: for a headstart, check out Venngage’s collection of free presentation templates . They are fully customizable, and the best part is you don’t need professional design skills to make them shine!

These valuable presentation tips cater to individuals from diverse professional backgrounds, encompassing business professionals, sales and marketing teams, educators, trainers, students, researchers, non-profit organizations, public speakers and presenters. 

No matter your field or role, these tips for presenting will equip you with the skills to deliver effective presentations that leave a lasting impression on any audience.

Click to jump ahead:

What are the 10 qualities of a good presentation?

Step-by-step guide on how to prepare an effective presentation, 9 effective techniques to deliver a memorable presentation, faqs on making a good presentation, how to create a presentation with venngage in 5 steps.

When it comes to giving an engaging presentation that leaves a lasting impression, it’s not just about the content — it’s also about how you deliver it. Wondering what makes a good presentation? Well, the best presentations I’ve seen consistently exhibit these 10 qualities:

1. Clear structure

No one likes to get lost in a maze of information. Organize your thoughts into a logical flow, complete with an introduction, main points and a solid conclusion. A structured presentation helps your audience follow along effortlessly, leaving them with a sense of satisfaction at the end.

Regardless of your presentation style , a quality presentation starts with a clear roadmap. Browse through Venngage’s template library and select a presentation template that aligns with your content and presentation goals. Here’s a good presentation example template with a logical layout that includes sections for the introduction, main points, supporting information and a conclusion: 

2. Engaging opening

Hook your audience right from the start with an attention-grabbing statement, a fascinating question or maybe even a captivating anecdote. Set the stage for a killer presentation!

The opening moments of your presentation hold immense power – check out these 15 ways to start a presentation to set the stage and captivate your audience.

3. Relevant content

Make sure your content aligns with their interests and needs. Your audience is there for a reason, and that’s to get valuable insights. Avoid fluff and get straight to the point, your audience will be genuinely excited.

4. Effective visual aids

Picture this: a slide with walls of text and tiny charts, yawn! Visual aids should be just that—aiding your presentation. Opt for clear and visually appealing slides, engaging images and informative charts that add value and help reinforce your message.

With Venngage, visualizing data takes no effort at all. You can import data from CSV or Google Sheets seamlessly and create stunning charts, graphs and icon stories effortlessly to showcase your data in a captivating and impactful way.

5. Clear and concise communication

Keep your language simple, and avoid jargon or complicated terms. Communicate your ideas clearly, so your audience can easily grasp and retain the information being conveyed. This can prevent confusion and enhance the overall effectiveness of the message. 

6. Engaging delivery

Spice up your presentation with a sprinkle of enthusiasm! Maintain eye contact, use expressive gestures and vary your tone of voice to keep your audience glued to the edge of their seats. A touch of charisma goes a long way!

7. Interaction and audience engagement

Turn your presentation into an interactive experience — encourage questions, foster discussions and maybe even throw in a fun activity. Engaged audiences are more likely to remember and embrace your message.

Transform your slides into an interactive presentation with Venngage’s dynamic features like pop-ups, clickable icons and animated elements. Engage your audience with interactive content that lets them explore and interact with your presentation for a truly immersive experience.

8. Effective storytelling

Who doesn’t love a good story? Weaving relevant anecdotes, case studies or even a personal story into your presentation can captivate your audience and create a lasting impact. Stories build connections and make your message memorable.

A great presentation background is also essential as it sets the tone, creates visual interest and reinforces your message. Enhance the overall aesthetics of your presentation with these 15 presentation background examples and captivate your audience’s attention.

9. Well-timed pacing

Pace your presentation thoughtfully with well-designed presentation slides, neither rushing through nor dragging it out. Respect your audience’s time and ensure you cover all the essential points without losing their interest.

10. Strong conclusion

Last impressions linger! Summarize your main points and leave your audience with a clear takeaway. End your presentation with a bang , a call to action or an inspiring thought that resonates long after the conclusion.

In-person presentations aside, acing a virtual presentation is of paramount importance in today’s digital world. Check out this guide to learn how you can adapt your in-person presentations into virtual presentations . 

Preparing an effective presentation starts with laying a strong foundation that goes beyond just creating slides and notes. One of the quickest and best ways to make a presentation would be with the help of a good presentation software . 

Otherwise, let me walk you to how to prepare for a presentation step by step and unlock the secrets of crafting a professional presentation that sets you apart.

1. Understand the audience and their needs

Before you dive into preparing your masterpiece, take a moment to get to know your target audience. Tailor your presentation to meet their needs and expectations , and you’ll have them hooked from the start!

2. Conduct thorough research on the topic

Time to hit the books (or the internet)! Don’t skimp on the research with your presentation materials — dive deep into the subject matter and gather valuable insights . The more you know, the more confident you’ll feel in delivering your presentation.

3. Organize the content with a clear structure

No one wants to stumble through a chaotic mess of information. Outline your presentation with a clear and logical flow. Start with a captivating introduction, follow up with main points that build on each other and wrap it up with a powerful conclusion that leaves a lasting impression.

Delivering an effective business presentation hinges on captivating your audience, and Venngage’s professionally designed business presentation templates are tailor-made for this purpose. With thoughtfully structured layouts, these templates enhance your message’s clarity and coherence, ensuring a memorable and engaging experience for your audience members.

Don’t want to build your presentation layout from scratch? pick from these 5 foolproof presentation layout ideas that won’t go wrong. 

4. Develop visually appealing and supportive visual aids

Spice up your presentation with eye-catching visuals! Create slides that complement your message, not overshadow it. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words, but that doesn’t mean you need to overload your slides with text.

Well-chosen designs create a cohesive and professional look, capturing your audience’s attention and enhancing the overall effectiveness of your message. Here’s a list of carefully curated PowerPoint presentation templates and great background graphics that will significantly influence the visual appeal and engagement of your presentation.

5. Practice, practice and practice

Practice makes perfect — rehearse your presentation and arrive early to your presentation to help overcome stage fright. Familiarity with your material will boost your presentation skills and help you handle curveballs with ease.

6. Seek feedback and make necessary adjustments

Don’t be afraid to ask for help and seek feedback from friends and colleagues. Constructive criticism can help you identify blind spots and fine-tune your presentation to perfection.

With Venngage’s real-time collaboration feature , receiving feedback and editing your presentation is a seamless process. Group members can access and work on the presentation simultaneously and edit content side by side in real-time. Changes will be reflected immediately to the entire team, promoting seamless teamwork.

7. Prepare for potential technical or logistical issues

Prepare for the unexpected by checking your equipment, internet connection and any other potential hiccups. If you’re worried that you’ll miss out on any important points, you could always have note cards prepared. Remember to remain focused and rehearse potential answers to anticipated questions.

8. Fine-tune and polish your presentation

As the big day approaches, give your presentation one last shine. Review your talking points, practice how to present a presentation and make any final tweaks. Deep breaths — you’re on the brink of delivering a successful presentation!

In competitive environments, persuasive presentations set individuals and organizations apart. To brush up on your presentation skills, read these guides on how to make a persuasive presentation and tips to presenting effectively . 

Whether you’re an experienced presenter or a novice, the right techniques will let your presentation skills soar to new heights!

From public speaking hacks to interactive elements and storytelling prowess, these 9 effective presentation techniques will empower you to leave a lasting impression on your audience and make your presentations unforgettable.

1. Confidence and positive body language

Positive body language instantly captivates your audience, making them believe in your message as much as you do. Strengthen your stage presence and own that stage like it’s your second home! Stand tall, shoulders back and exude confidence. 

2. Eye contact with the audience

Break down that invisible barrier and connect with your audience through their eyes. Maintaining eye contact when giving a presentation builds trust and shows that you’re present and engaged with them.

3. Effective use of hand gestures and movement

A little movement goes a long way! Emphasize key points with purposeful gestures and don’t be afraid to walk around the stage. Your energy will be contagious!

4. Utilize storytelling techniques

Weave the magic of storytelling into your presentation. Share relatable anecdotes, inspiring success stories or even personal experiences that tug at the heartstrings of your audience. Adjust your pitch, pace and volume to match the emotions and intensity of the story. Varying your speaking voice adds depth and enhances your stage presence.

5. Incorporate multimedia elements

Spice up your presentation with a dash of visual pizzazz! Use slides, images and video clips to add depth and clarity to your message. Just remember, less is more—don’t overwhelm them with information overload. 

Turn your presentations into an interactive party! Involve your audience with questions, polls or group activities. When they actively participate, they become invested in your presentation’s success. Bring your design to life with animated elements. Venngage allows you to apply animations to icons, images and text to create dynamic and engaging visual content.

6. Utilize humor strategically

Laughter is the best medicine—and a fantastic presentation enhancer! A well-placed joke or lighthearted moment can break the ice and create a warm atmosphere , making your audience more receptive to your message.

7. Practice active listening and respond to feedback

Be attentive to your audience’s reactions and feedback. If they have questions or concerns, address them with genuine interest and respect. Your responsiveness builds rapport and shows that you genuinely care about their experience.

8. Apply the 10-20-30 rule

Apply the 10-20-30 presentation rule and keep it short, sweet and impactful! Stick to ten slides, deliver your presentation within 20 minutes and use a 30-point font to ensure clarity and focus. Less is more, and your audience will thank you for it!

9. Implement the 5-5-5 rule

Simplicity is key. Limit each slide to five bullet points, with only five words per bullet point and allow each slide to remain visible for about five seconds. This rule keeps your presentation concise and prevents information overload.

Simple presentations are more engaging because they are easier to follow. Summarize your presentations and keep them simple with Venngage’s gallery of simple presentation templates and ensure that your message is delivered effectively across your audience.

1. How to start a presentation?

To kick off your presentation effectively, begin with an attention-grabbing statement or a powerful quote. Introduce yourself, establish credibility and clearly state the purpose and relevance of your presentation.

2. How to end a presentation?

For a strong conclusion, summarize your talking points and key takeaways. End with a compelling call to action or a thought-provoking question and remember to thank your audience and invite any final questions or interactions.

3. How to make a presentation interactive?

To make your presentation interactive, encourage questions and discussion throughout your talk. Utilize multimedia elements like videos or images and consider including polls, quizzes or group activities to actively involve your audience.

In need of inspiration for your next presentation? I’ve got your back! Pick from these 120+ presentation ideas, topics and examples to get started. 

Creating a stunning presentation with Venngage is a breeze with our user-friendly drag-and-drop editor and professionally designed templates for all your communication needs. 

Here’s how to make a presentation in just 5 simple steps with the help of Venngage:

Step 1: Sign up for Venngage for free using your email, Gmail or Facebook account or simply log in to access your account. 

Step 2: Pick a design from our selection of free presentation templates (they’re all created by our expert in-house designers).

Step 3: Make the template your own by customizing it to fit your content and branding. With Venngage’s intuitive drag-and-drop editor, you can easily modify text, change colors and adjust the layout to create a unique and eye-catching design.

Step 4: Elevate your presentation by incorporating captivating visuals. You can upload your images or choose from Venngage’s vast library of high-quality photos, icons and illustrations. 

Step 5: Upgrade to a premium or business account to export your presentation in PDF and print it for in-person presentations or share it digitally for free!

By following these five simple steps, you’ll have a professionally designed and visually engaging presentation ready in no time. With Venngage’s user-friendly platform, your presentation is sure to make a lasting impression. So, let your creativity flow and get ready to shine in your next presentation!

• What is PowerPoint? Video
• Create a presentation Video
• Choose the right view for the task Video
• Add and format text Video

What is PowerPoint?

Note:  Microsoft 365 Copliot coming soon in PowerPoint.

 With PowerPoint on your PC, Mac, or mobile device, you can:

Create presentations from scratch or a template.

Add text, images, art, and videos.

Select a professional design with PowerPoint Designer.

Add transitions, animations, and cinematic motion.

Save to OneDrive, to get to your presentations from your computer, tablet, or phone.

Share your work and work with others, wherever they are.

PowerPoint help

What's new in PowerPoint for Windows

Office Quick Start Guides

Get Microsoft presentation templates

Need more help?

Want more options.

Explore subscription benefits, browse training courses, learn how to secure your device, and more.

Microsoft 365 subscription benefits

Microsoft 365 training

Microsoft security

Accessibility center

Communities help you ask and answer questions, give feedback, and hear from experts with rich knowledge.

Ask the Microsoft Community

Microsoft Tech Community

Windows Insiders

Microsoft 365 Insiders

Was this information helpful?

Thank you for your feedback.

• PRESENTATION SKILLS

What is a Presentation?

Search SkillsYouNeed:

Presentation Skills:

• A - Z List of Presentation Skills
• Top Tips for Effective Presentations
• General Presentation Skills
• Preparing for a Presentation
• Organising the Material
• Writing Your Presentation
• Deciding the Presentation Method
• Managing your Presentation Notes
• Working with Visual Aids
• Presenting Data
• Managing the Event
• Coping with Presentation Nerves
• Dealing with Questions
• How to Build Presentations Like a Consultant
• 7 Qualities of Good Speakers That Can Help You Be More Successful
• Self-Presentation in Presentations
• Specific Presentation Events
• Remote Meetings and Presentations
• Giving a Speech
• Presentations in Interviews
• Presenting to Large Groups and Conferences
• Giving Lectures and Seminars
• Managing a Press Conference
• Attending Public Consultation Meetings
• Managing a Public Consultation Meeting
• Crisis Communications
• Elsewhere on Skills You Need:
• Communication Skills
• Facilitation Skills
• Teams, Groups and Meetings
• Effective Speaking
• Question Types

Subscribe to our FREE newsletter and start improving your life in just 5 minutes a day.

You'll get our 5 free 'One Minute Life Skills' and our weekly newsletter.

We'll never share your email address and you can unsubscribe at any time.

The formal presentation of information is divided into two broad categories: Presentation Skills and Personal Presentation .

These two aspects are interwoven and can be described as the preparation, presentation and practice of verbal and non-verbal communication. 

This article describes what a presentation is and defines some of the key terms associated with presentation skills.

Many people feel terrified when asked to make their first public talk.  Some of these initial fears can be reduced by good preparation that also lays the groundwork for making an effective presentation.

A Presentation Is...

A presentation is a means of communication that can be adapted to various speaking situations, such as talking to a group, addressing a meeting or briefing a team.

A presentation can also be used as a broad term that encompasses other ‘speaking engagements’ such as making a speech at a wedding, or getting a point across in a video conference.

To be effective, step-by-step preparation and the method and means of presenting the information should be carefully considered. 

A presentation requires you to get a message across to the listeners and will often contain a ' persuasive ' element. It may, for example, be a talk about the positive work of your organisation, what you could offer an employer, or why you should receive additional funding for a project.

The Key Elements of a Presentation

Making a presentation is a way of communicating your thoughts and ideas to an audience and many of our articles on communication are also relevant here, see: What is Communication? for more.

Consider the following key components of a presentation:

Ask yourself the following questions to develop a full understanding of the context of the presentation.

When and where will you deliver your presentation?

There is a world of difference between a small room with natural light and an informal setting, and a huge lecture room, lit with stage lights. The two require quite different presentations, and different techniques.

Will it be in a setting you are familiar with, or somewhere new?

If somewhere new, it would be worth trying to visit it in advance, or at least arriving early, to familiarise yourself with the room.

Will the presentation be within a formal or less formal setting?

A work setting will, more or less by definition, be more formal, but there are also various degrees of formality within that.

Will the presentation be to a small group or a large crowd?

Are you already familiar with the audience?

With a new audience, you will have to build rapport quickly and effectively, to get them on your side.

What equipment and technology will be available to you, and what will you be expected to use?

In particular, you will need to ask about microphones and whether you will be expected to stand in one place, or move around.

What is the audience expecting to learn from you and your presentation?

Check how you will be ‘billed’ to give you clues as to what information needs to be included in your presentation.

All these aspects will change the presentation. For more on this, see our page on Deciding the Presentation Method .

The role of the presenter is to communicate with the audience and control the presentation.

Remember, though, that this may also include handing over the control to your audience, especially if you want some kind of interaction.

You may wish to have a look at our page on Facilitation Skills for more.

The audience receives the presenter’s message(s).

However, this reception will be filtered through and affected by such things as the listener’s own experience, knowledge and personal sense of values.

See our page: Barriers to Effective Communication to learn why communication can fail.

The message or messages are delivered by the presenter to the audience.

The message is delivered not just by the spoken word ( verbal communication ) but can be augmented by techniques such as voice projection, body language, gestures, eye contact ( non-verbal communication ), and visual aids.

The message will also be affected by the audience’s expectations. For example, if you have been billed as speaking on one particular topic, and you choose to speak on another, the audience is unlikely to take your message on board even if you present very well . They will judge your presentation a failure, because you have not met their expectations.

The audience’s reaction and therefore the success of the presentation will largely depend upon whether you, as presenter, effectively communicated your message, and whether it met their expectations.

As a presenter, you don’t control the audience’s expectations. What you can do is find out what they have been told about you by the conference organisers, and what they are expecting to hear. Only if you know that can you be confident of delivering something that will meet expectations.

See our page: Effective Speaking for more information.

How will the presentation be delivered?

Presentations are usually delivered direct to an audience.  However, there may be occasions where they are delivered from a distance over the Internet using video conferencing systems, such as Skype.

It is also important to remember that if your talk is recorded and posted on the internet, then people may be able to access it for several years. This will mean that your contemporaneous references should be kept to a minimum.

Impediments

Many factors can influence the effectiveness of how your message is communicated to the audience.

For example background noise or other distractions, an overly warm or cool room, or the time of day and state of audience alertness can all influence your audience’s level of concentration.

As presenter, you have to be prepared to cope with any such problems and try to keep your audience focussed on your message.   

Our page: Barriers to Communication explains these factors in more depth.

Continue to read through our Presentation Skills articles for an overview of how to prepare and structure a presentation, and how to manage notes and/or illustrations at any speaking event.

Continue to: Preparing for a Presentation Deciding the Presentation Method

See also: Writing Your Presentation | Working with Visual Aids Coping with Presentation Nerves | Dealing with Questions Learn Better Presentation Skills with TED Talks

• Skip to main content
• Skip to primary sidebar

Business Jargons

A Business Encyclopedia

Presentation

Definition : A presentation is a form of communication in which the speaker conveys information to the audience. In an organization presentations are used in various scenarios like talking to a group, addressing a meeting, demonstrating or introducing a new product, or briefing a team. It involves presenting a particular subject or issue or new ideas/thoughts to a group of people.

It is considered as the most effective form of communication because of two main reasons:

• Use of non-verbal cues.
• Facilitates instant feedback.

Business Presentations are a tool to influence people toward an intended thought or action.

Parts of Presentation

• Introduction : It is meant to make the listeners ready to receive the message and draw their interest. For that, the speaker can narrate some story or a humorous piece of joke, an interesting fact, a question, stating a problem, and so forth. They can also use some surprising statistics.
• Body : It is the essence of the presentation. It requires the sequencing of facts in a logical order. This is the part where the speaker explains the topic and relevant information. It has to be critically arranged, as the audience must be able to grasp what the speaker presents.
• Conclusion : It needs to be short and precise. It should sum up or outline the key points that you have presented. It could also contain what the audience should have gained out of the presentation.

Purpose of Presentation

• To inform : Organizations can use presentations to inform the audience about new schemes, products or proposals. The aim is to inform the new entrant about the policies and procedures of the organization.
• To persuade : Presentations are also given to persuade the audience to take the intended action.
• To build goodwill : They can also help in building a good reputation

Factors Affecting Presentation

Audience Analysis

Communication environment, personal appearance, use of visuals, opening and closing presentation, organization of presentation, language and words, voice quality, body language, answering questions, a word from business jargons.

Presentation is a mode of conveying information to a selected group of people live. An ideal presentation is one that identifies and matches the needs, interests and understanding level of the audience. It also represents the facts, and figures in the form of tables, charts, and graphs and uses multiple colours.

Related terms:

• Verbal Communication
• Visual Communication
• Non-Verbal Communication
• Communication
• 7 C’s of Communication

Reader Interactions

Abbas khan says

October 2, 2022 at 11:33 pm

Thank you so much for providing us with brief info related to the presentation.

Farhan says

February 23, 2023 at 9:45 am

yusra shah says

July 3, 2023 at 2:04 am

it was helpful👍

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

• Random article
• Teaching guide
• Privacy & cookies

Electronics

by Chris Woodford . Last updated: December 5, 2022.

T hey store your money. They monitor your heartbeat. They carry the sound of your voice into other people's homes. They bring airplanes into land and guide cars safely to their destination—they even fire off the airbags if we get into trouble. It's amazing to think just how many things "they" actually do. "They" are electrons: tiny particles within atoms that march around defined paths known as circuits carrying electrical energy. One of the greatest things people learned to do in the 20th century was to use electrons to control machines and process information. The electronics revolution, as this is known, accelerated the computer revolution and both these things have transformed many areas of our lives. But how exactly do nanoscopically small particles, far too small to see, achieve things that are so big and dramatic? Let's take a closer look and find out!

Photo: The compact, electronic circuit board from a webcam . This board contains several dozen separate electronic components, mostly small resistors and capacitors, plus the large black microchip (bottom left) that does much of the work.

What's the difference between electricity and electronics?

If you've read our article about electricity , you'll know it's a kind of energy —a very versatile kind of energy that we can make in all sorts of ways and use in many more. Electricity is all about making electromagnetic energy flow around a circuit so that it will drive something like an electric motor or a heating element , powering appliances such as electric cars , kettles , toasters , and lamps . Generally, electrical appliances need a great deal of energy to make them work so they use quite large (and often quite dangerous) electric currents. The 2500-watt heating element inside an electric kettle operates on a current of about 10 amps. By contrast, electronic components use currents likely to be measured in fractions of milliamps (which are thousandths of amps). In other words, a typical electric appliance is likely to be using currents tens, hundreds, or thousands of times bigger than a typical electronic one.

Electronics is a much more subtle kind of electricity in which tiny electric currents (and, in theory, single electrons) are carefully directed around much more complex circuits to process signals (such as those that carry radio and television programs) or store and process information . Think of something like a microwave oven and it's easy to see the difference between ordinary electricity and electronics. In a microwave, electricity provides the power that generates high-energy waves that cook your food; electronics controls the electrical circuit that does the cooking.

Artwork: Microwave ovens are powered by electric cables (gray) that plug into the wall. The cables supply electricity that powers high-current electrical circuits and low-current electronic ones. The high-current electrical circuits power the magnetron (blue), the device that makes the waves that cook your food, and rotate the turntable. The low-current electronic circuits (red) control these high-powered circuits, and things like the numeric display unit.

Analog and digital electronics

There are two very different ways of storing information—known as analog and digital . It sounds like quite an abstract idea, but it's really very simple. Suppose you take an old-fashioned photograph of someone with a film camera . The camera captures light streaming in through the shutter at the front as a pattern of light and dark areas on chemically treated plastic . The scene you're photographing is converted into a kind of instant, chemical painting—an "analogy" of what you're looking at. That's why we say this is an analog way of storing information. But if you take a photograph of exactly the same scene with a digital camera , the camera stores a very different record. Instead of saving a recognizable pattern of light and dark, it converts the light and dark areas into numbers and stores those instead. Storing a numerical, coded version of something is known as digital .

Photo: Analog and digital electronics. The radio (back) is analog: it "soaks" up radio waves and turns them back into sound with electronic components like transistors and capacitors. The camera (front) is digital: it stores and processes photos as numbers.

Electronic equipment generally works on information in either analog or digital format. In an old-fashioned transistor radio , broadcast signals enter the radio's circuitry via the antenna sticking out of the case. These are analog signals: they are radio waves, traveling through the air from a distant radio transmitter, that vibrate up and down in a pattern that corresponds exactly to the words and music they carry. So loud rock music means bigger signals than quiet classical music. The radio keeps the signals in analog form as it receives them, boosts them, and turns them back into sounds you can hear. But in a modern digital radio , things happen in a different way. First, the signals travel in digital format—as coded numbers. When they arrive at your radio, the numbers are converted back into sound signals. It's a very different way of processing information and it has both advantages and disadvantages. Generally, most modern forms of electronic equipment (including computers , cell phones , digital cameras , digital radios , hearing aids, and televisions ) use digital electronics.

Electronic components

If you've ever looked down on a city from a skyscraper window, you'll have marveled at all the tiny little buildings beneath you and the streets linking them together in all sorts of intricate ways. Every building has a function and the streets, which allow people to travel from one part of a city to another or visit different buildings in turn, make all the buildings work together. The collection of buildings, the way they're arranged, and the many connections between them is what makes a vibrant city so much more than the sum of its individual parts.

The circuits inside pieces of electronic equipment are a bit like cities too: they're packed with components (similar to buildings) that do different jobs and the components are linked together by cables or printed metal connections (similar to streets). Unlike in a city, where virtually every building is unique and even two supposedly identical homes or office blocks may be subtly different, electronic circuits are built up from a small number of standard components. But, just like LEGO®, you can put these components together in an infinite number of different places so they do an infinite number of different jobs.

These are some of the most important components you'll encounter:

These are the simplest components in any circuit. Their job is to restrict the flow of electrons and reduce the current or voltage flowing by converting electrical energy into heat. Resistors come in many different shapes and sizes. Variable resistors (also known as potentiometers) have a dial control on them so they change the amount of resistance when you turn them. Volume controls in audio equipment use variable resistors like these. Read more in our main article about resistors .

Photo: A typical resistor on the circuit board from a radio.

The electronic equivalents of one-way streets, diodes allow an electric current to flow through them in only one direction. They are also known as rectifiers. Diodes can be used to change alternating currents (ones flowing back and forth round a circuit, constantly swapping direction) into direct currents (ones that always flow in the same direction). Read more in our main article about diodes .

Photo: Diodes look similar to resistors but work in a different way and do a completely different job. Unlike a resistor, which can be inserted into a circuit either way around, a diode has to be wired in the right direction (corresponding to the arrow on this circuit board).

These relatively simple components consist of two pieces of conducting material (such as metal) separated by a non-conducting (insulating) material called a dielectric. They are often used as timing devices, but they can transform electrical currents in other ways too. In a radio, one of the most important jobs, tuning into the station you want to listen to, is done by a capacitor. Read more in our main article about capacitors .

Photo: A small capacitor in a transistor radio circuit.

Transistors

Easily the most important components in computers, transistors can switch tiny electric currents on and off or amplify them (transform small electric currents into much larger ones). Transistors that work as switches act as the memories in computers, while transistors working as amplifiers boost the volume of sounds in hearing aids. When transistors are connected together, they make devices called logic gates that can carry out very basic forms of decision making. ( Thyristors are a little bit like transistors, but work in a different way.) Read more in our main article about transistors .

Opto-electronic (optical electronic) components

Photo: An LED mounted in an electronic circuit. This is one of the LEDs that makes red light inside an optical computer mouse .

Electronic components have something very important in common. Whatever job they do, they work by controlling the flow of electrons through their structure in a very precise way. Most of these components are made of solid pieces of partly conducting, partly insulating materials called semiconductors (described in more detail in our article about transistors ). Because electronics involves understanding the precise mechanisms of how solids let electrons pass through them, it's sometimes known as solid-state physics. That's why you'll often see pieces of electronic equipment described as "solid-state."

Electronic circuits and circuit boards

The key to an electronic device is not just the components it contains, but the way they are arranged in circuits. The simplest possible circuit is a continuous loop connecting two components, like two beads fastened on the same necklace. Analog electronic appliances tend to have far simpler circuits than digital ones. A basic transistor radio might have a few dozen different components and a circuit board probably no bigger than the cover of a paperback book. But in something like a computer , which uses digital technology, circuits are much more dense and complex and include hundreds, thousands, or even millions of separate pathways. Generally speaking, the more complex the circuit, the more intricate the operations it can perform.

Photo: The electronic circuit board from inside a computer printer. Which electronic components can you see here? I can make out some capacitors, diodes, and integrated circuits (the large black things, which are explained below).

If you've experimented with simple electronics, you'll know that the easiest way to build a circuit is simply to connect components together with short lengths of copper cable. But the more components you have to connect, the harder this becomes. That's why electronics designers usually opt for a more systematic way of arranging components on what's called a circuit board . A basic circuit board is simply a rectangle of plastic with copper connecting tracks on one side and lots of holes drilled through it. You can easily connect components together by poking them through the holes and using the copper to link them together, removing bits of copper as necessary, and adding extra wires to make additional connections. This type of circuit board is often called "breadboard".

Electronic equipment that you buy in stores takes this idea a step further using circuit boards that are made automatically in factories. The exact layout of the circuit is printed chemically onto a plastic board, with all the copper tracks created automatically during the manufacturing process. Components are then simply pushed through pre-drilled holes and fastened into place with a kind of electrically conducting adhesive known as solder . A circuit manufactured in this way is known as a printed circuit board (PCB) .

Photo: Soldering components into an electronic circuit. The smoke you can see comes from the solder melting and turning to a vapor. The blue plastic rectangle I'm soldering onto here is a typical printed circuit board—and you see various components sticking up from it, including a bunch of resistors at the front and a large integrated circuit at the top.

Although PCBs are a great advance on hand-wired circuit boards, they're still quite difficult to use when you need to connect hundreds, thousands, or even millions of components together. The reason early computers were so big, power hungry, slow, expensive, and unreliable is because their components were wired together manually in this old-fashioned way. In the late 1950s, however, engineers Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce independently developed a way of creating electronic components in miniature form on the surface of pieces of silicon. Using these integrated circuits , it rapidly became possible to squeeze hundreds, thousands, millions, and then hundreds of millions of miniaturized components onto chips of silicon about the size of a finger nail. That's how computers became smaller, cheaper, and much more reliable from the 1960s onward.

Photo: Miniaturization. There's more computing power in the processing chip resting on my finger here than you would have found in a room-sized computer from the 1940s!

What is electronics used for?

Electronics is now so pervasive that it's almost easier to think of things that don't use it than of things that do.

Entertainment was one of the first areas to benefit, with radio (and later television ) both critically dependent on the arrival of electronic components. Although the telephone was invented before electronics was properly developed, modern telephone systems, cellphone networks, and the computers networks at the heart of the Internet all benefit from sophisticated, digital electronics.

Try to think of something you do that doesn't involve electronics and you may struggle. Your car engine probably has electronic circuits in it—and what about the GPS satellite navigation device that tells you where to go? Even the airbag in your steering wheel is triggered by an electronic circuit that detects when you need some extra protection.

Electronic equipment saves our lives in other ways too. Hospitals are packed with all kinds of electronic gadgets, from heart-rate monitors and ultrasound scanners to complex brain scanners and X-ray machines. Hearing aids were among the first gadgets to benefit from the development of tiny transistors in the mid-20th century, and ever-smaller integrated circuits have allowed hearing aids to become smaller and more powerful in the decades ever since.

Who'd have thought have electrons—just about the smallest things you could ever imagine—would change people's lives in so many important ways?

A brief history of electronics

Photo: Sir J. J. Thomson, who discovered that electrons were negatively charged particles, at Cambridge University, in 1897. Thomson won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1906 for his work. Photo by Bain News Service courtesy of US Library of Congress .

• 1874: Irish scientist George Johnstone Stoney (1826–1911) suggests electricity must be "built" out of tiny electrical charges. He coins the name "electron" about 20 years later.
• 1875: American scientist George R. Carey builds a photoelectric cell that makes electricity when light shines on it.
• 1879: Englishman Sir William Crookes (1832–1919) develops his cathode-ray tube (similar to an old-style, "tube"-based television ) to study electrons (which were then known as "cathode rays").
• 1883: Prolific American inventor Thomas Edison (1847–1931) discovers thermionic emission (also known as the Edison effect), where electrons are given off by a heated filament.
• 1887: German physicist Heinrich Hertz (1857–1894) finds out more about the photoelectric effect, the connection between light and electricity that Carey had stumbled on the previous decade.
• 1897: British physicist J.J. Thomson (1856–1940) shows that cathode rays are negatively charged particles. Thomson calls them "corpuscles," but they are soon renamed electrons.
• 1904: John Ambrose Fleming (1849–1945), an English scientist, produces the Fleming valve (later renamed the diode). It becomes an indispensable component in radios.
• 1906: American inventor Lee De Forest (1873–1961), goes one better and develops an improved valve known as the triode (or audion), greatly improving the design of radios. De Forest is often credited as a father of modern radio.
• 1947: Americans John Bardeen (1908–1991), Walter Brattain (1902–1987), and William Shockley (1910–1989) develop the transistor at Bell Laboratories. It revolutionizes electronics and digital computers in the second half of the 20th century.
• 1958: Working independently, American engineers Jack Kilby (1923–2005) of Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce (1927–1990) of Fairchild Semiconductor (and later of Intel) develop integrated circuits.
• 1971: Marcian Edward (Ted) Hoff (1937–) and Federico Faggin (1941–) manage to squeeze all the key components of a computer onto a single chip, producing the world's first general-purpose microprocessor, the Intel 4004.
• 1987: American scientists Theodore Fulton and Gerald Dolan of Bell Laboratories develop the first single-electron transistor.
• 2008: Hewlett-Packard researcher Stanley Williams builds the first working memristor, a new kind of magnetic circuit component that works like a resistor with a memory, first imagined by American physicist Leon Chua almost four decades earlier (in 1971).

If you liked this article...

Find out more, on this website.

• History of electricity
• Integrated circuits
• Soldering and welding

Books for younger readers

• Easy Electronics by Charles Platt. Maker Media, 2017.
• Electronics for Kids: Play with Simple Circuits and Experiment with Electricity by Øyvind Nydal Dahl. No Starch, 2016.
• Eyewitness: Electricity by Steve Parker. Dorling Kindersley, 2013.

Books for older readers

• Open Circuits: The Inner Beauty of Electronic Components by Eric Schlaepfer and Windell Oksay. No Starch, 2022. A coffee-table guide to all your favorite electronic bits and pieces. What's going on inside them and how do they really work?
• Make: Electronics by Charles Platt. O'Reilly, 2015. A hands-on guide where you learn about electronic components by using them in increasingly complex circuits.
• Teach Yourself Electricity and Electronics by Stan Gibilisco and Simon Monk. McGraw Hill, 2016.
• The Art of Electronics by Paul Horowitz, Winfield Hill. Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Websites: history of electronics

• The discovery of the electron : This online exhibition from the American Institute of Physics explains how JJ Thomson probed the mysteries of the electron at Cambridge University.
• Atomic firsts : The UK Science Museum explains how JJ Thomson's research fits into the bigger story of the atom. [Archived via the Wayback Machine.]
• Transistorized! : A PBS website that covers the history of the transistor.
• The Mysterious Memristor by Sally Adee, IEEE Spectrum, May 1, 2008. A fascinating, easy-to-understand introduction to the development of memristors.

Websites: practical projects and hobbyist guides

• Evil Mad Scientist : A weekly updated blog that delivers electronics projects (and other "maker"-type stuff) with wit, ingenuity, and open-source ethos.
• Adafruit: Blog : More cool, offbeat electronics for makers.

Text copyright © Chris Woodford 2008, 2021. All rights reserved. Full copyright notice and terms of use .

Rate this page

Tell your friends, cite this page, more to explore on our website....

• Get the book
• Send feedback

• Get IGI Global News

• All Products
• Book Chapters
• Journal Articles
• Video Lessons
• Teaching Cases

Shortly You Will Be Redirected to Our Partner eContent Pro's Website

eContent Pro powers all IGI Global Author Services. From this website, you will be able to receive your 25% discount (automatically applied at checkout), receive a free quote, place an order, and retrieve your final documents .

What is Electronic Presentation

Related Books View All Books

Related Journals View All Journals

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it's official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you're on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings
• Browse Titles

NCBI Bookshelf. A service of the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health.

Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Evaluating Clinical Applications of Telemedicine; Field MJ, editor. Telemedicine: A Guide to Assessing Telecommunications in Health Care. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 1996.

Telemedicine: A Guide to Assessing Telecommunications in Health Care.

• Hardcopy Version at National Academies Press

1 Introduction and Background

For more than 30 years, clinicians, health services researchers, and others have been investigating the use of advanced telecommunications and computer technologies to improve health care. At the intersection of many of these efforts is telemedicine—a combination of mainstream and innovative information technologies. As defined here, telemedicine is the use of electronic information and communications technologies to provide and support health care when distance separates the participants.

On the commonplace side of the spectrum are familiar uses of the telephone for consultations between patients and clinicians and the use of radio to link emergency medical personnel to medical centers. On the other end of the telemedicine spectrum are largely experimental innovations such as telesurgery in which a surgeon receives visual and tactile information to guide robotic instruments to perform surgery at a distant site. In between these two ends of the spectrum lie an array of video, audio, and data transmission technologies and applications. Some, such as relatively expensive interactive video conferencing, allow clinicians to see, hear, examine, question, and counsel distant patients for "real-time" diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. Others, based on "store and forward" technologies, permit digital images and other information to be saved and transmitted relatively cheaply to consultants who can receive and interpret them when convenient, thus offering more scheduling flexibility for those on both ends of the communications link. In addition to patient care, these varied technologies have a multiplicity of current and possible uses in professional education, research, public health, and administration. Such multiple uses potentially allow costs for expensive information and communications investments to be spread more broadly.

This report was prompted by the scarcity of careful evaluations of patient care applications of telemedicine. It presents a broad framework for evaluating clinical applications of telemedicine and argues for more systematic and rigorous assessments of their effects on health care quality, accessibility, costs, and acceptability compared to alternative services. For telemedicine, as for any health technology or service, such assessments are essential for several reasons. They can

• guide policymakers considering whether to encourage telemedicine by stimulating infrastructure development, funding specific telemedicine programs, or reducing policy barriers;
• provide clinicians and patients appropriate reassurance or caution about telemedicine applications;
• inform health plan managers pondering whether clinical telemedicine is feasible, cost-effective, and acceptable to patients and clinicians; and
• help those who have invested in telemedicine find ways to identify problems and improve programs.

Because telemedicine is actually a family of quite diverse technologies and applications and because important educational, research, public health, and administrative uses and benefits may be intertwined with patient care uses, the evaluation framework proposed here will have to be adapted to fit different applications and environments. It may also have to be modified to consider links to other clinical and nonclinical programs that share parts of the same technical and human infrastructure. Such modification and adaptations notwithstanding, at the heart of the evaluation framework is a body of principles and methods that form the foundation for health services research and evaluation research generally. This report attempts to relate those principles and methods to the special challenges and problems in evaluating telemedicine. It is aimed primarily at policymakers, clinicians, patients, and managers, but it should also provide context and support for researchers and evaluators with an interest in assessing information and telecommunications technologies.

• Telemedicine In Context

Concerns about access to health care have propelled much of the interest in clinical applications of telemedicine. Applications have often concentrated on remote locales in the hope that they could make needed services more available to mountain families, tribal members on Indian reservations in the Southwest and the Dakotas, military personnel on tiny Pacific islands, and ranchers and others scattered across the country's open spaces. The promise has been that telemedicine could be more practical, affordable, and sustainable than traditional programs, including those intended to sustain or expand rural health care facilities and to attract physicians, nurses, and other personnel to remote areas on a short- or long-term basis. That this potential needs to be demonstrated is the thesis of this report.

Today, with the nation's health care system undergoing profound changes, telemedicine is attracting attention beyond rural areas. To the extent that telemedicine offers mechanisms for centralizing specialists, reducing costs for specialty care, and supporting primary care clinicians, managed care plans may find certain applications attractive in the urban and suburban areas they typically serve. Some academic medical centers, faced with reduced revenues and exclusion from local managed care networks, are exploring telemedicine options as they seek to develop new regional, national, and international markets for their highly specialized clinicians. Freestanding specialty groups, multiorganization medical consortia, and other entities likewise are investigating telemedicine as they seek far-flung clients for their services.

The prospect of a physician surplus coupled with declining personal income has become a real concern for many physicians, particularly specialists ( Pew Health Professions Commission, 1995 ; IOM, 1996 ). Nurses likewise are facing pressures from decreasing hospital utilization and a reordering of nursing practices in managed care, although these may be offset to some degree by more options in home, community, and office settings. Intense price competition is threatening the missions and even the existence of some academic health centers, public and community hospitals, community health centers, and other institutions whose costs are increased by education, research, or care for the uninsured and underinsured. In these contexts, the information and telecommunications technologies that constitute telemedicine have the potential to radically reshape health care in both positive and negative ways. In particular, over time, the widespread adoption of clinical applications of telemedicine could fundamentally alter the personal, face-to-face relationship between patient and practitioner that has been the model for medical care for generations.

Although economic considerations are stimulating many explorations of telemedicine for clinical, educational, and administrative purposes, health care organizations must also be concerned about how telemedicine could affect the actual and perceived quality of their services. As in other areas, quality assessment and improvement for telemedicine is closely linked to the continued development and implementation of sophisticated clinical, research, administrative, and other information systems.

Despite its multiplying uses and users, many forms of clinical telemedicine are still far from being routinely integrated into most facets of health care delivery. Given the scarcity of comprehensive and reliable data and the pace of change, an overall picture of telemedicine's current status must be painted in rather broad strokes. Consider, for example, the dimensions of the U.S. health system ( IOM, 1992a ):

Roughly 250 million patients and potential patients . Most adults have probably used the telephone to get medical advice or information. A growing number of Americans have personal computers and software that allow them to use medical databases (including some developed for clinicians or researchers rather than patients) and communicate with clinicians and others via electronic mail. An unknown, but undoubtedly tiny, fraction of the population has participated in an "electronic housecall," a video consultation with a distant medical specialist, or some other kind of interactive, audiovisual telemedicine application.

Over a half-million physicians, 1.5 million nurses, and many other health care professionals . Again, most practitioners have probably used the telephone to discuss patient care; many have participated in continuing medical education by teleconference; and some specialists such as radiologists are gaining considerable experience with the transmission of images for consultation purposes. An increasing number of clinicians have on-line access to the National Library of Medicine's Medline and other resources that allow them to search the medical literature. A growing number of health care organizations have home pages on the World Wide Web that provide information and links to information available at other sites. On-line journals are also springing up, which is raising concern about weakening of the screening and quality assurance functions served by traditional journals' peer review processes.

Thousands of hospitals, nursing homes, clinics, and other health care institutions . The number of health care institutions that have advanced telemedicine capacity (e.g., video as well as telephone and fax) is not well documented. A survey of approximately 2,400 rural hospitals conducted for the federal Office of Rural Health Policy found that nearly 20 percent reported some telemedicine services but that 60 percent reported no plans for telemedicine ( Jones, 1996 ). Academic medical centers, community hospitals, and other institutions have created World Wide Web pages that serve both as information sources and as marketing tools. To meet internal needs and external demands, offices and hospitals are being remodeled to better accommodate information technologies that require differently configured space for people and equipment. the electronic patient record is increasingly understood to be a necessity, although practical obstacles to implementation take time to overcome.

Hundreds of managed care organizations going under a variety of acronyms, including HMOs (health maintenance organizations), PPOs (preferred providers organizations), and PHOs (physician hospital organizations). For the most part, the committee found that these organizations have more pressing priorities than telemedicine, including implementation of better patient and administrative information systems. To borrow a phrase from clinical practice, "watchful waiting" seems to be a common strategy as decisionmakers monitor the experiences of innovators and early adopters of telemedicine.

The integration of clinical, educational, and other applications of telemedicine into health care is inextricably linked to a dynamic telecommunications industry and a developing National Information Infrastructure ( NII ). This infrastructure has been likened to "a giant electronic web that will allow each user's computer, telephone, and television to interconnect with others, regardless of their location … and will enable each user to communicate with everyone else who is connected to the web" ( Lasker et al., 1995 ). The NII has been accorded sufficient federal policy importance to be referred to by its initials as if it were a specific organization or technology rather than an evolving concept—a mix of aspirations, strategic plans, fast-changing technologies, and growing user demands and sophistication. A recent report from the National Research Council, tellingly titled The Unpredictable Certainty: Information Infrastructure through 2000, found that "there are as many visions of the information future as there are sectors of the economy helping to create them" ( NRC, 1996 , p. 3).

The technical base for telemedicine applications will also continue to be affected by innovations spurred by consumer electronics, the entertainment industry, and defense department investments. Moreover, as the telecommunications infrastructure expands to provide and support interactive educational, entertainment, retail, and other services at the "point of need" (e.g., home, school), telemedicine can be expected to follow a similar path. For example, the "electronic housecall" has the potential to save some ill or recovering patients the inconvenience or discomfort of an office visit, allow certain hospitalized patients to go home earlier, and avoid some admissions in the first instance. It may also provide preventive services to those who wish to avoid or minimize potential illness. The benefits and costs of home access to telemedicine services compared to alternative services have, however, yet to be systematically demonstrated.

Technical, clinical, organizational, and behavioral obstacles to easy use of telemedicine technologies remain, as do policy impediments and uncertainties related to reimbursement, licensure, medical liability, and other concerns. Many programs continue to depend on grants from government and industry, although some applications show more promise of becoming self-sustaining over the long term than others.

Overall, the financial and clinical justification for new or continued investment in telemedicine remains incomplete for many decisionmakers, particularly given competing demands on their resources in a period of significant economic and political uncertainty. Continued support will, in large measure, depend on better evaluation and evidence of the practicality, value, acceptability, affordability, and profitability of telemedicine.

• The Demand For Evidence Of Effectiveness

Although telemedicine faces some particular challenges in the realm of evaluation, it is hardly unique in facing demands for better evidence of its effectiveness and cost-effectiveness. For more than a decade, demand has been growing for better information about the effectiveness of specific health services ( OTA, 1978 , 1994 ; Eddy, 1984 ; Wennberg, 1984 ; IOM, 1985 IOM, 1990a ; 1992a ; Roper et al., 1988 ). The commonly cited sources of this demand include the sharp escalation in health care costs during the 1970s and 1980s, the documentation of wide variations in clinical practice, the proliferation of expensive medical technologies, and the publication of studies questioning the appropriateness of a variety of health care practices.

In response, a number of public and private initiatives have been launched to extend the evidence base for health care and to improve the use of such knowledge by clinicians, patients, and other decisionmakers (see, e.g., IOM, 1985 see, e.g., IOM, 1990a , 1992a ; Ball, 1990 ; PPRC, 1989 ; OTA, 1994 ). These initiatives include the establishment in 1989 of the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, a federal agency with a specific mandate to support research, guidelines development, and other activities to increase knowledge of what works and what does not work in health care. Some medical professional organizations, including the American College of Physicians, have an even longer record of efforts to assess the effectiveness of medical services and develop evidence-based guidelines for clinical practice. Elsewhere in the private sector (often with some public funding), initiatives include research-oriented ventures such as the Medical Outcomes Trust and the Cochrane Collaboration; market-oriented enterprises such as the technology assessment collaboration of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association and Kaiser Permanente of Southern California; and hybrid entities such as ECRI (formerly the Emergency Care Research Institute), a nonprofit technology assessment organization in Pennsylvania.

With the proliferation of advanced and even amazing new technologies, one temptation for evaluators and decisionmakers is to focus primarily on the technical features of particular technologies and, to some degree, lose sight of clinical, administrative, educational, or other problems that they purport to address. To counter this temptation, many have urged that those devising technology assessments, guidelines for clinical practice, and similar tools start by considering clinical, organizational, and social needs and goals and then examining the benefits, risks, and costs of alternative technologies or programs within this context. This report endorses that perspective.

Most of the initiatives to improve the evidence base for health care involve both the collection and analysis of data about specific services and the development of better research tools and databases. The latter work includes efforts to

• design less expensive and more realistic methods of testing the effectiveness of alternative clinical practices;
• construct better measures of health outcomes and of care processes, delivery system characteristics, and other variables that may affect outcomes;
• devise statistical and other tools that provide more meaningful and credible analysis and presentation of data;
• build computer-based patient records and other electronic information systems that provide relatively easy and fast access to large databases and that permit the application of powerful statistical methods for analyzing and displaying those data;
• create decision support tools and learning systems that assist clinicians and patients in evaluating information, preferences, and options;
• formulate strategies for providing information to patients, clinicians, and others in ways that promote informed decisions and stimulate desired changes in behaviors and outcomes; and
• assess the effect of information and decision-support strategies on behaviors and outcomes.

Evaluations of telemedicine applications can build on these efforts as well as on a body of evaluation research concepts and methods developed in areas such as psychology, education, and welfare policy. Such evaluations can—in common with this report—likewise build on the work of a number of investigators and organizations, who have undertaken evaluations of telemedicine applications and whose contributions are reviewed in later chapters of this report.

• Study Origins And Approach

The concept for this study emerged from discussions between staff of the National Library of Medicine ( NLM ) and the Institute of Medicine ( IOM ) that began in late 1994. The NLM has a long history of supporting the development of information and communications technologies to assist health researchers, clinicians, policymakers, and, increasingly, patients. For example, through Medline, Grateful Med, and Loansome Doc, the NLM has made it easier to search medical literature and find specific information for education or problem solving. The NLM has also funded a number of telemedicine demonstration projects (see Appendix A ).

Although a variety of demonstration and evaluation projects have been valuable in demonstrating basic feasibility and safety, most have not been guided by a systematic framework for evaluating the impact of clinical telemedicine on the quality, accessibility, or cost of health care. Recognizing this deficiency, the National Library of Medicine (with assistance from the Health Care Financing Administration) asked the Institute of Medicine to develop a framework and related set of criteria for evaluating clinical applications of telemedicine. The evaluative focus was to be on the quality, accessibility, and cost of health care, not on technical hardware and software issues.

To undertake the requested study, the IOM appointed a 15-member committee of experts in telemedicine, medical informatics, health care delivery, health services research, quality assurance, economics, and public policy analysis. The committee met three times between July 1995 and February 1996. Staff from the NLM , the Health Care Financing Administration, the Department of Defense, the Office of Rural Health Policy of the Department of Health and Human Services, the federal Joint Working Group on Telemedicine , and other interested groups were invited to committee meetings. In addition, IOM staff and committee attended a number of meetings organized by these agencies and various private organizations.

During its deliberations, the committee identified several working principles that reflected its appreciation of the complicated and volatile state of the health care system and that shaped its examination of telemedicine and its analysis of evaluation strategies. These principles, which include a mix of practical and normative judgments or assumptions and which are one basis for the evaluation framework presented in Chapter 6 , included the following: 1

• Neither health care nor telemedicine is static.
• Systematic ways of evaluating and monitoring the impact of social, economic, and technological changes will always be needed.
• Research on the outcomes and effectiveness of new and established health care technologies is a necessary element of evaluation and monitoring strategies.
• The computer-based patient record, which will become a necessary and integral part of health care, is fundamental for monitoring strategies.
• Technology evaluations and decisions should not, in general, be dominated by a preoccupation with the characteristics and demands of individual technologies but rather should derive from the clinical, financial, institutional, and social objectives and needs of those who may benefit or suffer from the technologies.

Committee and staff reviewed the literature on telemedicine, making use of computer-based information resources sponsored by the NLM and other organizations. Although the committee recognized a number of interesting telemedicine initiatives in other countries, it concentrated its limited time and resources on the United States. 2 Committee members and staff participated in site visits, conference calls, and meetings with a variety of individuals and groups. A six-member technical advisory panel (see p. iv) met with the study committee in November 1995 to assist it in defining key evaluation questions and criteria and to provide written comments on preliminary materials drafted by the committee. Committee members prepared background papers on economic and behavioral issues, and these have been incorporated into various sections of this report. The committee reviewed a draft manuscript and discussed final conclusions and recommendations at its third and final meeting in February 1996. This document, which was submitted for outside review in accordance with IOM and National Research Council procedures and policies, constitutes the committee's formal report.

• Terms And Definitions

As more and more people use computers and advanced telecommunications technologies at work and at home, the arcane language of these technologies—bits and bytes, analog and digital signals, pixels and bandwidths—is slowly diffusing, but it remains far from common parlance in most medical settings. Reflecting its dependence on these technologies, the field of telemedicine is replete with highly technical terms and abbreviations.

This report tries to avoid jargon when possible and to define clearly those technical terms that are necessary. Because even terms that are in relatively common use may have a variety of explicit—and implicit—definitions, several key terms and concepts are defined and discussed below. Other terms will be defined as they are used in later chapters. A glossary and list of abbreviations are also provided for reference (see Appendix B ).

Telemedicine

The committee sought a definition of telemedicine that was parsimonious, consistent with customary social or professional usage, and not easily misunderstood or misused. The group began by reviewing a number of suggested definitions. 3 The common elements of these definitions were (a) information or telecommunications technologies, (b) distance between participants, and (c) health or medical uses. The definitions differed in whether they (a) singled out clinical applications or also covered other uses and (b) incorporated the concept of an integrated structure or system. The committee definition incorporates the three common elements. Clinical applications are treated as one category of applications of telemedicine. The committee viewed the degree of system integration not as a defining characteristic but, rather, as a major variable or factor to be considered in planning, implementing, evaluating, and redesigning telemedicine programs to achieve desired outcomes.

Thus, as cited on the first page of this report, telemedicine is defined as the use of electronic information and communications technologies to provide and support health care when distance separates the participants. 4 Several elements of this definition warrant comment.

First, the committee recognized that video conferencing is sometimes perceived as the defining mode of telemedicine, but the committee's definition more broadly encompasses telephone conversations, transmission of still images, and other communications as well. Further, although the means of transferring information from one location to another (i.e., telecommunications media) are important, they are only a part of the technological base of telemedicine. More generally, information technologies include computer-based means for capturing, storing, manipulating, analyzing, retrieving, and displaying data.

Second, the committee's definition covers both clinical and nonclinical applications of telemedicine. As shown in Table 1.1 , current uses fall into several broad categories. Clinical applications of telemedicine, the focus of this report, involve the first category—patient care, including diagnostic, treatment, and other medical decisions or services for particular patients. Nonclinical uses of telemedicine, such as continuing medical education and management meetings, do not involve decisions about care for specific patients. The clinical-nonclinical boundary is not sharp, however. In particular, a primary care physician who views or participates in consultations for a series of similar patients may in the process learn how to diagnose or manage a clinical problem without consultation in most subsequent cases. (To the extent that such learning is one explicit objective of the consultation, the label "telementoring" may be applied.) Moreover, nonclinical uses of telemedicine for administrative or educational purposes may contribute to the effectiveness of clinical applications by encouraging greater familiarity and acceptance of sophisticated telecommunications technologies and by spreading certain capital and operating costs over a larger base.

Categories and Examples of Telemedicine Applications.

Third, geographic separation or distance between the participants is a defining characteristic of telemedicine. (The term distance medicine is sometimes used as a synonym for telemedicine.) Although many of the technologies employed in telemedicine (e.g., computers) are also used when distance is not an obvious issue (e.g., within a radiology department), telemedicine came into being to overcome problems arising from geographic separation between people who need health care and those who could provide or support an important element of that care.

Classifying Clinical Applications of Telemedicine

As noted above, clinical applications of telemedicine involve care for particular individuals, although any given transaction may also serve educational, administrative, or research purposes. In a report that considered telemedicine in the context of provider payment policies, Grigsby et al. (1994a) proposed a broad classification scheme for these applications (see also PPRC, 1995 ). 5 The committee slightly revised this classification by aggregating similar applications to produce six general categories:

• initial urgent evaluation of patients for triage, stabilization, and transfer decisions;
• supervision of primary care by nonphysician providers when a physician is not available locally;
• one-time or continuing provision of specialty care when a specialist is not available locally;
• consultation, including second opinions;
• monitoring and tracking of patient status as part of follow-up care or management of chronic problems; and
• use of remote information and decision analysis resources to support or guide care for specific patients.

This classification scheme includes a mix of several different dimensions related to the clinical problem, the process of care, and the kind of clinical information involved in a particular clinical application of telemedicine. Each of these dimensions, in turn, involves several possible subdimensions, as depicted in Table 1.2 .

Dimensions, Subdimensions, and Examples of Patient Care Relevant to Telemedicine Applications.

In this report, the site that organizes and provides telemedicine services is called the central or consulting site and the site at which the patient is located or from which patient data are initially sent is called the remote, satellite, or distant site. Those at the central site are often specialist physicians but they may also be primary care physicians, nurse practitioners, psychologists, nutritionists, and other personnel.

Evaluation is a broad term applied to a variety of methods and strategies for identifying the effects and assessing the value, feasibility, or other qualities of a technology, program, or policy. In developing an evaluation framework , the committee construed its task as delineating the basic concepts of evaluation and relating them to the particular issues raised by telemedicine.

Evaluations may compare particular clinical interventions (e.g., psychotherapy versus drug treatment for mental disorders) or the programs or systems organized to provide health care services (e.g., inpatient versus outpatient mental health care). Evaluations may focus on processes or outcomes or both. The outcomes of interest may be relatively restricted (e.g., safety but not effectiveness or costs) or a wide range of outcomes may be examined. Evaluations of efficacy such as randomized clinical trials test interventions under strictly controlled conditions to minimize the impact of "extraneous" variables, whereas evaluations of effectiveness attempt to test interventions under ordinary conditions and to identify how such extraneous variables affect results ( Brook and Lohr, 1985 ).

For purposes of this report, an evaluation criterion is a measure, indicator, standard, or similar basis for describing outcomes or making judgments. Examples of criteria in common use in evaluations include mortality, hospital length of stay, and patient satisfaction. The committee focused on the set of basic concerns about the quality, accessibility, and cost of health care that lie at the core of most health services research and technology assessments. Because a comprehensive presentation of specific criteria appropriate for the heterogeneity of telemedicine applications was beyond the committee's resources, this report sets forth criteria in the form of questions with examples of the kinds of measures or standards that would be applied to particular telemedicine applications.

Drawing from a widely cited 1990 IOM report, the committee agreed that quality of care is "the degree to which health care services for individuals and populations increase the likelihood of desired health outcomes and are consistent with current professional knowledge" ( IOM 1990c , p. 21). Consistent with the concepts set forth in a 1993 report ( IOM, 1993a ), the committee defined access as the timely receipt of appropriate health care. Costs measure the value of resources expended for an activity or objective. They are generally measured in dollars but are sometimes expressed in other units (e.g., travel time, days lost from work, treatment delays) without monetary conversion. These concepts and related evaluation topics (e.g., cost-effectiveness) are discussed further in later chapters of this report.

Although many telemedicine evaluations will focus on individual patient care, the growth of managed care and the debate over allocating resources for health care will direct more evaluations toward populations, including but not limited to those enrolled in managed care plans. Analyses may compare the costs, benefits, and risks of alternative services for an entire population or may concentrate on outcomes for the least healthy or most vulnerable groups in a population (e.g., elderly individuals, teenage mothers). For example, a telemedicine application might target a high-risk group to test whether telemonitoring, on-line information services, and early intervention could reduce total medical costs compared to conventional care.

• Structure Of The Report

This chapter has described the origins of this project and presented principles and definitions on which the remaining chapters build. The rest of this report provides a broad context and framework for evaluations that would expand information for decisionmakers considering telemedicine.

The next four chapters provide context. Chapter 2 reviews the evolution of telemedicine and illustrates the range of current applications. Chapter 3 considers the technical and human infrastructure of telemedicine, and Chapter 4 discusses policy issues with an emphasis on professional licensure, malpractice, medical privacy, payment for services, and telecommunications law. Chapter 5 reviews telemedicine evaluation frameworks and selected evaluation projects identified by the committee. As noted earlier, the focus is on programs in the United States.

The committee sets forth basic principles of evaluation and proposes elements for telemedicine evaluation in Chapter 6 . Chapter 7 is organized around the quality, access, and cost outcomes but also considers patient and provider acceptance of telemedicine. The report concludes in Chapter 8 with the committee's findings and recommendations.

One theme runs through this report. Although telemedicine involves a large and quite varied assortment of clinical practices, devices, and organizational arrangements, its applications should be subject conceptually to the same evaluation principles as apply (or should apply) to other technologies in health care.

The committee drew on a variety of studies that elaborate on many of the listed points. They include IOM reports on health services research (1979 (1995a), computer-based patient records (1991), technology assessment and effectiveness research (1985 (1990a), clinical research (1990b, 1994a), health data systems (1994b), quality assessment and improvement (1989 (1990c), and clinical practice guidelines (1992b). Other agencies have likewise produced important reports on these topics (see, e.g., Shortell and Reinhardt, 1992 ; OTA, 1986a , 1994 , 1995 ; PPRC, 1989, 1995 ).

Staff created an inventory of telemedicine projects and evaluations, but the committee concluded that the documentation of completed and ongoing projects was so uneven that the inventory, although useful for the committee, should not be published with the report. In addition, various government agencies were moving through surveys and other means to develop inventories and make them available electronically ( Puskin et al., 1995 ).

The definitions consulted by the committee included these:

"the investigation, monitoring and management of patients, and the education of patients and staff using systems which allow ready access to expert advice, no matter where the patient is located" ( Van Goord and Christensen, 1992 , cited in Gott, 1995 , p. 10).

"the use of telecommunications techniques at remote sites for the purpose of enhancing diagnoses, expediting research, and improving treatment of illnesses" ( Weis, 1993 , p. 151). "the practice of health care delivery, diagnosis, consultation, treatment, transfer of medical data, and education using … audio, visual, and data communications" ( Kansas Telemedicine Policy Group, 1993 , p. 1.6).

"the use of telecommunications technology as a medium for providing health care services for persons that are at some distance from the provider" ( Grigsby et al., 1993 , p. 1.3).

"the use of two-way, interactive telecommunications video systems to examine patients from remote locations, to facilitate medical consultations, and to train health care professionals" ( Council on Competitiveness, 1994 , p. 6).

"the use of telecommunications technologies to provide medical information and services" ( Perednia and Allen, 1995 , p. 483).

"an integrated system of health care [sic] delivery and education that employs telecommunications and computer technology as a substitute for face-to-face contact between provider and client" ( Bashshur, 1995 , p. 19).

"the use of information technology to deliver medical services and information from one location to another" ( OTA, 1995 , p. 224).

"an infrastructure for furnishing an array of individual services that are performed using telecommunications technologies" ( PPRC, 1995 , p. 135).

"telemedicine encompasses all of the health care, education, information and administrative services that can be transmitted over distances by telecommunications technologies" ( Lipson and Henderson, 1995 , p. I-1-4).

"the use of modern telecommunications and information technologies for the provision of clinical care to individuals at a distance and the transmission of information to provide that care" ( Puskin, et al., 1995 , p. 394).

Derivative terms include: teleconferencing, teleconsultation, telementoring, telepresence, and telemonitoring as well as terms related to specific clinical fields such as teleradiology, teledermatology, and telepsychiatry. The first five terms are defined in the glossary ( Appendix B ).

The nine categories in this classification covered: (1) initial urgent evaluation of patients; triage decisions; pretransfer arrangements; (2) medical and surgical follow-up, including medication checks; (3) supervision and consultation for primary care encounters in sites where a physician is not available; (4) routine consultations and second opinions based on history, physical exam findings, and available test data; (5) transmission of diagnostic images; (6) extended diagnostic workups or short-term management of self-limited conditions; (7) management of chronic disease and conditions requiring a specialist not available locally; (8) transmission of medical data; and (9) public health, preventive medicine, and patient education.

• Cite this Page Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Evaluating Clinical Applications of Telemedicine; Field MJ, editor. Telemedicine: A Guide to Assessing Telecommunications in Health Care. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 1996. 1, Introduction and Background.
• PDF version of this title (2.0M)
• Disable Glossary Links

In this Page

Other titles in this collection.

• The National Academies Collection: Reports funded by National Institutes of Health

Recent Activity

• Introduction and Background - Telemedicine Introduction and Background - Telemedicine

Your browsing activity is empty.

Activity recording is turned off.

Turn recording back on

Connect with NLM

National Library of Medicine 8600 Rockville Pike Bethesda, MD 20894

Web Policies FOIA HHS Vulnerability Disclosure

Help Accessibility Careers

What is an EV?

Electric avenues:  if you’re driving a car that needs to be fueled up, chances are your vehicle runs on an internal-combustion engine (ICE), powered by gasoline or diesel fuel. Electric vehicles (EVs) have a battery instead of a gasoline tank and an electric motor instead of an ICE.

But not all EVs are created equal. There are several types of EVs, all powered a little differently:

• Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) are powered by rechargeable electric batteries. BEVs produce no tailpipe emissions and have no combustion engine.
• Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) are powered by an electric motor as well as a small combustion engine . They have an all-electric range from 20 to 60 miles and can be charged at a charging station.
• Hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) have an internal-combustion engine and an electric motor that assists only at low speeds. The battery is charged either by the combustion engine or through recuperation when braking.
• Fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) use electric motors. The electricity is generated in fuel cells  and can be stored in a small buffer battery. Fuel cell vehicles require hydrogen (compressed into tanks) as fuel.

The automotive future is electric—McKinsey projects that worldwide demand for EVs  will grow sixfold from 2021 through 2030. Annual unit sales would go from 6.5 million to roughly 40 million over that period. In recent years, the COVID-19 crisis and the war in Ukraine have accelerated the momentum of sustainable mobility. Understanding EVs and e-mobility  can illustrate how these vehicles are transforming the industry and helping to decarbonize the planet.

Learn more about McKinsey’s Automotive and Assembly Practice .

Are there other EVs aside from cars?

The popularity of electric bikes and scooters , driven by their affordability and ease of access, represents a new chapter in micromobility .

On the opposite end of the EV spectrum are e-trucks . Demand for them is booming in response to a regulatory push to reduce emissions in the logistics and transport sectors . EU regulations now require new trucks to reduce carbon emissions 30 percent by 2030. California’s recent Advanced Clean Truck regulation requires manufacturers of commercial vehicles to start selling e-trucks in 2024 and restricts all sales of new trucks to electric models by 2045.

Today, e-trucks are becoming more economical for manufacturers to produce and for consumers to purchase and own. As a result of improvements in electric powertrain technology and declining battery costs, McKinsey predicts that within the next few years, the total cost of ownership  for many e-trucks, depending on the specific use case, will be similar to or better than that of traditional ICE trucks. Toward the end of this decade, we expect that fuel cell electric trucks, powered by hydrogen, will also penetrate the commercial-vehicle industry, especially in heavy-duty applications and long-haul use cases, where pure battery electric powertrains might have limitations given battery size and weight.

And in the broader world of mobility, electric aircraft  are also on the horizon. Electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft could be flying above cities as soon as 2030 . The global electric-aircraft market is estimated to reach $17.8 billion by the year 2028, according to a recent report . Funding for advanced air mobility, including electric aircraft, exceeded $8 billion  as of March 2021.

What is the range of EVs?

About the mckinsey center for future mobility.

These insights were developed by the McKinsey Center for Future Mobility (MCFM). Since 2011, the MCFM has worked with stakeholders across the mobility ecosystem by providing independent and integrated evidence about possible future-mobility scenarios. With our unique, bottom-up modeling approach, our insights enable an end-to-end analytics journey through the future of mobility—from consumer needs to modal mix across urban and rural areas, sales, value pools, and life cycle sustainability. Contact us , if you are interested in getting full access to our market insights via the McKinsey Mobility Insights Portal.

Range is how far an EV can go before recharging, an important consideration for customers in the market for EVs. That’s because, at present, most EVs can travel only around half the distance of the typical ICE vehicle before recharging—and because charging stations are still few and far between , even in markets that have embraced EVs.

What is fast charging for EVs?

There are two types of chargers:

• Alternating current (AC) slow charging (3–22 kW) provides energy for, on average, 30 miles for an hour of charging. These are found in private homes and in public charging stations. AC is also used in private homes and can be installed easily.
• Direct-current (DC) fast charging (50–300 kW) provides, on average, at least 150 miles for 20 minutes of charging. This type of charging is available only at public charging stations and requires a significant investment to install.

Fast chargers are a considerable expense —as of 2022, the hardware alone for a 300-kW charger costs from $50,000 to $100,000, and installation can be just as pricey. The costs could drop by about 40 percent over the next five to seven years as demand for fast charging increases to reflect the expanding EV customer base. The greatest opportunity in the EV-charging value chain will come from on-the-go charging, which allows drivers to pay a premium to charge within an hour.

Accelerating the rollout of charging infrastructure will be a crucial enabler for EVs to go mainstream. At present, there are about 1.15 million public charging stations in China, around 340,000 in Europe, and roughly 100,000 in the United States. The European Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Masterplan, developed together with industry associations (including ACEA, Eurelectric, and WindsEurope), forecasts that until 2030 approximately 7,000 charging stations must be built every week to sustain the ramp-up of e-mobility.

Governments, utilities, and charging companies need to consider several questions as they build out the charging infrastructure . For instance, where should charging stations be located—bearing in mind accessibility, convenience, and equity ? What charging speed is essential? And what’s the best way to balance profitability and convenience?

How do EVs affect the electric grid?

As the mobility market continues to shift toward EVs, many observers are considering the effects on global energy grids. Generally, electrical capacity will need to expand to support the growing number of EVs on the roads, but analysis suggests that growth in e-mobility will not drive substantial increases in power demand  in the short to medium term.

McKinsey’s research on EVs in Germany —where up to 15 million EVs are expected to be on the roads by 2030—suggests that the majority of charging will take place at single- or multiunit homes, places of work, on highways and at public stations, and at retail destinations such as shopping malls. The greatest opportunities for growth will be at van or truck fleet hubs, which will need to evolve to meet both heavy demand and the need for fast charging.

One solution to mitigate much of the impact of EV customers on electric grids is “ managed charging .” That approach entails a combination of incentives for customers to use off-peak charging times and moves to enable utilities to turn charging on and off for areas or individuals, based on real-time use. Vehicle-to-grid (V2G)  technology can facilitate managed charging.

Introducing McKinsey Explainers : Direct answers to complex questions

How does the rise of evs affect natural resources.

Ecological concerns are central to the shift to EVs—for consumers as well as regulators.

The rise of EVs has direct implications for the supply chain of raw materials. The greater demand for EVs in recent years has meant greater demand for raw materials and EV inputs , including metals and ores such as cobalt, lithium , and nickel. Demand for lithium carbonate, for example, could rise to three million to four million metric tons in 2030, from 500,000 metric tons in 2021. As for nickel, McKinsey predicts a shortage in the middle of this decade. Exploding demand for nickel, as well as its use in several industries (such as steel production), is likely to drive this shortage.

Of course, fewer ICE vehicles in operation means less demand for oil and natural gas.

More broadly, when it comes to sustainability and the mobility industry, much attention is paid to bringing down tailpipe emissions —understandable, since they account for 65 to 80 percent of the emissions automobiles generate. But it’s worth noting that efforts to reduce material emissions will be crucial, over time, to realizing the potential of the zero-carbon car . Mobility’s longer-term net-zero transition  entails both opportunities and risks, and coordinated responses from the public and private sectors can help ease the shift.

Is the automotive future electric?

Simply put, yes. Mainstream EVs will transform the automotive industry  and help decarbonize the planet. There is essentially no other solution to decarbonize passenger transport. Hydrogen will probably not play a significant role in passenger mobility as EV-charging speeds and ranges increase and green hydrogen remains too expensive for the average private BEV owner. Other options have different limitations: synthetic fuels are too expensive, biofuels are not abundantly available—and both release emissions.

• Regulation. National and municipal governments have introduced new regulations and incentives to accelerate the shift to sustainable mobility. In the United States and Europe, new regulatory targets aim for an EV share of 50-plus percent by 2030. A number of countries, including those in the European Union, have gone well beyond this, announcing accelerated timelines for ICE sales bans in 2030 or 2035. Many national governments are also offering EV subsidies .
• Consumer behavior. People are more accepting than ever of alternative, sustainable mobility options. In 2021, the number of inner-city trips with shared bicycles and e-scooters rose by 60 percent year over year. Interest in EVs reflects this consumer shift: more than 45 percent of car customers in 2021  considered buying an EV.
• Technology. Automotive-industry players are accelerating the development of new concepts of mobility, including electric, connected, autonomous, and shared vehicles . These technology innovations will help reduce the cost of EVs and make electric shared mobility a real alternative to owning a car.

Are EVs profitable? How can companies boost the profitability of EVs?

EV profitability remains at best slightly above breakeven for current models, although three-quarters of EVs analyzed show negative profit margins. This is mainly the result of high battery costs and expensive R&D efforts over still relatively low volumes.

But the market share for EVs is rising. McKinsey’s analysis forecasts that if this continues, the average EV profit level will gradually improve  thanks to cost reductions and economies of scale. Already, Tesla posted a 32 percent gross margin in Q1 2022 .

For now, companies have ways to boost the profitability of EVs. These include incremental measures  to spread industry best practices (such as direct-to-customer sales  or design-to-value  processes) to optimize costs. Automakers can also make more radical adjustments  to their business models—for instance, by incorporating EV/battery-as-a-service offerings.

Reducing battery costs (despite increasing raw-material costs) through economies of scale, innovations in battery technology, and a better charging infrastructure (to avoid always-increasing range requirements) will help improve the cost position of electric vehicles.

How are chip shortages affecting the EV market?

A shortage of semiconductors , also known as chips, is affecting the vehicle market—electric and otherwise. The shortage is the result of a complicated confluence of events, including struggles during the COVID-19 pandemic, a lack of new capacity, geopolitical tensions, limited stock, and contract terms unique to the auto industry. The scarcity lowers car production and is responsible for billions of dollars of lost revenue.

Given the shortage and resulting losses, automotive EV-component manufacturers  will need to rethink how and when they order semiconductors to meet the growing demand for EVs.

How can ICE businesses stay competitive?

The last hundred years are known in the automotive industry as the ICE Age, when vehicles with internal-combustion engines dominated the roads and skies. While most vehicles on the road are still powered by ICEs today, EVs are slowly replacing ICE vehicles, especially in the European Union, China, and the United States. However, emerging markets will still use ICE vehicles into the 2040s, and aftermarket components will still be used through the 2050s and beyond.

To stay competitive, ICE suppliers need to explore ways to navigate the energy transition—and revisit their portfolios —as electric mobility continues to grow.

What is the Electric Vehicle Index?

McKinsey’s Electric Vehicle Index (EVI)  tracks the dynamic e-mobility market in 15 countries, focusing on BEVs and PHEVs. It emphasizes two key factors:

• Market demand, by analyzing the share of EVs in the overall market and the factors fueling the growth and adoption of EVs in each country. These factors include incentives (such as subsidies), existing infrastructure, and the range of available EVs.
• Industry supply, by examining how many of a country’s manufacturers are producing EVs and EV components, such as e-motors and batteries.

The EVI then assesses the key performance indicators in each country’s EV market and plots them on a scale from 0 to 5 for both supply and demand factors. The resulting analysis  offers interesting insights on the regional dynamics and emerging trends of EVs.

For a more in-depth exploration of these topics, see insights from the McKinsey Center for Future Mobility .

Learn more about the McKinsey Center for Future Mobility  and our Automotive & Assembly Practice , and check out automotive and mobility-related job opportunities if you’re interested in working at McKinsey.

Articles referenced:

• “ Can the automotive industry scale fast enough? ,” May 12, 2022, Russell Hensley , Kevin Laczkowski , Timo Möller , and Dennis Schwedhelm
• “ ICE businesses: Navigating the energy-transition trend within mobility ,” March 14, 2022, Will Han, Asad Husain , Srikant Inampudi , Brian Loh, Yogesh Malik , and Samuel Stone
• “ Electrifying the bottom line: How OEMs can boost EV profitability ,” November 11, 2021, Thomas Gersdorf, Andreas Haunreiter, Russell Hensley , Patrick Hertzke , Ruth Heuss , Stefan Pöhler, Patrick Schaufuss, and Andreas Tschiesner
• “ Why the automotive future is electric ,” September 7, 2021, Julian Conzade, Andreas Cornet , Patrick Hertzke , Russell Hensley , Ruth Heuss , Timo Möller , Patrick Schaufuss, Stephanie Schenk, Andreas Tschiesner , and Karsten von Laufenberg
• “ Building better batteries: Insights on chemistry and design from China ,” April 22, 2021, Nicolò Campagnol, Mauro Erriquez, Dennis Schwedhelm , Jingbo Wu, and Ting Wu

Want to know more about EVs?

Related articles.

Can the automotive industry scale fast enough?

ICE businesses: Navigating the energy-transition trend within mobility

Why the automotive future is electric

An official website of the United States Government

• Kreyòl ayisyen
• Search Toggle search Search Include Historical Content - Any - No Include Historical Content - Any - No Search
• Menu Toggle menu
• INFORMATION FOR…
• Individuals
• Business & Self Employed
• Charities and Nonprofits
• International Taxpayers
• Federal State and Local Governments
• Indian Tribal Governments
• Tax Exempt Bonds
• FILING FOR INDIVIDUALS
• How to File
• When to File
• Where to File
• Update Your Information
• Get Your Tax Record
• Apply for an Employer ID Number (EIN)
• Check Your Amended Return Status
• Get an Identity Protection PIN (IP PIN)
• File Your Taxes for Free
• Bank Account (Direct Pay)
• Payment Plan (Installment Agreement)
• Electronic Federal Tax Payment System (EFTPS)
• Your Online Account
• Tax Withholding Estimator
• Estimated Taxes
• Where's My Refund
• What to Expect
• Direct Deposit
• Reduced Refunds
• Amend Return

Credits & Deductions

• INFORMATION FOR...
• Businesses & Self-Employed
• Earned Income Credit (EITC)
• Child Tax Credit
• Clean Energy and Vehicle Credits
• Standard Deduction
• Retirement Plans

Forms & Instructions

• POPULAR FORMS & INSTRUCTIONS
• Form 1040 Instructions
• Form 4506-T
• POPULAR FOR TAX PROS
• Form 1040-X
• Circular 230

What taxpayers need to know about digital asset reporting and tax requirements

More in news.

• Topics in the News
• News Releases
• Multimedia Center
• Tax Relief in Disaster Situations
• Inflation Reduction Act
• Taxpayer First Act
• Tax Scams/Consumer Alerts
• The Tax Gap
• Fact Sheets
• IRS Tax Tips
• e-News Subscriptions
• IRS Guidance
• Media Contacts
• IRS Statements and Announcements

IRS Tax Tip 2024-21, March 26, 2024

Taxpayers filing 2023 tax returns must check a box indicating whether they received digital assets as a reward, award or payment for property or services or disposed of any digital asset that was held as a capital asset through a sale, exchange or transfer.

A digital asset is a digital representation of value that is recorded on a cryptographically secured, distributed ledger or any similar technology. Common digital assets include virtual currency and cryptocurrency, stablecoins and non-fungible tokens.

Examples of digital assets transactions include:

• Sale of digital assets.
• Receipt of digital assets as payment for goods or services.
• Receipt of new digital assets because of mining and staking activities.
• Receipt of new digital assets because of a hard fork.
• Exchange of digital assets for property, goods or services.
• Exchange or trade of digital assets for another digital asset(s).
• Any other disposition of a financial interest in digital assets.

Reporting digital assets transactions

Taxpayers must report all income related to their digital asset transactions.

• Use Form 8949, Sales and other Dispositions of Capital Assets , to calculate a capital gain or loss and report it on Schedule D (Form 1040), Capital Gains and Losses .
• If the transaction was a gift, file Form 709, United States Gift (and Generation-Skipping Transfer) Tax Return.
• If individuals received any digital assets as compensation for services or disposed of any digital assets they held for sale to customers in a trade or business, they must report the income as they would report other income of the same type. For example, they would report W-2 wages on Form 1040 or 1040-SR, line 1a, or inventory or services on Schedule C.
• If an employee was paid with digital assets, they must report the value of assets received as wages. Similarly, if they worked as an independent contractor and were paid with digital assets, they must report that income on Schedule C (Form 1040), Profit or Loss from Business (Sole Proprietorship) . Schedule C is also used by anyone who sold, exchanged or transferred digital assets to customers in connection with a trade or business.

Subscribe to IRS tax tips

•  Facebook
•  Twitter
•  Linkedin

What is Good Friday? What the holy day means for Christians around the world

Christians around the world observe Good Friday two days before Easter, but what is it, and why do they commemorate the holy day?

The holiday is part of Holy Week, which leads up to Easter Sunday. Palm Sunday kicks off the series of Christian holy days that commemorate the Crucifixion and celebrate Jesus Christ's resurrection.

"Good Friday has been, for centuries now, the heart of the Christian message because it is through the death of Jesus Christ that Christians believe that we have been forgiven of our sins," Daniel Alvarez, an associate teaching professor of religious studies at Florida International University, told USA TODAY.

What is Holy Saturday? What the day before Easter means for Christians around the world

When is Good Friday?

Good Friday is always the Friday before Easter. It's the second-to-last day of Holy Week.

In 2024, Good Friday will fall on March 29.

What is Good Friday?

Good Friday is the day Christ was sacrificed on the cross. According to Britannica , it is a day for "sorrow, penance, and fasting."

"Good Friday is part of something else," Gabriel Radle, an assistant professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame, previously told USA TODAY. "It's its own thing, but it's also part of something bigger."

Are Good Friday and Passover related?

Alvarez says that Good Friday is directly related to the Jewish holiday, Passover.

Passover , or Pesach, is a major Jewish holiday that celebrates the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt.

"The whole Christian idea of atoning for sin, that Jesus is our atonement, is strictly derived from the Jewish Passover tradition," said Alvarez.

How is that possible?

According to the professor, Passover celebrates the day the "Angel of Death" passed over the homes of Israelites who were enslaved by the Egyptians. He said that the Bible states when the exodus happened, families were told to paint their doors with lamb's blood so that God would spare the lives of their firstborn sons.

Alvarez says this is why Christians call Jesus the "lamb of God." He adds that the symbolism of the "blood of the lamb" ties the two stories together and is why Christians believe God sacrificed his firstborn son. Because, through his blood, humanity is protected from the "wrath of a righteous God that cannot tolerate sin."

He adds that the stories of the exodus and the Crucifixion not only further tie the stories together but also emphasize just how powerful the sacrifice of the firstborn and the shedding of blood are in religion.

"Jesus is the firstborn, so the whole idea of the death of the firstborn is crucial," said Alvarez.

He adds that the sacrifice of the firstborn, specifically a firstborn son, comes from an ancient and "primitive" idea that the sacrifice unleashes "tremendous power that is able to fend off any kind of force, including the wrath of God."

Why Is Good Friday so somber?

Alavarez says people might think this holiday is more depressing or sad than others because of how Catholics commemorate the Crucifixion.

"I think [it's] to a level that some people might think is morbid," said Alvarez.

He said Catholics not only meditate on Jesus' death, but primarily focus on the suffering he faced in the events that led up to his Crucifixion. That's what makes it such a mournful day for people.

But, the professor says that Jesus' suffering in crucial to Christianity as a whole.

"The suffering of Christ is central to the four Gospels," said Alvarez. "Everything else is incidental."

According to the professor, statues that use blood to emphasize the way Jesus and Catholic saints suffered is very common in Spanish and Hispanic Countries, but not as prevalent in American churches.

Do you fast on Good Friday?

Father Dustin Dought, the executive director of the Secretariat of Divine Worship of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, previously told USA TODAY that Good Friday and Ash Wednesday are the two days in the year that Roman Catholics are obliged to fast.

"This practice is a way of emptying ourselves so that we can be filled with God," said Dought.

What do you eat on Good Friday?

Many Catholics do not eat meat on any Friday during Lent. Anything with flesh is off-limits. Dought says this practice is to honor the way Jesus sacrificed his flesh on Good Friday.

Meat that is off limits includes:

Instead, many Catholics will eat fish. According to the Marine Stewardship Council , this is allowed because fish is considered to be a different type of flesh.

Contributing: Jordan Mendoza ; USA TODAY