lhh666-6 Project Deck Skill
Create beautiful presentation decks to communicate project status to your future self and collaborators.
Purpose
Based on Scott Cunningham's Part 7: "Making Beautiful Decks For My Future Self" - using decks not for public speaking but to efficiently communicate work status across time and to coauthors.
The Philosophy
"I use decks to help me keep track of the work I was doing so that I can communicate it to my coauthors and myself later in the week when we meet to go over our projects."
Codex has absorbed the "rhetoric of decks" - the tacit knowledge about what makes presentations effective:
- One idea per slide
- Titles are assertions, not labels
- Lead with conclusions
- Visual hierarchy signals importance
- Repeat for retention
- Transition explicitly
When to Use
- Before a supervisor meeting
- At the end of a research sprint
- When handing off to a coauthor
- When returning to a dormant project
- Weekly project status updates
Workflow
- Read project context - Progress logs, current focus, recent work
- Design deck structure:
- Research question
- What's been done (with figures/tables)
- Key findings so far
- Current blockers
- Next steps
- Create beautiful output - Clean design, good typography, optimal cognitive density
- Include visuals - Figures, tables, diagrams that capture the work
Deck Rhetoric Principles
## Principles for Effective Decks
1. **One idea per slide** - Don't overload
2. **Titles are assertions** - "Distance increases abortion rates" not "Results"
3. **Lead with conclusions** - Don't bury the lede
4. **Visual hierarchy** - Most important things stand out
5. **Optimal cognitive density** - Smooth delivery, not overloaded
6. **Beautiful figures and tables** - Data visualisation matters
7. **Explicit transitions** - Guide the reader through the narrative
Extended Rhetoric Principles
For Research Decks
- Motivation slides: Why should anyone care? What's the gap?
- Methods slides: Identification strategy in plain English, visualize variation
- Results slides: Lead with main coefficient, visualize where possible
- Figures: Clear titles, labeled axes, no chartjunk
For "Decks as Thinking Tools"
When making decks for yourself/coauthors:
- Document decisions — Why did we choose this approach?
- Visualize data — Patterns you've discovered
- Track progress — What's done, what's next
- Summarize code — What scripts do what
- Capture context — So future-you remembers
Beamer Tips
- Custom themes > recognizable templates
- Metropolis or Madrid themes as starting points
- Sans-serif fonts for readability
- Generous margins and whitespace
- Compile without warnings (fix overfull hboxes)
Example Prompt
"Create a project deck for my Indifference Adjustments paper. Read my progress logs and the current state of the project, then make a 10-slide deck that I can use in my supervisor meeting next week. Include the key figures and a clear 'what's next' section."