Skip to content
AI Work
Commons
Try an example
Early preview Nothing here is released yet. Pages marked Garden are drafts that no person has reviewed. How review works

Build a slide story the evidence can support

Garden · not yet reviewed Time: 35 minutes Good for: programme coordinator, team lead, operations staff

You'll end up with: A five-slide decision outline with supported claim titles, checked numbers, visible limitations and a clear question for the audience.

Tools: Any general AI chat assistant. Use the synthetic notes or information you are authorized to share. No connected apps or paid feature is required.

Garden starter · AI-proposed · Synthetic example · Not independently reviewed or model-tested.

Why this matters

A presentation can look finished before its argument is sound. Start with a question somebody needs to answer. Then make each slide earn its place with evidence, a visible limit or a proposed next step.

Smallest useful build

A five-slide outline for a tool-lending desk lead, with one claim title per slide, source IDs, suggested visuals and brief speaker notes. Allow 35 minutes. No presentation software is needed for the first pass. If you later build slides, inspect the exported file separately: a good outline does not prove readable layout.

You own the recommendation and the meaning of the evidence. AI can offer story orders, draft short titles and suggest visuals. The hoped-for gains are clearer work, better judgment, reusable checking skills and less rework; none has been measured here.

Sample inputs

Entirely invented notes, also in the synthetic fixture:

s1 Decision: should the tool-lending desk run a small follow-up trial of a new request checklist? No expansion is approved.
s2 Baseline week: 24 requests; 18 completed within two days.
s3 Pilot week with checklist: 24 requests; 21 completed within two days.
s4 Different volunteers and possibly different request types across the two weeks. No random assignment. No cost or satisfaction data.
s5 Possible next step: one more week, same completion definition, request-type notes, and a volunteer to check counts. Owner not assigned.

Steps

  1. Write your recommendation first. Make it provisional. A reasonable starting point is “consider another small trial, subject to checking the numbers.”

    Help me frame a five-slide presentation for [audience] to decide [question]. My provisional recommendation is [sentence]. Ask about any missing decision or evidence before suggesting a story.

  2. Build the evidence list. Calculate the rates yourself before comparing with AI.

    Using only s1–s5, list the factual claims we can make and the source IDs for each. Show the completion-rate arithmetic with denominators. Separate observed differences, possible explanations and things we do not know. Do not infer causation, savings or approval.

  3. Choose the story, then ask for the outline.

    Draft five slides for this decision. For each give a short claim title, at most two supporting points with source IDs, a simple visual suggestion and one caveat where needed. Label recommendations as proposals. Keep the limits of the comparison visible. No decorative imagery or invented numbers.

  4. Read only the titles, then audit the details. Rewrite any title you cannot defend. Ask for targeted revision instead of accepting a new, unchecked deck.

    These claims need correction: [list]. Revise the affected titles, numbers and speaker notes only. Show which source IDs support each change and whether my recommendation now needs reconsideration.

Authored example to inspect

This is an original reference outline, not a model output or a tested deck:

  1. Decide whether a further checklist trial is worth running. The lead has not approved expansion. [s1] Visual: the decision question in plain text.
  2. The pilot week had a higher observed completion rate. Baseline: 18/24 = 75%. Pilot: 21/24 = 87.5%. Difference: 12.5 percentage points. [s2, s3] Visual: two bars on a 0–100% scale, labelled with both count and denominator.
  3. The comparison does not tell us what caused the difference. Volunteers differed, and request mix may have differed; there was no random assignment. Cost and satisfaction are unknown. [s4] Visual: a short limitations list beside the comparison.
  4. A further small trial could answer a narrower question. Proposal: use the same completion definition and record request types during another week. A count-checking owner is still needed. [s5] Visual: three proposed checks, clearly labelled as a proposal.
  5. Choose the next step and name its owner. Decision ask: approve a bounded follow-up, ask for another design, or pause. These are proposed choices, not decisions already made. [s1, s5] Visual: a short decision list; no invented name or date.

Keep the causal caveat on slide 3, not hidden in a footnote. Keep the denominators visible on slide 2. If the audience cannot read the labels, change the layout rather than removing evidence.

Check it

  • Recalculate 18/24 and 21/24 independently.
  • Use “12.5 percentage points” for the difference; “12.5% improvement” would mean something else.
  • Check that no slide says the checklist caused the difference.
  • Verify that proposed trials and approvals have not been merged into one claim.
  • Read the titles in order. Would a person know the decision, evidence, limitation and next choice?
  • If you create a deck, check contrast, readable labels, chart scales, reading order and overflow in the exported file.

Break it

Replace s3 with:

s6 Corrected pilot log: 30 requests, not 24; 21 completed within two days.

The pilot rate becomes 70%, which is 5 percentage points below the 75% baseline. The success headline must change. The correction still does not prove the checklist caused a fall. Decide whether your proposal changes; do not let AI silently keep the old recommendation.

Reflect

  • Which slide required a decision from you rather than a wording change?
  • Did a visual make a weak comparison look stronger than it was?
  • Could you explain percentage points and the missing causal evidence without the assistant?
  • Did you spend less time revising once the claims were checked first?

Next iteration

Try a new audience or the corrected case before reusing the structure. Save a claim list, not a deck of fixed conclusions. Recheck every imported chart and number if you later turn the outline into slides.

Presentation inspiration: Jeff Su. Link and original summary only; no source templates or assets are included.

Connections

Skills it uses

Concepts it practises

Competencies

How we know

The claim
Presentation work includes revising the argument and checking claims after the first draft.
The evidence
Jeff Su demonstrates a presentation revision workflow in a fictional scenario. This starter uses a different, original synthetic scenario and provider-neutral prompts.
The limits
A practitioner demonstration is not comparative research. No source slides, prompts, screenshots or templates are copied. This Commons workflow has not been model-tested or independently reviewed.

Plain Markdown for agents: /projects/prj-slide-story-from-evidence.md