Kate Ebbott & Daniel Manning
Storyboarding and presentation building
A process for creating high quality presentations with any AI tool that supports generating slides (e.g. Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini)
How to use an AI assistant to storyboard a presentation idea and generate a draft PowerPoint file based on your content and a template
Link to the document used in the tutorial.
This process demonstrates how to use a generative AI assistant to turn a presentation concept, raw notes, or existing text (like a blog post) into a structured storyboard and then a draft slide deck. The primary benefit is saving time on the manual tasks of structuring content and creating slides, allowing you to focus on refining the core narrative and visuals. This approach is a starting point; the AI-generated output is not a finished product and requires human review, editing, and refinement to ensure accuracy and quality.
02:40Start a chat and provide your presentation concept. In a new chat, describe your presentation's topic, goal, and intended audience. Include any brainstormed ideas, raw notes, or a 'word vomit' of what you want to cover. This gives the AI the core material to work with.02:48Ask the AI to create a storyboard. Prompt the AI to structure your ideas into a storyboard. For example:Could you storyboard this idea for a small presentation where...The AI will break your content down into a logical sequence of scenes or slides.05:09Review and iterate on the storyboard. Read the AI's proposed storyboard. Provide feedback in the chat to refine the flow, content, and structure. Continue this conversational process until you are satisfied with the narrative arc.05:36Provide a template and ask the AI to generate the presentation. Upload a PowerPoint (.pptx) file to serve as a visual template. Prompt the AI to generate the slides based on the finalized storyboard and the provided template. For example:Yep, draft the slides. Here's a set of slides with some templates I've used in the past. Use them as the theme and template.06:04Review the generated presentation and provide visual feedback. Download and open the generated.pptxfile. Review the visual design, layout, and hierarchy. In the same chat, provide specific feedback for visual changes, such asMake all headers smaller.06:27Download the final, revised presentation. The AI will generate a new version of the presentation file based on your feedback. Download this file to continue editing manually in your presentation software.07:23Optional: Create a master prompt for future use. To save time on future projects, ask the AI to create a reusable prompt that includes all your established conventions, such as brand colours, font choices, and layout preferences. You can paste this master prompt at the start of new conversations to ensure consistency.
Tool | The presenter uses Claude, but notes that other tools like ChatGPT or Gemini can perform similar tasks. |
|---|---|
Access | The free tiers of most major AI assistants should be sufficient for this task. |
Key Process | The workflow prioritises iterating on a text-based storyboard before generating the visual slides. |
Example Prompt | The presenter initiated the process with the prompt: "Could you storyboard this idea for a small presentation where I want my students to understand the intuition, then apply it in an activity (activity being the final slide). Heres my brainstorm: Demystifying programming and code: data representations and state..." |
Input Formats | You can provide raw text ideas, a link to a blog post, or upload a |
Output Format | The AI assistant can generate and export a PowerPoint ( |
Related skills
- Brainstorm ideas and generate drafts — This activity's core is using AI to brainstorm a presentation's structure (the storyboard) and then generate a first draft of the slides.
- Refine and iterate prompts — The presenter demonstrates a multi-turn conversation, providing specific feedback to refine both the storyboard and the final visual output.
- Create multimodal outputs — The process transforms text-based concepts and raw notes into a structured, visual presentation file (.pptx).
- Apply human judgement to validate AI outputs — The presenter repeatedly reviews the AI's storyboard and generated slides, providing corrections and feedback to improve the quality of the final product.