Facts in presentations

In an earlier post, I commented on the way in which Preseident Barac Obama had announced to the world that Osama bin Laden had been killed.  Sticking with that theme for another post (but using as an excuse to crowbar in something completely differnet, to be honest!) it’s worth looking at some other comments about the fallout.

New Scientist, for example, suggests that it’s a good idea not to release pictures of the dead man because of the likelihood that they’ll inflame passion – increasing emotion and decreasing rational thought. In other words, pictures are more effective at persuading people than words.  They site research evidence from legal impact studies.

What does that tell you about whether you should be using images or words in your presentations?

Long time readers will know that I’m in favour of whatever works – as simple as that – so pictures seem to be the way to go in many instances.  Does that mean that I’m advocating a lack of hard data? No. I’m saying that the presentation isn’t necessarily the best place/way to present that data.

For me, the main job of the presentation is to get people sufficiently interested in what you’re talking about to want to read the technical data… which should be in your handouts.  With that in mind, the whole way you design your presentations suddenly changes!

Instead of trying to get information over to your audience, what you’re trying to do is get interest and excitement in your audience… the data should be there, of couse, but doing it in your presentation is simply massively inefficient.  For the life of me I can’t remember where I read this research (sorry!) but there’s a strong body of evidence to suggest that lessons/lectures and presentations are not good ways to use your time if you want people to remember facts and figures. For those of you who went to university, ask yourself how much of any given hour’s lecture you actually remembered – and compare how much of the stuff you knew in your exam you gleaned from books and so on compared to what you learned in lectures.

So have a think about your next presentation: are you trying to tell people things (inefficiently and probably pointlessly) or are you trying to get them interested in things (more effective)?  (If it’s the latter, make sure you follow up, obviously, otherwise you’re just hot air.)