Presentation Tips

Are you familiar with a saying ‘A picture paints a thousand words.’?

People are more reactive to what they see with their eyes than what they listen and hear with their ears.

 

 

According to a research done at Wharton Business School, audiences remember only 20% of what they heard, 40% of what they heard and saw, and 80% of what they heard, saw and experienced.
 
Even though a presenter with great speech skills say thousands of words, s/he can’t win over a well organized, simple and impact ‘picture’.
Also, remember that a thousand of words contains ‘a presentation slide with full of texts’.
 

A picture paints a thousand words!

 

For example, let’s say that a presenter introduces about ‘New Robot Technology’.
 
It’s a difficult area of industry for general people, and the presentation slides are filled with various science technology languages about cutting edge robots.
 
In this case, can audiences understand the new concept robots with a variety of advanced science technologies? This is when ‘a picture’ is desperately needed more than ‘a thousand of words’.
 

 

Not a slide with full of complicated and difficult texts, but a robot image will arouse audiences’ curiosity; ‘so, what’s so great about that interesting looking robot? what does it do?’.
 

We can find an example of the effects of presentation ‘visual materials’ in our daily life.

 

Think about news articles on politics, economy, society, entertainment and etc. that we see every day. when reading a news article, people tend to read the title first and look for images right after.
However, if the article has no images, we have to read the entire texts and interpret the important contents.
 

‘Weather forecast’ is another great example. People would prefer an weather forecast with maps and images, not text-based newspaper articles. complicated and difficult contents must be visualized to deliver the messages more effectively and faster.
 

 

# Then, ‘how do we select ‘a presentation slide’ that will replace a thousand of words’?

 

Let’s find out which slide will be prepared as ‘visual materials’. and what to consider before preparing the ‘visual materials’.

 

[ Criterion of slides to be turned into ‘visual materials’. ]

❶ Slides with complicated messages

❷ Slides including Key Messages

❸ Slides with contents on values, comparison, future, change and etc.

 

[ Things to consider before preparing ‘visual materials’ ]

❶ Knowledge level of audiences on the topic

❷ The distance from the screen at the site

❸ The age of audiences presentation time

 

For slides with complicated messages, it’s good to change texts into image, photos, charts, figures, diagrams and etc.
This will eliminate the needs to interpret the complicated contents on slides for audiences.

(Do not forget the ‘one slide, one message’ principle.)

 

Also, if the slide contains the key message of the presentation, it’s good to make the contents simple and clear by creating simple visual materials.
(The more important the message is, the simpler it has to be shown.)
 

Sometime people think that simple presentations are easy to make. but, creating a simple visual material is a lot harder because it has to replace a thousand of words.
(It’s easier to make a mess than to clean up a desk.)

 

Challenge yourself! towards your own persuasive presentation.
from ‘one presentation slide that will replace a thousand of words’!!