Over the past few months, Warren and I have shared some thoughts (and hopefully some useful tips) about presentations, and visualising data.  Today, I'd like to suggest that one of the most valuable tools you'll use in your work isn't something you learned on a course, and isn't an object provided by your employer (if you have one) - it's a camera.

Now, if you're a regular reader, you'll know that both Warren and I feel that improving the quality of your images - whether graphical figures, or illustrative pictures - can have a huge impact on the efficacy of your argument.  But while the internet has revolutionised our ability to access images, I think it's well worth considering pictures you can take yourself.  

We've all seen the stock images of well groomed people in suits, shaking hands in airy, light-filled offices.

But who wouldn't prefer to see the meeting they're actually in?

It's not unusual for me to dig out my camera when I want to use images to illustrate a concept in a presentation.  Here are a couple of examples.

Scenario 1

When working with researchers or analysts, they often find it tricky to step back from the detail of their work, in order for them to decide what the key messages are, and how best to present them.  In order to communicate this message, I decided to use the metaphor of a recipe.  If you wanted to create a tasty dish, it would be a mistake to use all of the ingredients at your disposal.

You need to trust your experience and expertise to pick out the really important stuff.

Thank God, a custard and kiwi-free tomato sauce.

Scenario 2

As Warren has described previously, there is something of a magical (and memorable quality about grouping items in threes.  Setting aside ancient rules of rhetoric, I wanted to use a mnemonic to help people remember that I'd make three points; remembering that there are three points is the first step to remembering what they were, after all.  As conceptual points, I lacked an obviously visual way of communicating them.  So I decided to use an image which focused on the 'three-ness' instead.

You might think that you need a big swanky camera to take pictures good enough to be used in a presentation or report, but in fact the majority of the images I've used are taken on a small digital point-and-click camera.  What's more important is getting reasonable lighting (which is why, in both of my examples, the pictures were taken on my kitchen worksurfaces, where I could add all sorts of lights).  I then used a free image editor (Microsoft Picture Editor, in my case) to crop the images and increase the saturation, or make other changes.  And if you really don't have time to conduct a mini photoshoot, don't forget the power of the cameraphone - if you're out and about, and spot a nice image, perhaps an entertaining contrast or even a 3D exploded pie chart in the wild, you can quickly snap it and put it into your next presentation; after all, when you're taking your own pictures, you can be certain there are no issues with permission to use them!

 

There's a cracking (and lengthy) post by Christopher Fahey and Timothy Meaney building on their talk from this year's SXSW conference: Conversation is the New Attention. There's a lot of good stuff in there, including an inspiring story about a presenter using only his smartphone for speaking notes and wandering amongst the audience as he spoke. While it's worth a read just for that, I want to highlight something towards the end of the piece, which draws on John Medina's fine book Brain Rules.

Fahey and Meaney talk about the problems of keeping your audience's attention in a presentation - at a tech-y conference, people may start to fiddle more with their phones, in a university tutorial a student may simply fall asleep (happened to me last week). In an attempt to avoid this fate, the authors talk about Medina's four characteristics of 'attention':

The lizard brain likes the familiar, and will tend to our 'default setting' whenever possible. Google is great for finding information, but relying on it for our image needs can lead to some pretty ppor results which wil reflect badly on you and your research. So why do we need to unGoogle when searching for snaps?

1. Quality. Search engines will scour the internet for any images they can find which may be related to your enquiry. These will generally have been optimised to fit onto a web page. That is, they will be low resolution 'thumbnail' images specifically designed to be viewed on a small monitor.

When you blow that image up to fit on a Powerpoint slide, you'll find yourself with something blocky and distinctly amateurish which will detract from the information you're presenting.

2. Copyright. Google Image searches will list *any* images it can find. As such, they are likely to contain a lot of copyrighted material which you have no right to lift and use in your presentation. It only takes one email of your slides to an interested audience member and they could easily end up in the public domain, with or without your knowledge. If those slides contain copyrighted images, you could find yourself in hot water.

Even if you vow never to email your slides to anyone, there's no sense in getting in bad habits you'll just have to undo later. Learning how to use images properly gives you the skill you'll need for a publication or big conference presentation.

3. Ditch Google, get Creative. Images under Creative Commons (CC) licence are your friends. There are a variety of licences under the CC umbrella, but as long as you credit the image creator (generally, the photographer) and aren't planning to do any major re-editing of the original, you'll be OK to re-use any images with a CC licence.

Where to find them? Flickr has a huge range of images, many of which are Creative Commons. A good way to search them is through the Compfight search engine. Just click on 'creative commons' in the sidebar, enter your search term and away you go. Clicking an image takes you to its Flickr page:

Check the image licence (1, above) - it's summarised on the page but you can get more details by clicking through. This one says you are free to copy and transmit the work as long as you attribute the creator of the image, don't use it for commercial benefit and agree not to alter it.

Then move up to 'actions' and click on 'view all sizes' (2):

Here's where you get your hands on the image. You need a pretty big one if you're using for a full Powerpoint slide. In this case, choose original (3) as it's the biggest on offer - remember you want it to look good on the 'big screen'. Go large!

Then just download (4) and paste it into your Powerpoint with some text crediting the image. For this image I would suggest: Flickr user 'mobile disco': "I Love Peckham post-its" (there's no real name given for this user, if there is one, use that instead).

Ta-da! You have a high quality, correctly licensed image from the very creative Flickr community, rather than the lo-res, copyrighted fare of Google Images.

Further reading:

11 ways to use your image poorly - classic Presentation Zen post on the best way to use your image in a slide (hint: *fill* the screen).

Easy-peasy guide to crediting images - great flowchart to help you check you're doing it right.

Where can you find good images? - more Presentation Zen goodness, list of alternative sites for good, roylaty-free images.

Last week, I talked about the lizard brain, and the way it tempts you to follow the line of least resistance whenever you encounter a challenge, or try to do something new.  This week, I’d like to suggest one way that you can break out of your normal routine, by reverting to what Warren and I call one of the ‘tools of the trade’ – pen and paper.

It is easy to start a project – presentation, report or figure – by switching on the computer and opening up a familiar piece of software.  The first thing that many people do when preparing a presentation is open up Powerpoint, and click onto those inviting text boxes: title here; bullet points go here.  Copy and paste the slides from the last presentation you gave, tweaking the date and venue on the title page.

We've all been there. Picture from alice_c, flickr creative commons. 

 But when you fall into this pattern, the medium takes over, and it becomes more important than the message you’re trying to get across.  When you find yourself going onto autopilot, it’s a great chance to stop, reflect, and go analogue – get out paper and pens.

Paper allows you the chance to really explore what it is you’re trying to achieve, before you get bogged down in the technicalities of making that happen.  We often ask people on our courses to have a go at drawing a figure which shows data that we’ve given them, with only some coloured pens and A1 paper.  They’re often uncomfortable at sacrificing accuracy, but going analogue provides them with a chance to think through the decision-making process of which data to focus on, and how to present it most effectively.  Those are the key concerns, rather than worrying about how to get the chart wizard to show what you want.

Getting out a pen and paper also stimulates bits of your brain that might otherwise be neglected; research suggests that writing by hand has a powerful impact on the parts of your brain involved with cognitive processing and working memory, and using techniques such as drawing pictures or mindmapping can help you see new connections, highlight priorities and can also suggest new ways of communicating your message. 

Once you start adding in coloured pens and post-it notes, you can really embrace the flexibility and creativity of going analogue.  And we practice what we preach!  Planning for our most recent course (contact us if you’d like to know more, or book us to help your organisation) looked like this:

 Post-it notes naturally bring out everyone’s playful side.  Bring the joy of the analogue into your work!

From the brilliant postitwar.com.

 

Last week I delivered some closing remarks to the (very successful!) ENQUIRE postgraduate conference. Various PhD deadlines, attending conference sessions and err (whisper it) my lizard brain meant that the task of writing the remarks began at 2pm. I was speaking at 4pm, so this definitely falls into the "sub-optimal" class of presentation preparation. I'd picked up a couple of ideas during the conference and was helped out enormously by a friendly tweet, but how to put it all together - intelligibly - in a very short space of time?

A device used by my academic supervisor popped into my head. When asking a class to read a chapter, he always asks them to come back next week with three key points. As well as focusing in on key aspects of the text, it provides a ready-made structure to note taking.

Why three? Well, instinctively it seems a neat number of things to look at. Whether that's because of its mathematical qualities or its prevalence in literature. Jokes often often rest on a ternary rhythm. Essentially, it just feels neater than two or four (five, I would argue, is too many for a presentation).

So I went with three sources for the inspiration mentioned in the friendly tweet:

1. academic peers
2. academic 'heroes' (our plenary speakers)
3. the ENQUIRE journal

This structure makes it much easier for your audience to follow you, as you can simply explain at the beginning what you're going to cover. It also makes it much easier for you, as the speaker, to drop in the vital signposts which help keep your audience engaged. So before talking about academic peers, say something like "the first source of inspiration, our academic peers" then after that section "so that was the first source of inspiration, our academic peers, now for the second: our academic heroes". This seems fairly banal when written on the page, but it makes a huge difference in keeping an audience with you.

After these three points, I attempted to draw it all together, turning the idea of sources of inspiration on its head and suggested something that the audience could be inspired to go and do by all the great stuff they'd seen in the last two days. My suggestion was to go and start a postgraduate journal and/or conference in their own university, as they still seem to be the exception rather than the norm amongst PhD students. Then there was just time to thank the speakers, organisers and finally the attendees, suggesting they finish by giving each other and themselves a big round of applause. Always a safe note to end on...

This is by no means a 'set in stone' template for how to do a presentation - just an example of how we can reach for familiar patterns to structure our talks, especially when prepaation time is tight. While dividing your presentation up into three parts is a handy way of signposting to help your audience, it doesn't follow that they will remember all three of those things once you've finished talking. You might have to set your sights even lower if you want your ideas to stick. But that's for another post...

The concept of your lizard brain is one that Warren has mentioned before, but it was brought home to me, repeatedly and painfully, over the weekend.  Having happily left my stabilisers behind 25 years ago, I spent last weekend in Wales, relearning how to ride a bike. I wanted to get to grips with riding off road, going downhill and over rocks, roots and even jumps. 

I’d love to pretend this is me, but it really isn’t. Photo by Dave Cheeseman.

The mantra of the weekend was ‘brakes are not your friend’; the idea is to reduce your speed when you approach an obstacle, then release the brakes while actually riding over it.  This sounds straightforward, until your lizard brain takes over.  I approached a small step and released my brakes as instructed. The front wheel dropped and the back wheel followed, by which time I was going a bit quick, and my lizard brain leapt in, jamming on my front brakes as hard as I could.  Over the handlebars I went, in what was – apparently – a spectacular yet graceful encounter with the ground. 

The term ‘lizard brain’ was coined by Seth Godin, to describe the resistance we all encounter when we try to do something challenging.  The lizard brain is a remnant from our evolution, and it wants us to make life as easy as possible.  It wants us to be warm, fed, comfortable and preferably not being chased by large predators.  When we’re not in a survival situation, the lizard brain still has an impact, but now the drive is to make life comfortable and to avoid modern difficulties or hazards.  This weekend, the lizard brain kept yanking on my brake levers.  When you’re presenting data, the lizard brain makes you put this year’s numbers into a chart or table that you originally designed last year, or the year before.  After all, nobody complained, so it must have been alright. 

The lizard brain suggests that you stick to using slides you’ve prepared from previous presentations.  It makes you revert to using bullet points and complex diagrams that take ages to explain.  And the lizard brain always says that, because your colleagues think it’s OK to take an hour to prepare for a 30 minute presentation, you can only spend that amount of time too. 

We all do it.  We set out with the best intentions: this time, I’m going to redesign this data and make it really shine; this time, I’m going to ride with the brakes off; and the lizard brain pops up.  But if you want to overcome your lizard brain, here are three things that I’ve taken away from my weekend on a bike, and that you could bear in mind when you need to overcome the resistance to visualising your data or preparing your presentation differently.

1.  It’s uncomfortable

Your instinct is to be cautious, to not make yourself a target for criticism, to do what’s universally accepted.  This is, of course, totally sensible.  So when you’re trying to do something new, expect it to feel awkward.

2.  It takes time

Habits, whether working habits, or the habits of a lifetime (so far) of riding a bike, take time to break.  It also takes time to learn new habits.  Try and factor that time in, whether it is blocking off some time in your diary to look at good examples elsewhere, to finding images, or to make sure you put aside as much time as you can to prepare a presentation.

3.  It brings its own rewards

Yes, it feels awkward, or difficult to justify to colleagues.  Yes, it doesn’t come naturally, especially when you’re changing long-standing habits.  But yes, it does feel good when you’re able to fight back and overcome your lizard brain.  Not just achieving whatever it was you wanted to do: design a new approach to communicating numbers; give an excellent presentation; get that funding; but also knowing that you’ve had to consciously decide to do things differently.

 

Over the last couple of weeks we've concentrated on data visualisation, emphasising the importance of clear, unfussy methods which don't obscure the story of the data. A good figure can be very powerful, but may not be enough on its own to convey a message. In particular, if you are giving a presentation in person, I suggest that projecting a succession of figures onto a screen - no matter how well put together they are - is not the best way to get your point across.

Memorable images are key in giving a good presentation - even if you have 10 killer figures that you'd like to present to your audience, run through them all on Powerpoint and their power will quickly wither away to naught as your audience suffers information overload. They spend so much time squinting at the screen, it really doesn't matter what you're saying as they've stopped listening.

A better idea: select the very best two or three figures which support your argument and mix them up with some visual aids which, while not carrying the same intellectual weight as your carefully compiled data, are just as important in making sure your ideas stick in the mind of your audience.

Let's say you're giving a presentation on those accused of offences during the recent English riots. It would be very easy to put together a series of figures cutting the data in various ways, as the Guardian have done here. Without commenting on the attributes of these particular figures, showing too many of them in a presentation risks diluting their power through loss of context.

There is an argument that sticking to plain figures serve a purpose in taking the political heat out of an issue, and refocusing on the evidence. There is some truth in that, but I would argue that researchers often go too far the other way and forget that after looking at umpteen tables and figures, it's all too easy to forget what we were talking about in the first place.

The riots are clearly a politically charged issue; images should be chosen with care. They might convey a message of community recovery such as the one above, or could emphasise lawlessness, as with this powerful but more conventional image from Greece in 2008 (mouseover both images for credits):

Garr Reynolds (Presentation Zen author and Thunderfly pin-up) puts it well:

Statistics...are just abstractions. But when we hear the story amplified by compelling photography...the issue becomes concrete.

As long as the image is a good fit with your evidence, then it provides a crucial hook for your audience, reminding them of what the data contained in your carefully crafted figure means in the 'real world'.

Next week, we'll look at how to quickly find high quality images that can be reproduced in your presentation or report. For now, I'd love to hear your views on using images in conjunction with the traditional academic figure. Do you think they help make an argument? Or does using images like those above risk overshadowing the research data?

When you’re thinking about presenting or communicating your information, it helps to begin with an understanding of how humans perceive and understand things.  Warren and I cover this in the courses we run, and we do our best to start from robust and well-researched psychological hypotheses.  A good example of this is the Gestalt theory of perception, which proposes that humans are predisposed to notice patterns (the whole) before noticing its constituent parts.

 

Start from the brain! Photo from Patrick Denker, Flickr Creative Commons

 

So one of the most interesting articles I’ve read about designing presentations comes from a senior psychologist, recently of UCLan, Dr Chris Atherton.  Chris’s blog often has interesting reflections on how her research interests overlap with developments in learning design, and her presentation at the beginning of this year to the Learning Technologies conference draws many of her conclusions together.

 

Chris introduces the notion that memory is intrinsically unreliable, and that if we want our presentations or information to be memorable, we need to help our audience with whatever assistance we can offer. Chris suggests that a schema, that is, a story or rule of thumb, helps us to ‘hang’ information on an existing framework.  This is the concept which underpins those articles suggesting you imagine travelling a familiar route (home to work, for example), ‘hanging’ an item you need to remember at a landmark.  Then when you reimagine that route later (in the supermarket, for example), you think, ah yes! I’m passing Mecca Bingo, that means I need to buy onions.

 

Chris also suggests that memory rapidly becomes overloaded in traditional presentations, as presenters ask their audience to take in large quantities of information from both the presenter themselves speaking, and their slides.  So, her tips are to reduce the amount of information you hope to impart to an audience, and to ‘hang’ it on a schema to help your audience retain it.

 

Chris demonstrated the efficiency of this approach in her experiments in learning design with her own students. She reduced the demands placed on her students by her choice of delivery methods (so, no slides covered with multiple bullet points, tiny writing or difficult to interpret graphs), thereby freeing their cognitive processes to focus on the content of the lectures being delivered by her as presenter.  Her results show conclusively that designing visual aids to complement what she was saying (rather than compete with it for her students’ attention) led to them retaining more information from her lectures.  Happy lecturer, happy students.

 

If you get a chance, do download Chris’s slides from Slideshare; they’re posted with a text commentary as, following her own rules, the slides don’t tell the whole story – the presenter does that.  But in any case, it’s worth remembering: help your audience to remember what you’re trying to get across, by limiting the amount of information you’re trying to communicate, and by providing a memorable approach, such as a story or rule of thumb.

 

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/seth_godin_on_the_tribes_we_lead.html

Here's the video we showed during the day to illustrate presentation techniques.

Interesting guy and subject matter; we got range of responses to the presentation during the event.

Well worth watching.