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Effectively communicating with visual aids made simple.

1 Distributed by Gates Matthew for redistribution without permission of authorSub-chapter to appear in Dues, M., & Stoner, G. M. (in press) "Effective OralPresentations," The Practice of Organizational Communication. New York: communicating with visual aids made Gates Matthew Stoner 2001 The use of presentation software, such as Microsoft s PowerPoint , can enhancea presentation, but a common fallacy is you must use lots of clip art, fancy transitions,and multimedia movies to have a good presentation. However, often the most effectivepresentation is a simple one. visual aids created using presentation software can (1)enhance speaker credibility, (2) focus attention, (3) increase interest, and (4) aidretention. These four benefits are very attractive, however, a presentation overloaded withtoo many elaborate features can serve as powerful distractions and decrease theeffectiveness of a presentation.

Effectively communicating with visual aids made simple. By Gates Matthew Stoner ©2001 The use of presentation software, such as Microsoft’s PowerPoint™, can enhance

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Transcription of Effectively communicating with visual aids made simple.

1 1 Distributed by Gates Matthew for redistribution without permission of authorSub-chapter to appear in Dues, M., & Stoner, G. M. (in press) "Effective OralPresentations," The Practice of Organizational Communication. New York: communicating with visual aids made Gates Matthew Stoner 2001 The use of presentation software, such as Microsoft s PowerPoint , can enhancea presentation, but a common fallacy is you must use lots of clip art, fancy transitions,and multimedia movies to have a good presentation. However, often the most effectivepresentation is a simple one. visual aids created using presentation software can (1)enhance speaker credibility, (2) focus attention, (3) increase interest, and (4) aidretention. These four benefits are very attractive, however, a presentation overloaded withtoo many elaborate features can serve as powerful distractions and decrease theeffectiveness of a presentation.

2 Additionally, poorly prepared visuals aids which are notreadable, relevant to the presentation, and overly complex not only reduce effectivenessbut can have a negative impact on a speakers credibility and the audience s interest inthe presentation. The decisions you make in preparing visual aids for a presentationshould always consider how to best achieve these four benefits while avoiding thetemptation to overwhelm your audience by abusing the special features available inpresentation software you startSeveral important questions to should be asked when preparing a presentation andconsidering using a software package. These questions will guide whether or not youchoose to use a presentation software package and how best to create the visual by Gates Matthew for redistribution without permission of authorFirst, what is your purpose for using visual aids ? Slides created on the computer mightbe overkill for a short 4-minute presentation, while they can Effectively retain the interestof your audience for a longer and complex presentation.

3 You should not choose to haveslides just because everyone else is doing it. The effort might not be worth the troubleand possible distractions can take away from the effectiveness of your message. A recentarticle in the Wall Street Journal reported that Gen. Hugh Shelton, Chairman of the JointChiefs of Staff at the Pentagon, issued an order to skip the bells and whistles inPowerPoint and just get to the point. If your audience is too absorb in reading andprocessing the message of your slides, they are not listening to your message. Hence, youhave lost your audience and achieved the opposite effect you indeed for yourpresentation. Can you achieve your purpose without the visual aids created bypresentation software? If so, the effort and expense might not be worth the trouble whenyour main purpose is to clearly and credibly inform or persuade your audience. Audienceconsiderations are crucial to the decisions you will make when preparing long is your presentationTwo common mistakes when delivering a presentation using visual aids generatedby a software package are to (1) create a slide for every point and (2) rapidly delivermore than one slide per minute.

4 Slides should serve as signposts for your audience andhighlight your main points. Poor slides have too much information and often repeat everyword spoken by the presenter. The slides should guide your audience through yourpresentation and reinforce the main points, thus focusing attention and aiding theretention of your message. To avoid these common mistakes, you should pace the3 Distributed by Gates Matthew for redistribution without permission of authorpresentation to have no more than one slide per minute. A 5-minute presentation shouldhave no more than 5-6 slides or overheads. This rule will help you to avoid thetemptation to have a slide for every point and to read word-for-word from the slides byinstead summarizing the main points for both yourself and the audience. Bullet points canaid you to deliver the presentation in a more extemporaneous delivery style. Too manyslides serve as a distraction as your audience is reading instead of will you be presenting?

5 Slides and visuals aids are really useful for presenting numbers and relationshipsamong numbers with charts. Budgets, cash flow incomes, and survey data can be difficultto convey to an audience. Effective charts and images can provide pictorialrepresentations of abstract concepts to show trends and relationships which otherwisemight not be evident if delivered orally. For example in a marketing presentation, a chartcan be used to show expected sales of a new car as well as a prototype drawing of whatthe car will look like. This example highlights two important roles of charts and imagesin a presentation, (1) convey what words cannot, and (2) reinforce abstract conceptswhile aiding role of the audience will also influence how you will choose the presentmaterial in your presentation. Figures 1 and 2 represent diagrams of the same concept, anintranet office computer network.

6 An engineering audience would quickly recognize thefirst diagram and understand the abstract concepts represented, while a business audiencewould not. The second figure is designed for a more general audience in a way attemptsto make the abstract concept understandable. The use of charts and other images in yourpresentation must recognize the knowledge level of your by Gates Matthew for redistribution without permission of authorFigure Figure the visual Aidn Tailor your visual to the audience and the Prepare visuals that will be easily seen by your Visuals should support, not overwhelm what is being by Gates Matthew for redistribution without permission of authorGood Rules to FollowA rule can serve as effective guide, but also can be a constraint for a rules are suggested below to aid in creating an effective presentation, but likeall rules there are situations in which it is best to ignore the rule.

7 A guiding principal inpreparing visuals aids for a presentation is do they serve your purpose. Thus, violationsto these are completely appropriate if they serve your ColorsColor choice is a very important decision when preparing a presentation since itwill impact your audience s ability to read the slides and too much color can be verydistracting. The limited use of color can focus attention to key terms and concepts. Nomore than 2-3 colors should be used on the same slide and a consistent use of the samecolor scheme will avoiding confusing the audience. Your use of color should serve yourpurpose, thus radically changing your color scheme occasionally can be quite effective,while the over use of various colors can be distracting. The option to change colors mustbe evaluated in terms of the audience as well as environmental factors, such as where youare contrast is light colors on a dark background or vice-versa dark colors on alight colored background.

8 High color contrast aids your audience in reading overheads orelectronically displayed slides. While low color contrast ( light colored text on a lightbackground) can be very difficult to read and even more difficult depending on thelighting of the room. The best approach is to always use high contrast colors, such asyellow or white text on a dark blue background or dark black text on a white background( for overheads). Many presentation software packages provide very pretty templates6 Distributed by Gates Matthew for redistribution without permission of authorto use in your presentations, often these default formats have low color contrast and arenot equipment you will be using for your presentation as well as where youpresent will also influence your choice of color in a presentation. The most optimalenvironment is a dark room with an expensive computer LCD project, often though, youwill present in less than optimal environments with outside light sources and a poorprojection system, perhaps even a standard overhead projector.

9 These two environmentalfactors can also influence how color is projected to a screen, for example you might usered to highlight a word and it will display as orange. As such, you will need to prepareyour presentation for the environment in which you will be presenting. If you areunaware of the environment, your presentation should follow the general rules suggestedof high color contrast and limited use of color since you will not know how they are common to business reports and memos, but often in presentationmargins are ignored as speakers attempt to place too much content on a slide or results in the slides becoming unreadable since the font size is reduced in an attemptto fit all the content. Additionally a practical concern is text in the lower or side marginsmight display off the screen and be unreadable to the audience. One-inch margins for aslide or overhead can help avoid this problem.

10 Television production students learn asimilar rule to create TV safe shots, such that all the important action appears in thecenter of the screen. Various sized television sets cut off the side margins differently, thusto be TV safe is to never shot any action near the sides of the frame. This also7 Distributed by Gates Matthew for redistribution without permission of authorestablishes the center of the screen as the focal point for your audience and aids thespeaker to guide their slide does not need to have every word spoken to the audience and insteadshould summarize 3 to 4 main points. Remember, your bullet points are to serve assignposts for the audience to let them know where you are going in the presentation. Ageneral rule is a slide should have no more than 25-35 word and less can be more. Again, you also do not want your audience reading all the time and too much informationon the screen will result in that outcome.


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