| Think of Your Listeners |
- Listening is much more difficult than reading
- "Listeners" listen somewhere between
25%
and 50% of the time
- Information must be taken in "on the fly" with no
backtracking
- Short-term memory holds only 5 to 7 points
- People remember only 10% of what they hear
versus
50% of what they read
- If your audience only listens only part of the time and remembers
only
10% of what they hear, then your "window" of
communication
is around 2.5% to 5.0% of your total presentation time!
Therefore:
Pity your poor listeners!
Do everything you can to help your listeners to listen and
remember.
|
| Design to Help People
Listen |
- Organize - provide structure and framework for the
data you will present
- provide a "jigsaw puzzle boxtop" for listeners
to
organize and reconstruct your verbal message
- list points to be covered and provide a "road
map"
of how you will get there
- Illustrate - help listeners to visualize - convert
data to information
- paint a picture
- tell a story
- make comparisons
- Repeat - improve audience reception of data
- remember that "listeners" listen only 25 to 50% of the
time
- repetition may suggest importance to your audience
|
| Visuals Should... |
- Support your communication objective
- Enhance your verbal message, not detract from it
- Set tone and emotional content of verbal message with the use of
colors
and images
|
| Good Visuals Are... |
- Visible - You have to be able to see it to believe
it
- Visuals should be legible to most distant viewer
- Minimum legibility standards: one inch letter height on
screen
per 30 feet viewing distance
- Data needed for legibility calculation
- Screen width
- Distance from projector to screen
- Lens rating of projector (in inches)
- Distance of most distant viewer from screen
- Typewritten copy will not be visible!
- Enlarge it on copy machine
- Use 18 point type or larger when laying out transparencies on a
computer
- Limit number of words per line
- 3 to 4 per line optimal
- 6 to 7 maximum
- Limit number of lines per visual
- Less than 10 per transparency
- Clear - Instantly recognizable in context to your
verbal message
- Focus on one idea per visual
- Avoid too much primary information
- Use color to focus on key information
- Directly relate to communication objective
- Complement verbal message
- Add impact or tone to message
- Provide overview or "whole picture"
- Simple
- Eliminate extraneous information and clutter
- Visually simplify using design, color, or overlays
|
| Ways of Adding Variety |
- Combine both left and right brain sensory channels
- Left brain: words, sentences, symbols
- Right brain: graphs, charts, symbols, pictures, etc.
- Add color for emphasis, but beware of color connotations
- Use movement with transparency pens, overlays, slide dissolves,
etc.
- Change backgrounds to change pace or introduce new topic
- Change sequence of eye scanning (horizontal, vertical, diagonal)
with
design
|
