I’m delighted to offer you a guest post this week, by Echo Rivera, an expert on research presentation. She has some terrifically creative ideas and resources to share with you (and me!). My post this week is on Echo’s blog, and is about creativity and ethics in presentation. Here’s what Echo has to say:

I’m so excited to be a guest contributor to Helen’s blog. I’ve learned a lot by reading her posts and love that she is helping folks be more creative in their research methods. I thought this would be a perfect place for me to talk about how to engage your audience beyond the use of your slides, so you can maximize your potential presentation impact. Specifically, I’ll be talking about how to add more creative elements to your presentation package.

1. Ask your audience questions

Ask yourself: during your last presentation, for how many minutes in a row did you talk at people? If your answer is longer than 7-10 minutes, then chances are they disengaged. We humans don’t really like to be talked to for too long because it can be overwhelming for the brain.

I’m sure there are gadgets and apps that are designed to get your audience engaged. Personally, however, I prefer no-tech or low-tech engagement approaches so that the tech doesn’t get in the way.

The easiest way to get your audience interacting with your presentation is to ask them questions every few minutes or so. They don’t even need to respond out loud–you could just ask them to think about their answer or write it down in their notes. It doesn’t add a lot of time to your presentations, and it keeps people interested.

You could also take this to the next step by having them respond in some way. A really effective way of your audience to engage is have then guess an answer before it’s revealed. For example, I’ll (a) pose a question “should you use a default slide template?”, (b) ask them write down their guess on their handout and/or to share their answer (e.g., raising their hands, answering in the chat, shouting out loud), (c) add a dramatic pause, then (d) reveal the answer, “no”. For those who are surprised by the answer, it will now be more memorable. For those who already knew the answer, it will validate and reinforce that knowledge.

2. Use engaging visuals

Okay so this is technically about your slides, so I’m kind of cheating here. But, a lot of the visuals I see in my clients’ or students’ presentations could use an extra boost of creativity.

Let me ask you this: When you need a photo for your slides, how often do you go to Unsplash (because you already know to not use Google Images, right?) and then type in the description of what you’re looking for–with terms like “STEM” or “Surveys” or “Researcher.”

If you’re like most academics, evaluators, or researchers then chances are that’s exactly what you do. And that’s exactly how you end up with Clip Art or really clichéd images that won’t resonate. I’m talking about those puzzle pieces, shaking hands, word clouds, and over-the-top cheesy smiles of business people. Your audience is not going to engage with those types of images.

So, another easy way to add more creativity is to start moving towards more modern, non-cheesy, photos and away from outdated Clip Art. Build up your visual database. Maybe even consider finding creative ways to make your own visuals, like what Ann K. Emery did with play-doh.

3. Create interactive or “gamified” handouts

I mentioned earlier that your handouts should not just be a printout of your slides. Instead, you should be creating custom handouts for your presentations. Don’t worry–it takes less time than you think because it’s very easy to copy slides or your speaker notes and paste them into Word.

When creating your handout, don’t hesitate to be creative! Add fill-in-blank sections so your audience needs to engage with your presentation by taking notes. To reduce anxiety and improve real-time cognitive processing, I often tell them I’ll provide the answer key after the presentation.

If you want to take the next step, then you could “gamifiy” the handout. Turn your presentation material into a crossword puzzle, word matching, or other types of games. This is a great way to formalize what I suggested earlier for asking your audience questions. Imagine if you created a handout where your audience had to guess the answers.

4. Create a data placemat

A data placement is an interactive handout times ten. The purpose is to engage your audience in interpreting and understanding the data, so it works for qualitative and quantitative projects.

“Data placemats display thematically grouped data designed to encourage stakeholder interaction with collected data and to promote the cocreation of meaning under the facilitative guidance of the evaluator.” (Pankaj & Emery, 2016, p. 81)

I encourage you to read the 2016 article by Veena Pankaj and Ann K. Emery which provides a helpful blueprint for how to create one and host a successful data placemat meeting. Then, be sure to check out this PDF which actually shows you their data placemat (and, as a bonus, beautiful data visualization examples). Finally, there is also a useful blog post about data placements, with some lessons learned and examples, on the American Evaluation Association 365 blog.  

Your Action Plan

These are all great ways to add more audience engagement and creativity into your presentations. Take a moment to review your last (or next) presentation and conduct an “engagement audit.” Start by adding some form of audience engagement at least every 10 minutes and updating your visuals to be more engaging and creative. Then, revise your handouts so they’re more engaging and memorable.

Just remember that it’s all part of a “presentation package,” which is my fancy way of reminding people that their presentation always involves multiple components: what you say (your speaker notes), what people see (your slides), and what people read or interact with (your handout). As a bonus tip, those three things should never be identical: your slides should not just be your speaker notes and your handout should not just be all your slides printed out.

If you’d like some bonus resources to help make your slides better, then check out my free Stellar Slides Starter Kit instant download. It includes my top 10 favorite presentation tips (illustrated by me), a presentation design workflow, and more!

About Echo

Hi! I’m Dr. Echo Rivera, founder and owner of Creative Research Communications, LLC. I’m here to help you communicate your research and educational information more effectively and creatively. I have a PhD in Community Psychology and over a decade of research and evaluation experience. I moved on from my research & evaluation career to focus solely on helping others share their work more effectively. I’d love to connect with you on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.