Include Graphic Images In Screen Presentations

• Morey Stettner
• On 6:34 pm EST, Friday November 6, 2009

When audience members hear a speech, they like to listen and see slides. But they don't like to do both at once.

"The way we're wired, we can't do two complex cognitive tasks at once," said Peter Desberg, a professor of psychology at California State University, Dominguez Hills. "If there's text on the screen while the speaker is talking, it's distracting."

Yet many speakers show text-laden slides and then read from them. The result? Listeners grow restless and tune out.

To convey complex or technical information, it's fine to prepare slides with text. Just don't talk over them.

Instead, pause for a few seconds while the group reads from the slide. They're more apt to digest the information if they can concentrate on it without hearing you speak.

Direct The Audience's Attention

Use your body language to signal to the audience that you want everyone to read along with you. Walk to the side of the screen and briefly turn your back on the group to look at a new slide.

"When I do this, it looks like I'm reading the slide," said Desberg, co-author of "Own the Room." "Everyone follows my cue and starts reading it too."

When he wants to resume speaking, Desberg walks toward the center of the stage and briefly establishes eye contact with people in different parts of the room. This alerts audience members that it's time to stop reading and shift their focus to the speaker.

Turn off your slides before you resume speaking. Otherwise, people will stare at any visual image that vies for their attention.

"Your audience's attention cannot be split," Desberg warned. "You have to decide at every moment where their focus should be."

Graphics In Motion

Strive to design slides with graphic images rather than text. The more messages you can communicate with graphics, the better.

To demonstrate correct procedures for serving customers, for instance, show a short video that models key learning points. That's better than providing a bulleted list of to-do items.

"If you can show rather than tell, it's more likely to sink in," Desberg said. "You can tell someone 24 points to play tennis, but you're better off showing a tennis coach demonstrating all those points."

Graphics that move are more captivating than still graphics, he adds. But the motion needs to underscore your message. If you want your listeners to follow safety rules, an image of a car crashing into a wall can convey the danger of carelessness.

Before you prepare a graph, summarize in one sentence what you want people to understand. Then stop talking and show the slide. If you say that sales have surged in recent months, follow up with a bar graph that clearly shows sales growth.

Buzz up!