The Power Visual Edutainment: Why It Makes Audience Love to Learn

The more visual a presentation is, the more memorable it will be. Very few people will argue with that, but a good visual presentation is not just about the visuals. It's not just about the slides. It's also about the way you transition from one slide to another, how you introduce them, and how you interact with your slides.

When you combine good slide design, effective transitions and interact with them in dynamic ways, your audience will have an easier time remembering your content. Let's look at each of these elements separately.

Slide Design and Formatting

If you are new to the world of photography and would like to learn the basics of photo editing, your best option is to search the internet and follow along with your chosen video. This section of the blog post describes how to format your images on your presentation software.

Before you do that, make sure that your images have good composition, color, contrast, and resolution. And, unless they are old or considered vintage, make sure you use high resolution images.

A 2009 study published in the Journal of Cognitive Development (The Picture Superiority Effect in Recognition Memory) revealed that "participants were much more likely to remember the objects that had been presented as images than they were to remember the ones presented as spoken words." To make sure that holds true, use these guidelines to help you design your slides.

1. Make images large. It's highly recommended that you use the full screen for a single image or what's commonly known as a full-page bleed.

2. One idea per slide. Don't make the mistake of having three unrelated images on the same slide. You can have three different kinds of bourbon bottles in one picture but a single image of a bourbon bottle, a second image of a martini glass, and a third image of a bottle of vodka on one page will confuse your audience.

3. Avoid putting text on your slides. A word here or there is okay but if you show a slide with a lot of text and then start to talk, your audience will read the text rather than listen to you.

4. If you must place text on an image, make sure it's large enough for people to read from the last seat in the audience. Marketing specialist and best-selling author Guy Kawasaki's rule of thumb is to "keep text to 30-point font or larger."

5. Avoid bullet points at all cost. When audience members see bullet points on slides, they immediately think the presenter is not prepared.

6. Choose your images and format them so they trigger your thought process.

7. Test your slide design by doing the 3 - second glance test. Look at your slide for 3 seconds and then look away. If you can't remember the object/message or information on the slide, make necessary changes.

Dynamic Slide Transitions

A slide transition is the visual effect that occurs when you move from one slide to another. Depending upon the content and tone of your presentation, most of your transitions need to be seamless and unnoticeable to your audience. Fades, wipes and cuts are the most widely used transitions when you want them to be "invisible."

There are times when you purposefully want to use a slide transition to emphasize an idea. For example, if you just finished talking about the Apollo astronauts return to earth, there is a remarkable transition in PowerPoint that folds up your image into an origami-like airplane and flies it off the screen. That's one of many imaginative transitions that cruise ship lecturer Brian Unger uses to maximum effectiveness. He spends a lot of time searching for the most effective way to transition into or out of his talking points.

How to interact with your slides or don't be a slide show to your slide show.

The most important thing to know about interacting with your slides is that you can either enhance your message or kill your presentation altogether. If you introduce your slides and present them in a dynamic way, you will add major edutainment value to your presentation.

Here are some guidelines to help your audience:

1. It's important to recognize that having slides divides your audience’s attention. They either look at you or they look at your slides. They can’t do both equally at once. This means that your audience will read your body language and then your slides, or the other way around. Decide at every given moment, which one is more important...looking at you or looking at your slide.

In most western countries, people read from left to right, so if you stand to the left of the projection screen, your audience will look at you first and then at your slide. However, if you stand to the right of the screen, it will be the other way around.

2. When you reference an upcoming slide, stand on one side or the other so you don’t block the screen. Choose the side that best suits your purpose at the moment.

3. Give specific thought to when you want to reveal the next slide. Always decide in advance and practice the transition. If you talk and change the slide at the same time, the audience will have a hard time listening to you when they see something new appear on the screen. Keep in mind that most projection screens are much larger than you.

4. "Frame" or introduce your slides. Here's an example:

a. Framing introduction - "What you're going to see next is an image of the Saturn 5 rocket that launched the Apollo 11 astronauts to the moon."

b. Reveal slide of Saturn 5 rocket liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center.

c. Present your facts: "The first stage burned for about 2 minutes and 41 seconds, lifting the rocket to an altitude of 42 miles. In just under 3 minutes, it burned 4,700,000 pounds of fuel!"

If you reveal an explosive picture of the Saturn 5 rocket launch while presenting those astounding numbers, no one in the audience will hear those astounding numbers. Frame the image before you reveal it.

5. When possible, move around your space. It's dynamic to see a speaker move toward or away from the screen. It's also dynamic to see a speaker move to the left or right of the projection screen while they talk.

Sports and weather reporters do it all the time. You can too. Sure, you can use a laser pointer but it's not very exciting to see you stand in one place and aim your laser toward the screen.

Now, it goes without saying that you need to learn when to look at the screen and when to look at the audience when you talk. It will be distracting if you look at the screen and don't talk to your audience.

6. Sometimes, you want your audience to stop looking at a slide because you have something important to say. If you leave the slide on the screen, your audience's attention will be split, and the impact of your next point will be diminished.

Some projection “remotes” have a button that lets you momentarily turn off your slides. Use it. If you don’t have access to such a remote, consider inserting blank slides for points that you want the audience to focus on.

On cruise ships, you'll need to keep an image on the screen at all times because your presentation will be broadcast into the staterooms or cabins. In those instances, it won't look good for the viewer to see a blank screen so if you need to keep an image on the screen, make sure it isn't so dynamic that it takes away from what you're saying.

7. To watch or not to watch the slides change. That is the question. New presenters often ask, "should I look at the slide when I reveal it?" It all depends upon the content of the slide and what you are saying at that time. If you’re pointing out something important, by all means look at the slide and point it out. Otherwise, you don't need to "watch" the slide change.

When you combine good slide design, effective transitions and interact with them in dynamic ways, you edutain your audience and help them remember your content.

The bottom-line is don’t be a sideshow to your slide show!