Do Visual Presentations Work?
Visual presentations can be effective if they are adapted to the limitations of the human brain. The typical presenter must modify their writing skills to blend whole brain thinking into the formula. By doing this you can create an effective visual presentation.
What Happens in the Human Brain During a Presentation?
Most business tools that are used to create visual presentations focus solely on left brain activities. They tend to be extremely complex, displaying many statistics and graphics, overloading the left brain capacity.
The human working memory operates on two channels, an auditory and visual channel. Most people would think that a visual presentation would utilize solely the visual channel. However, this is not true. Anytime text is displayed on the screen, both the auditory and visual channels are used. The visual channel sees the information, but the auditory channel sounds out the words.
The Executive Presentation
Over 99% of executives either prepare their own visual presentations or have an internal administrative assistant perform the preparation for them. Less than 1% actually enlists the external services of a visual presentation professional that understands how audiences receive, process, and stores the information that they take in. With these statistics in mind, it is understandable that many visual presentations are not ranked as excellent.
To transform writing skills into persuasive visual presentation skills, you must obtain a complete understanding of why audiences respond negatively to visuals. To be successful, you must develop a broad set of design techniques and sensory communication skills.
Education is Key
Those that are not educated in the way the human brain works do not target their presentations to work with these characteristics in a positive way. Working toward giving your audience what they need and expect from a presentation in a manner that allows whole brain communication to be engaged elicits much more positive and successful results.
Learning to incorporate both left brain and right brain characteristics into a presentation will make a world of difference in your results. Acquiring and implementing the knowledge of the brain’s channels that are used and being cautious not to overload one channel will keep your audience engaged.
You Can Become an Excellent Presenter
While employing the services of an educated presentation professional can dramatically improve persuasive presentation results, learning the skills and employing them yourself will improve not only the prepared visuals but the overall delivery of the presentation. In this way you can avoid the pitfalls that cause audiences to respond negatively to visual presentations. You will engage the entire brain participation and appeal to both the analytical and sensory perception to produce an overall excellent presentation. This will be well received, processed, and retained by your audience members. It will also produce the kind of measurable results that you are hoping for, causing you to become a more efficient, effective, and confident presenter.