How do you use visual aids to support your answers?

✅ As a thumb rule, use one shape for similar kind of content. ❌ Don’t mix bar graph with pie chart. Don’t mix a pyramid with a circle based infographic. ✅ Keep shapes consistent all across the presentation

You are telling a story. Make sure your visuals support your story. Ensure the visuals you choose provide the right emotion, context, flow, and are related to one another throughout the presentation.

The key to using relevant visuals is to research your audience ahead of time and select visuals that deliver your information in a way that is meaningful to the audience. For starters, I encourage you to read the book, "People Styles at Work and Beyond" by David Bolton & Dorothy Grover Bolton. This provides context for how audiences of different personality styles/characteristics like to receive information. This knowledge helps assess which type of visual to use and why. If telling a story, I may show a relevant picture to visualize the story. When leveraging data, rather than using an elaborate chart, I may choose no more than three data points and tell a story about them to provide context and meaning for my audience.

It cannot be denied that avoiding complex visuals do aid in delivering key mesage but there are instances, where one has a highly complex data which cannot be explained with same chart approach. I have encounteres this several times. They key is then to : 1. Take a story telling approach, which ensures everything is breaken down into key messages. 2. Build logical linkage between two different charts. 3. Ensure that charts are clearly laid out with key message, without looking cluttered.

The key trick for choosing your data visualization aids is that the first thing that comes to your mind is not necessarily the right one. Dig deeper, think of non-obvious visuals and analogies, and look them up online on websites like Freepik, Envato, or even go to Midjourney. Write a prompt to create the visual you want in the style and look and feel you desire.

💡It’s a good practice to show the shape of the visual first and then add text to it in the next slide. ✅This builds up anticipation. ✅Gives the viewer more time to absorb the context ✅Draws their attention to the correct spot on the slide presentation

Remove as much from the slide as you can. You want your audience to focus on what you are presenting, not on reading the slide or distracted by graphics or the motion of clips/videos. Try to limit the words to the least amount possible that will remind you of which content you are presenting for that slide. If your audience can get all the information from the presentation there is no need for a presenter.

💡The visual infographic should be used as a hint for you to elaborate, not to read the entire presentation from it. ✅ Use phrases/pointers in infographics that act as a trigger for you and as a connector for the audience.

You want to be the focus of attention so move. People look at movement and if you are standing still while your slides are moving, while distractions in the audience are moving, or other distractions are present the audience will get distracted. Use pitch and tone to emphasize important points. When scanning the room stop every one to two seconds and look at the same person for one to two seconds. This will make you look more intentional with your delivery.

When presenting, I always like to have a flip chart or whiteboard available to help visualize the material. I do this for two reasons: 1. Backup plan if the technology doesn't work 2. Depending upon where the conversation must go with your audience, I may not have a visual on a slide, however, I can create something on the flipchart or whiteboard to supplement the discussion and help visualize the discussion to provide context as needed. I sometimes will have secondary visuals that I don't intend to use at the end of the presentation in an appendix that I can jump to as needed, although I don't often leverage them. Again, this serves as another option for a backup plan.

When possible align the color of your visuals to the theme of the event or organization. Also aligning visual to specific verbiage used by the audience will assist in facilitating interest and understanding. Likewise, ensure the metrics, graph types, and scale are familiar to the audience. A photo of US dollars may not be well received when presenting to European executives.

Have a notetaker for this part of the presentation whenever possible. Depending on the audience it may seem unprofessional to stop the presentation to take notes.

When using an actual “physical” visual aid- i.e. an original Beatles Album or a baseball signed by favorite player- don’t forget to use the blackout button on the clicker. Make the focus the item. You. Live. Take the PPT away often during Q and A utilizing the black out feature. This small technique does wonders for the audience when going in and out of Q and A.