Table of Contents |
Almost all presentations can be enhanced by the effective use of visual aids. These can include handouts, PowerPoint slides, and many other types of props.
Visual aids are an important nonverbal aspect of your speech that you can control. Once you have chosen a topic, you need to consider how you are going to show your audience what you are talking about.
Visual aids accomplish several goals:
Your audience naturally will want to know why you are presenting the visual aid. The purpose for each visual aid should be clear, and almost speak for itself. If you can’t quickly grasp the purpose of a visual aid in a speech, you have to honestly consider whether it should be used in the first place.
The following chart demonstrates two of the most common purposes of visual aids.
Purpose | Explanation | Applied Example |
---|---|---|
Emphasis | This use of a visual aid can effectively highlight key words, ideas, or relationships for the audience. | If you want to emphasize a trend between two related issues, such as socioeconomic status and educational attainment, a line graph might show effectively how, as socioeconomic status rises, educational attainment also rises. |
Support | This use of a visual aid can back up an assertion or argument that you make with evidence. | To support your argument about the relationship between socioeconomic status and educational attainment, you might include on a slide, "According to the U.S. Department of Education Study no. 12345," or even use an image of the Department of Education webpage projected on a large screen. You might also consider showing similar studies in graphic form, illustrating similarities across a wide range of research. |
No matter what your purpose for using it is, you must ensure that your visual aid is clear.
How to represent information visually is a significant challenge, and you have several options.
However, all visual aids should meet the following criteria:
IN CONTEXT
You may choose to use a chart or diagram to show a timeline of events to date, from the first meeting about the proposed product to the results from the latest focus group. This timeline may work for you, but let’s say you would like to get into the actual decision-making process that motivated your team to design the product with specific features in the first place. You may decide to use decision trees (or tree diagrams) showing the variables and products in place at the beginning of your discussions, and how each decision led to the next, bringing you to the decision-making point where you are today.
To complement this comprehensive guide and help make a transition to current content areas of questions, you may use a bar or pie graph to show the percentage of competing products in the market. If you have access to the Internet and a projector, you may use a topographical map showing a three-dimensional rendering of the local areas most likely to find your product attractive. Then you may show a comparable graph illustrating the distribution of products and their relative degree of market penetration.
Finally, you may move to the issue of results, and present the audience with a model of your product and one from a competitor, asking which they prefer. The object may be just the visual aid you need to make your point and reinforce the residual message. When we can see, feel, touch, or be in close proximity to an object, it often has a greater impact. In a world of digital images and special effects, objects presented in real time can still have a positive effect on the audience.
You will want to give some thought to how to portray your chart, graph, or object when it’s time to use your visual aids. The chalk or white board is a common way of presenting visual aids, but it can get messy. Many times, there is a better way to display your visual aid.
Flip charts on a pedestal can serve to show a series of steps or break a chart down into its basic components. A poster board is another common way of organizing your visual aids before a speech, but given its often one-time use, it is losing out to the computer screen. It is, however, portable and allows you a large "blank page" with which to express your ideas.
Handouts may also serve to communicate complex or detailed information to the audience, but be careful never to break handout rule number one: Never give handouts to the audience at the beginning of your speech.
Where do you want the audience to look— at you or at the handout? Many novice speakers might be tempted to say the handout, but you will no doubt recognize how that diverts and divides the audience’s attention. People will often listen to the words from the handout in their minds and tune you out.
Transparencies and slides have been replaced by computer-generated slide show programs like PowerPoint by Microsoft, which we will discuss in greater detail later.
Technology: Apply Your Skill |
These programs can be very helpful in presenting visual information, but because computers and projectors sometimes break down and fail to work as planned, you need a Plan B.
EXAMPLE
You may arrive at your destination and find the equipment is no longer available, is incompatible with your media storage device, or is simply not working, but the show must go on. Having a backup plan, such as your visuals printed on transparencies, will ensure you are prepared should these unexpected equipment or interface compatibility problems arise.Video clips, such as those you might find on YouTube, can also be effective visual aids. However, as with handouts, there is one concern: You don’t want the audience to want to watch the video more than they want to tune into your presentation.
How do you prevent this? Keep the clip short and make sure it reinforces the central message of your presentation, and always stop speaking before the audience stops listening. The same holds true for the mesmerizing force of moving images on a screen.
People are naturally attracted to them and will get "sucked into" your video example rather quickly. Be a good editor, introduce the clip and state what will happen out loud, point out a key aspect of it to the audience while it plays (overlap), and then make a clear transitional statement as you turn it off.
PowerPoint is a slideware program that you have no doubt seen used in class, presentations at work, or perhaps used yourself to support a presentation. PowerPoint and similar slideware programs provide templates for creating electronic slides to present visual information to the audience, reinforcing the verbal message.
You’ll be able to import, or cut and paste, words from text files, images, or video clips to create slides to represent your ideas. You can even incorporate web links. When using any software program, it’s always a good idea to experiment with it long before you intend to use it, explore its many options and functions, and see how it can be an effective tool for you.
When using PowerPoint, there are several important factors to consider:
As we’ve discussed, visual aids can be a powerful tool when used effectively, but can also run the risk of dominating your presentation. As a speaker with strong technology skills , you will need to consider your audience and how the portrayal of images, text, graphics, animated sequences, or sound files will contribute to or detract from your presentation.
Here is a brief list of hints to keep in mind as you prepare your presentation:
Giving thought to where to place visual aids before speaking helps, but when the time comes to actually give your speech, make sure you reassess your plans and ensure that they work for the audience as they should. Speaking to a visual aid (or reading it to the audience) is not an effective strategy. Know your material well enough that you refer to your visual aids, not rely on them.
Source: This tutorial has been adapted from "Business Communication for Success" Version 1.0 by Scott McLean. Copyright 2010. ISBN 978-1-4533-2742-5 (Licensee Product: Workplace Communication), reprinted with permission from FlatWorld.