Evidence-Based Presentation Design

I have been a fan of the work of Prof. Jeffrey Pfeffer of Stanford for many years. I particularly like his Evidence-Based Management approach. Prof. Pfeffer recently asked me to write a column on Evidence-Based Presentation Design for his website. Here it is.

Evidence-Based Presentation Design. It’s ironic: practicing Evidence- Based Management often involves presenting evidence, and yet the way we present that evidence frequently itself violates other evidence, evidence about effective presentation design.

Beliefs that only 7% of your message is in what you say and the rest is non-verbal, for example, or that each slide should contain seven bullets of seven words each, are based either on a faulty misreading of the empirical research or are directly contradicted by the research.

Fortunately, there is ample evidence—from research in communications, psychology, marketing, education, multimedia computing, and law—that can be used to establish design guidelines for effective presentations. ... Read the rest at the Evidence-Based Management website.

Comments

[Andy Bulka]

What constitutes evidence when you back up a presentation or decision? Often it is a web link to some "evidence" or sometimes it is a word document filled with information e.g. a government or internal company report.

A convenient way to present someone with a decision with supporting evidence is to use "bMap bundles" generated by the decision mapping and presentation tool bCisive http://bcisive.austhink.com which include all the evidence hyperlinked to your presentation automatically zipped and ready to email your colleagues.