How do you make your presentation memorable for your audience with the findings of

cognitive psychology?

It was 2005. George W. Bush was starting his second term as US president, phones still had
keyboards and the first ever video had been uploaded to YouTube.
At the time, Bill Gates was beginning to feel the pressure from Google. Its competition was
growing at a dizzying pace. Microsoft's investors, customers and partners were wondering
how it would respond to the new player's moves in the market. So Gates was preparing for a
presentation that would showcase Microsoft's ambitious plans.

The plans were called 'Windows Live'.

Finally, 1 November arrived, the time of the speech. In a room in San Francisco, Bill took to
the stage and quickly started talking about scalable web services and ecosystems.

He also showed slides like this one:

this one:

or finally this one:

Although the slides were dense with a huge amount of information, Gates didn't spend too
much time discussing them. He pushed forward with his presentation, and only spent a
minute discussing the above image....
Unfortunately, incomprehension was painted on the faces of the thousands of people
gathered. A few days after the event, neither the trade media nor bloggers could tell what the
revolutionary nature of Microsoft's new strategy was.

The Gates speech in question was considered one of the worst in the company's history.
Compared to Steve Jobs' famous iPod presentation four years earlier, Microsoft's founder
came off tragically.

Screenshot from Steve Jobs' presentation - Jobs explains what size the iPod will be.

Paradoxically, the man whose company owns... PowerPoint was responsible for the
disastrous performance. It would seem, therefore, that Gates should use the software in a
more skilful way.
Adding spice to the whole story is the fact that - in retrospect - Bill Gates was talking about
truly revolutionary plans.

Among them were:

 a search engine with ads like Google - today this is Bing (owned by Microsoft), the
second largest search engine in the US after Google,
 a business messenger with social media elements - today this is LinkedIn (owned by
Microsoft), which is used by more than 500 million people,
 calling from a PC to another PC and phones - today this is Skype and Teams (also
owned by Microsoft), which is used by more than 300 million people every month,
 working in real-time on a single document - today this is Office 365 used by more
than 155 million users,
  a suite of business applications for small and medium-sized businesses - today this
has evolved into Microsoft Dynamics, which is one of the 10 most popular CRMs in
the world.

So how is it that Bill Gates, rather than outlining a beautiful vision of the future in the minds
of his audience, has left them perplexed?
Although it is said that such a reaction from the audience is most often due to boredom, the
reasons may be different. On the one hand, it is the curse of knowledge that we sometimes
describe. On the other, information overload.

When creating a presentation, remember the limitations of the human brain

Everyone agrees that the brain has its limitations. Yet presentations are often designed as if
humans were computers onto which countless amounts of data can be uploaded. 15 bullet
points, huge diagrams, incomprehensible buzzwords - everyone has experienced this at least
once.

This combination of slides and documents even has its own name - 'slideshows'.

Since we are not computers, we feel overloaded with information at the sight of such a
presentation and start to "switch off".

We then either stare at the window or divert our attention to something simpler to process like
checking our email inbox or scrolling Facebook.

Just as a computer needs processor power and RAM to run complex programmes and games,
our brains need attention resources to process complex information.

But what do we do when we need to talk about something complex? How much information
to include to keep the audience's attention for 20 minutes?
This is where psychology and the knowledge that memory is divided into working and long-
term memory comes to our aid.
Working memory is like our cache memory. It is what allows us to understand more complex
sentences, although it is not without its flaws - we have all experienced its inadequacies when
trying to remember a telephone number or a shopping list.

We see defects in working memory in older people, who can get lost in our speech, forgetting
what our words were about.
On the other side of the barricade, we have long-term memory. It concerns information such
as the date of the Battle of Grunwald or the names of our friends. Gaps in long-term memory
would mean forgetting past events and memories from our lives.

If something 'doesn't fit' into working memory, it probably won't make it into long-term
memory. In other words - our audience will not understand or remember what we have said.

Our working memory has a limited capacity. Too much information at once overwhelms us
and we are unable to remember it.

So how do we prepare a presentation to take into account the limitations of the human brain?
Based on psychological knowledge, we can suggest four methods.

1) The ideal amount of information depends on the audience's involvement

The average number of information we are able to hold in working memory is 7.

We know this from an article published in 1956 by Professor George Miller (which is why
this value is sometimes referred to as Miller's number).

In his research, the psychologist tested how much information certain types of sensory
modalities such as auditory memory, visual memory, etc. could hold. Usually, the results
oscillated between five and nine items. The average of these values is precisely the magic 7.

To this number, +/- 2 is added to emphasise that we are not talking about an absolute value,
but a range.

There is, however, a catch here: in a 2003 article, psychology professor Nelson Cowan
pointed out that the people studied by Miller were so involved in remembering information
that they may have been aided in this process by, among other things, long-term memory.
Consequently, we can only afford to communicate 5-9 elements if we know that the audience
will be engaged in our speech.

However, the good news is that when we succeed in engaging the audience, we can more
than double their memory capacity. This is why engaging presentations are remembered even
years later.

However, if there is a risk that audience engagement may fail, then we need to simplify our
message further.

In his work, Cowan attempted to isolate 'pure' working memory and set its limits. This is how
he came to the conclusion that the actual amount of information this memory holds is 2-4
portions of data.

We now know that the creation of 15 Bill Gates-style bullet points falls away. However, this
is no revelatory conclusion - anyone who has listened to a boring presentation knows this.
How many bullet points to show, then, to keep the audience's attention?

One of the findings of Cowan's research is that the key to good data presentation can be to
portion it out. This should be done in such a way as to provide between 2 and 4 units of
information at a time, i.e. 2-4 findings per slide. No more than that.

So many conclusions per slide is far too much

Dan Pink's presentation. The slides are not overloaded, making it easy for the audience to
absorb new information and conclusions. Slide source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=rrkrvAUbU9Y&feature=youtu.be

2) The two-step nature of the information helps the audience assimilate your message

The second lesson is that information should be two-stepped. Ideally, it should start with a
short keynote summarising the point in question and only then develop the issue.

Make sure that the elaboration is not too broad. The following list of sentences could serve as
an example:

Continuous monitoring of finances - a constant connection to the Internet means

uninterrupted access to the limits you have set.
Implementing innovation - our company is starting to implement employees' ideas.
Mr Sandwich - from tomorrow, we host Mr Wieslaw at lunchtime with his delicious range of
snacks.

The first slogan is like a container into which our recipients will put further information. If
we don't give it to them, we run the risk that the data in the heads of the audience will be
chaotically scattered.

In this case, Bill Gates again failed to show off. He went straight to keyword-packed specifics
without giving people any wider context.

3) Use the order in which information is presented

Another important element is the order in which information is presented. Research shows
that the best remembered elements are the beginning and end of a presentation. Failure to
take this into account can impair the memorability of a message by up to 40%.

This finding is called the primacy and freshness effects. This relationship was first pointed
out by the pioneer of memory psychology Herman Ebbinghaus in 1885.

Primacy effect and freshness effect. The amount of information remembered depending on
the position of the word in the sequence.

However, this is not the only application of this fact.

The effect of freshness and precedence can be a very effective tool for enhancing persuasion.
There is evidence that the very positioning of information can influence the long-term or
immediate behaviour of listeners.

Let's assume that we care about long-term or distant action. For example, we want our
audience to think about their department's strategy. According to the researchers' findings, in
that case we should put the important information at the beginning.

What if we are hoping for immediate action? Then it is a much better idea to place the
message at the end of the presentation. Research shows that the effect of freshness is shorter
but more intense.

This significantly increases the chance of taking action shortly after hearing the message.
This is why so-called Call To Action slogans, such as "Order now" or "Sign up for a course",
are placed at the end of a presentation.

4) Take care of the visual layer

The final element that influences the reception of our message is the visual layer.

According to Professor Allan Paivio's theory of dual coding, we understand information on

two levels - verbal and pictorial. If we see a text alone or an image alone, it is more difficult
for us to understand the message than when we get a text with an aptly chosen image.

According to Paivio's numerous studies, the right combination of verbal and pictorial
messages allows us to better understand and remember information.

However, the images must be well chosen. This means that the graphics used should facilitate
understanding of the material and not just be an attractive addition to the text.

If we make a presentation about a company's strategy and upload a stock photo of people
holding hands, it will not be an image that facilitates understanding of the material. However,
if we include a simple diagram showing the main elements of the strategy, this will meet the
criteria of Professor Paivio's theory as much as possible.

In doing so, it is important to remember that we are still bound by the limitations of working
memory. Such a slide, although visual, without a discussion of the content will overwhelm
the audience, causing the audience to quickly switch off.
Example of an overloaded presentation

Example of a well-prepared slide

Summary

In order to make a presentation comprehensible, first of all you need to know the people you
will be addressing. This will allow you to assess their level of engagement. If the engagement
level is high, try to include up to 7 chunks of information per slide. If low, aim for 2 or 3.

In addition, information should be divided into two levels: a short keynote and a slightly
longer explanation.

Information placed at the beginning and end will be remembered much better than that in the
middle of the presentation.

Also remember to place the most key messages in these places. Information placed at the
beginning increases the chance of action in the long term, while information placed at the end
increases the likelihood of immediate action.

Adding attractive visuals allows our message to be more easily received and remembered for
longer.

However, it is important to bear in mind that visuals are meant to aid understanding of the
content, not just be decoration.

Knowing the limitations of the mind allows us to reach our audience much better, especially
when we have something complex to communicate.
At ExplainVisually, we've been helping to communicate complex things in simple ways since
2014, and over the years we've worked for companies such as IKEA, Pfizer and ING. If you
would like to find out more about what we do, I invite you to take a look at what we offer:

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