- Every good presentation
is essentially a good story.
Now, we know when we're
hearing a good story,
we're paying attention, our
curiosity is increasing,
we understand what is being said,
and if it's a really good story,
then we think about it
and talk about it later
with our friends and colleagues.
We want our scientific
presentations to produce
these same effects in our audience.
- One really important ingredient
of a good story is drama.
So, we've got to find the
drama in our scientific
issue that we're presenting.
The drama might be in the
importance of the issue
that we're studying, or the drama might be
in resolving some longstanding question,
or it could be something really
surprising that we found.
But the important thing
is that we need to locate
the drama in the work we're presenting
and get excited about it.
It's gonna be a much better story then.
We all hate it when
someone is telling a story
and they're meandering around.
They're putting in details
that aren't that important.
They're going off on tangents,
and it just makes it
difficult to follow the story.
So, one of the biggest
challenges in giving
effective scientific
presentations is to identify
the central narrative
and leave out the rest.
Find what's important
to tell the main story
and forget everything else.
If people are curious about
something you haven't mentioned,
they can ask about it during
the question and answer period.
- Before you sit down
to develop your slides,
you need to figure out
where to develop your story.
Now, there are a lot of different options,
so let's just cover a few.
One thing you can do is
simply take a blank page
and focus on the flow of the story.
Just get some thoughts down.
Don't let anything else distract you
from getting down the main narrative.
Another approach is
something like a mind map
which provides a more graphical
representation of the story.
This type of visual approach
provides a different view
of the narrative line
you are trying to draw,
and may help you to recognize
when particular parts
of your story are becoming
disproportionately long.
By far the most common
approach used by speakers
is probably just developing their story
in the actual presentation software.
This is also probably
the most dangerous option
because it encourages you
to start creating slides
before you have really refined your story.
Remember that the story should drive
the creation of slides.
The slides shouldn't be driving
the creation of the story.
Let's take a few minutes
to talk about using
visuals to support your storytelling.
Now, we're gonna talk a lot
about how to make slides,
but for now, let's look at a
few examples that illustrate
how using visuals can help
or hurt a presentation.
In this study, we used a fascinating array
of patient reported outcome measures,
including the Weinfurt
Mountain Dew Anxiety Measure,
the Tom Brady Inflation Index,
the Kim Kardashian Judgment Inventory,
and the Hellhammer Tectonic Rage Scale.
- So, that was kind of dizzying,
because he was using presentation software
animation effects all over the place.
They weren't adding to the message.
They were actually distracting from what
he was trying to say.
- Challenges.
There are many challenges associated
with using patient reported outcomes
in clinical research.
We've made progress on some of these
in the clinical research enterprise.
This is particularly
problematic in the area
of clinical trials, and the FDA is aware
of these issues, and has offered
some guidance in their recent documents.
- What was the problem here?
The visuals on the slide should
support the storytelling.
But in this case, the
bullet points on the slide
corresponded only slightly to
what the presenter was saying,
and so, the audience is
trying to read those bullets
and at the same time listen
to the presenter drone on.
- So, let's talk about challenges
with patient reported outcomes.
There are too many instruments measuring
the same health concept,
and while some of those
instrument measures
are good, many are not.
There, it is difficult to compare
and combine data across studies
and also to compare and
combine data across conditions.
And also, many measures
are also too complex.
- So, that was incredibly painful.
I felt like the presenter
and I were on a journey
together to discover
what this talk was about
by reading the bullet points
as they are revealed to us.
Several years ago some
colleagues and I were giving
a presentation at the NIH about
a relatively new initiative
and we wanted to start
off this long presentation
with a very clear statement
about what exactly
this initiative was.
And so, we came up with a
visual support for that story
that was very spare, but very effective
in quickly letting people know
exactly what this was about.
I'm excited to tell you
today about the Patient
Reported Outcome Measurement
Information System, or PROMIS.
PROMIS is essentially three things.
First of all, PROMIS is a set of measures
of both pediatric and
adult health concepts.
Second, PROMIS is an
advancement in the science
of self-reported health measurement.
And finally, PROMIS is
readily available software
that lets you administer these
newly developed measures.
So, to summarize, we
want to find the drama.
We want to include
points that are critical
to the storyline and leave out the rest.
And finally, we want to use
visuals that will support
the storytelling, not distract from it.
- [Announcer] This educational
program is supported
by a grant from the National Center
for Advancing Translational Sciences.
- All right.
(laughing)
- Sorry, I'm sorry.
All right, let me try it.
Okay.
- Hold up, wait, wait, wait!
Ah, okay.
- For example, you might
be defending the thesis,
or,
(laughing)
God, I had it!
I had it!
(laughing)
