m62 visualcommunications, the global leader in presentation effectiveness, is today urging presenters to deliver presentations that use dual encoding to convey information both visually and aurally, thus more than doubling audience retention rates.
Presenters often make the mistake of assuming that a slide deck of bullet points is an effective visual aid in PowerPoint design. In fact, studies have shown that audiences cannot read and listen to a presenter simultaneously. This is because both the actions of listening to the presenter and of reading text are processed by the same element of working memory – the Phonetic Loop.
The result is that audiences cannot pay attention to both sources of information at the same time. This can lead to them reading the bullet points, and ignoring the presenter. In fact, studies have shown that having a presenter reiterate what they have already read is the number one annoyance for audiences in a presentation.
Instead, true visual aids should be used. This is when slides support what is being said by the use of diagrams or images. If slides make sense without the presenter, the presenter becomes defunct. Slides and presenter need to work together to form a coherent message. Information delivered via dual channels is over twice as likely to be remembered.
Nicholas Oulton, Founder of m62, commented: “Presenters need to realise that a list of bullet points does not function as an effective visual aid. Good presentation skills will only get a presenter so far if the audience is simply reading the text. Effective visual aids work seamlessly with the presenter to convey the message.
“Humans remember around 15-20% of what they hear and 20-30% of what they see. Yet when both sources are combined with dual encoding, this figure can be more than doubled, with audience recall up to 70-80%. The implications of this on a presentation are clear. With the majority of decisions made after the presentation, an audience in a sales or investor presentation is significantly more likely to arrange to work with you if they can remember your message.”
m62 visualcommunications has produced almost 10,000 presentations for clients worldwide, from offices in the UK, US and Singapore.
For more information about m62 visualcommunications, call +44 (0)151 259 6262 or visit m62.net.
