Question

"Slide Designs and Visual Aides"

Select ONE of the following:

1. Consider the importance of visuals in connecting with an audience. Discuss a moment or experience in your life when a picture, drawing or other visual had a significant impact. Consider whether the same impact could have occurred if you heard about the image rather than experiencing it visually.
2. Find a poorly designed PowerPoint slideshow and share it here. Give a short summary that identifies the problems and make suggestions on what would improve the design.

Answer 1

Consider the importance of visuals in connecting with an audience.

It has been established since a very long time that visuals leave a deeper impact on your brain more than a narration. Research has accounted for the fact that this increased attention towards visual stimuli is because of the way our brain processes and collects these informations. Our brain is fairly efficient in processing images and can also be attributed as an image processor. Also, the area attributed for processing of images is much larger than that used for processing of words. Words have an abstract impact on the brain which becomes difficult to retain whereas visuals make a more concrete impact on the brain. Thus, when an orator wants to make an impact such that his words and ideas would be imbibed in each and every member present in the audience, he has to incorporate pictures in his paintings. They can try and use thousands of words, both easy and with impressive vocabulary, but when the same thing is portrayed in a more visual format with the help of graphs or cartoons, depending on the type of information, even if a person does not want to listen, they will see and the images will get absorbed in their brains.

Discuss a moment or experience in your life when a picture, drawing, or other visual had a significant impact and consider whether the same impact could have occurred if you heard about the image rather than experienced it.

I have always been a smart learner rather than a hard learner. I remember, when people in my dorms would try and mug up the complex metabolic pathways from the texts, I would just make a flow chart along with the structures and the same pathway would be done in less than 15 minutes. Also, it is easier to understand the reactions when learnt through the flow structures rather than learning through the long sentence texts.

Find a poorly designed PowerPoint slideshow and share it here. Give a short summary that identifies the problems and make suggestions on what would improve the design.

Following is one of the bad PowerPoint presentations. There is too much text in one slide and too many images in the other slide. Also, one of the slides is empty where the text has been italicised and the entire slide is left blank. The font size is too small. Also, in the slide named animals, the background and the font colour do not go together. The background is such that it intereferes with the font and nothing is legible.

https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/middletonat/bad-powerpoint-example