Poster Points
Today I had the pleasure of taking part in our PhD day — a get-together of all the students who have embarked on the intellectual marathon of getting a doctorate at the Open University Business School. The PhD day is a bit like one of the water stations where the weary runners are handed refreshments by enthusiastic volunteers. Today’s volunteers included Professor Nina Reynolds from Southampton with a very useful talk on how the various components of a research project are like a jigsaw puzzle (i.e. they should fit, rather than be forced together), my colleague Dr Andrew Lindridge on ethical problems presented by sensitive research topics (some pretty hair-raising stories there), and my humble self on the the power of the poster. Click the link to see my slides.
Poster presentation is a skill that budding researchers need to master to cut it in the world of academic conferences. Most of the stuff that’s been written on the subject is in medical or nursing journals. But posters are gaining popularity in business subjects as a way of disseminating research quickly and simply.
Most of my audience today had just been on a course about how to design and create posters and some had actually produced entries for a poster competition to be judged on the day. Looking at the display I knew there wasn’ t much I could teach them about production, but the focus of my talk was on what posters are good at.
We all know, more or less, what posters are. Their simplicity is part of their strength. According to Wittich and Schuller, writing in the 1970s about educational media, they can be defined as a ‘visual combination of bold design, colour and message intended to catch and hold the attention of the passer-by long enough to implant or reinforce a significant idea in his or her mind’. You can see already that there is a strong overlap between what advertisers might want a poster to do, and what you might want your poster to do at an academic conference.
Asked what a poster might mean for a researcher, my audience came up with a list that included: summary, prop for talking, shop window, abstract and positive nightmare. I was pleased with that list because it conveyed the sense of how a poster sparks personal interaction between researcher and audience, and also how much planning and work is involved in producing one that’s effective and impactful.
First you need to decide the overall format of your poster. If you are presenting at a conference there may be instructions to follow. Or there may be a ‘normal’ approach for your subject area. But given the potential of a poster for getting your name known, you may want to defy convention and make a splash. It all depends on your objectives — what do you want the poster to do?
You should never underestimate the power of visual impact. A study of posters at medical science conferences concluded in 2011 that even indifferent science was seen as groundbreaking if it was expressed in a visually stunning poster. There are plenty of templates and ‘how to’ guides on the web to help you come up with something suitably amazing, using familiar packages like PowerPoint or Publisher.
But what about your role as presenter? Quite apart from what’s pinned or velcroed to the display stand, you need a persuasive script. The average visit to a poster is between two and four minutes according to that 2011 study cited earlier. So you need to convey your message superfast. Script an ‘elevator pitch’ about your research. This is a statement between 30 seconds and two minutes long ( apparently the range of time people spend in lifts) which conveys who you are, what you’re doing, and why it’s so interesting and important to your audience. Harvard Business School has a nice formula with career openings in mind, but it can easily be adapted to academic earbending.
Preparing answers to likely questions will save time, and make you more confident. Handouts (not necessarily miniature reproductions of the poster but key points with your contact details) are an excellent idea. As is having some kind of freebie on hand to attract visitors. Even the simple offer of a sweet can stop a visitor in their tracks, and (if sufficiently chewy) silence them long enough to listen to your pitch uninterrupted.
I mentioned common ground between advertisers and academics when it comes to posters. Advertising research from Holland in 2009 makes a number of interesting points. Using a tachistoscope (a device which can show split-second images of posters or other material) researchers established that consumers needed less viewing time to be able to recall posters which had clear branding and novel information, short headlines, minimal clutter, photographs and predominantly blue colour schemes. They took longer to absorb messages from posters with a lot of text, complex images, humour, pictures of women, information about price and red colour schemes. I’m baffled about the women and the colour scheme (my wife will not be surprised to hear that). But it’s clear that the more complex the message, the more difficulty people have getting it. Might seem obvious but it’s good to know there is scientific evidence for the old adage of keep it simple when it comes to posters — academic or otherwise.
