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Build Awesome Conference Posters with Mike Morrison
191 Plays5 years ago
Cheers to the last episode of The PolicyViz Podcast for 2019! I’ll be taking a couple of weeks off before coming back with brand new episodes in January. In the meantime, please take a peek at my forthcoming book, Elevate...
The post Episode #165: Mike Morrison appeared first on PolicyViz.
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Transcript
Introduction and Holiday Wishes
00:00:10
Speaker
Welcome back to the Policy Vis podcast. I'm your host, John Schwabisch. Happy holidays, everyone. I hope you'll find some time to rest and relax and unplug over the next couple of weeks and recharge for 2020. This is the last podcast for 2019.
Improving Academic Posters: Motivation and Critique
00:00:26
Speaker
I'm very happy to have Mike Morrison on the show. Mike is a graduate student at Michigan State University, and he has started a movement to improve the way people
00:00:37
Speaker
Create posters for academic conferences if you've never been at an academic conference or have never seen an academic poster It is worth a couple of minutes of your time to do a quick Google search because a lot of them are not great a lot of them are packed full with lots of text and
00:00:53
Speaker
3D bar charts, 3D exploding pie charts. A lot of the things that we in the DataVis community would not really appreciate in terms of good data communication. But Mike has taken upon himself to try to help people improve the way they present their information, their data, and their research.
00:01:10
Speaker
through the poster medium. So I'm excited to talk to him on the podcast. Before we get to that interview, just a couple of notes to close up the year.
Upcoming Book Announcement: 'Elevate the Debate'
00:01:19
Speaker
First off, if you didn't see, I have a new book coming out. It'll be released in early February. It's called Elevate the Debate. And it is authored with members and colleagues of the Urban Institute Communications Department. And I'm really excited to have that book coming out. It helps researchers and analysts go all the way through the communications process.
00:01:37
Speaker
of how to get their work out there to people who need it and who can use it. So we talk about how to create strategy, we talk about data visualization, we talk about presentation skills, how to write blogs, how to use social media effectively, how to talk to reporters, and how to put all that together into a communication strategy. So I'm really excited to have that book coming out in just a few weeks and I hope you'll check it out and leave a review on Amazon or just let me know what you think about the book.
00:02:03
Speaker
And of course, if you are interested in supporting this show, please do head over to my Patreon page, or just head over to my PolicyViz shop where you can check out new Hollet DataViz inspired holiday cards, thank you cards, postcards, there are t-shirts, there are games, there are posters, and there are more things there for all the DataViz folks in your life.
00:02:24
Speaker
And if you would just like to leave a review of the show, that'd be great.
Scientific Poster Layouts: Impact and Significance
00:02:30
Speaker
Check it out on iTunes, on Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, and all the places where you can listen to your favorite podcasts. So I hope you'll have a great New Year. I hope you have a great holiday season. So until 2020, this is the policy of this podcast. And here is my interview with Mike Morrison.
00:02:53
Speaker
Hey, Mike. How are you, friend? Hey, John. Pretty good. How about you? I'm doing well. It's a Monday morning. So, you know, you're still trying to wake up. Yeah, all is good. How are things by you? Pretty good. Preparing to fly out to Philly for the first big data collection for my better poster stuff. We're going to test it at a live poster session. OK, cool. I want to talk about that. I want to talk about all the work you've been doing with the posters and the better posters.
00:03:23
Speaker
hashtag that keeps popping up all the time on my Twitter feed. Maybe we can start by having you just give a little background for folks so they know where you're coming from. And then we can talk about why you got into creating better posters and all the ongoing work that you're doing.
00:03:35
Speaker
Sure. Yeah. So quick, quick life story. I guess I was a UX designer and web developer for about 10 years. Got really burned out of my job, quit my tech career to go back to school to get a PhD in work psychology where I am now. So hopefully I have about a year left on my PhD. And then I was completing my PhD.
00:03:55
Speaker
I started getting frustrated with a lot of the user experience as a science, including the poster, which is like, you may not know this, but posters are actually, I think by quantity, the biggest medium of science dissemination, even above papers, just by count quantity, I think. I've heard that a set in a paper, but they're very big.
00:04:12
Speaker
And so everybody uses basically scientists try to communicate tens of thousands of findings every year through posters. They all use the same template. So my idea was, well, if we can improve this default crappy template everybody uses, even by a little bit, any gains in efficiency of knowledge transfer, since everybody uses it, would have these massive ripple effects across all of science and kind of speed up the scientific
New Poster Proposal Gains Traction
00:04:30
Speaker
system.
00:04:30
Speaker
And so I, um, I introduced a, a new layout, a new sort of default proposal for, um, scientific poster layouts. I made a, like a cartoon about it, um, or release earlier this year. And I expected to be sending it to people for years and bothering them and trying to get them to look at it. And instead it exploded across science in 24 hours. Um, and then people started using it. People started using the design and the, and now a better poster is a thing and it's becoming increasingly, um, sort of.
00:04:58
Speaker
a standard alternative to the traditional wall of text scientific poster. So can you talk about the template that scientists are using because when I go to social science conferences,
00:05:09
Speaker
There are also lots of posters, obviously, but they don't seem to be using a particular template. They seem to be fairly, I mean, they all seem to be very dense with the words and the 3D bar charts and all that stuff. But they don't seem to follow a particular template. So is that different in these various scientific fields? I think templates may be not the most precise word. I think sort of approach is probably a better word.
Traditional vs. Good Design Principles in Posters
00:05:33
Speaker
I probably should use that. But I think basically, there are some common elements, right?
00:05:38
Speaker
that you want, but people put like, you know, the giant title of a top and below that the second most important thing in science, which is your long list of author names is the second biggest priority and right hierarchy for most posters. And then they sort of next thing they do is they try to say, Okay, I got this very complex dense paper, how do I get everything in this dense paper?
00:05:59
Speaker
onto this poster in the same format. So they'll have like an intro section and they follow the same format as a scientific paper. You have like an intro, methods, results, discussion, and it flows like that. And there'll be some variation in where people put that, which is actually a problem because if there's variation in it, then you have to learn the layout of every poster, which takes resources.
00:06:18
Speaker
And so it's generally the approach is they're trying to condense everything in their paper onto a poster. And what that ends up looking like is like imagine driving down the highway and seeing billboards with like paragraphs all over them. Like you're just not getting anything. And so it's a medium. If you look at how movie posters are designed and actual posters are designed, they're very minimal. I was once like printing out a poster at like a Kinko's or something. And it was one of my better posters and the girl printing it out was like, huh, this doesn't look like a scientific poster normally.
00:06:46
Speaker
And I was like, what do they normally look like? She's like, just covered in text. And I was like, and what do other posters look like for actual like poster venues? And she's like, more like, you know, imagery and a couple words. So it's like, yeah, exactly. So yeah, it's just very, it's, they're not, they're designing posters like papers more than they are designing posters like posters.
00:07:04
Speaker
Yeah. So, I mean, it's an interesting quandary, right? Because at a lot of conferences that I go to, um, what they usually have is a session for posters and they'll have the author standing next to it. So crappy presentation. Yeah, right. Exactly. And so I wonder, I would guess that most people who would push back on this would say, well, you know, I need to have all the detail on there.
00:07:26
Speaker
because I want the reader to be able to find all the subtlety and nuance and detail, which is what researchers always think. And now they take the same approach with their slides, which of course we could talk about too. But do you view the fact that people are reading these posters as a different medium than like a presentation?
00:07:45
Speaker
Uh, our posters different presentation. Yeah. I think the people assume people are going to read more than they do. And I think that's the largest missed, like bad assumption that scientists make when they make these posters is that people are going to stand there reading them in silence for 10 minutes. And what really happens is you walk by one, you desperately like sort of just ask the person and then you go up to the person and you just ask them to explain everything.
00:08:06
Speaker
And I think the research on posters supports me on this, that very little poster content is actually read. And so I think there's this misconception that I think beginner designers often have, that everything you put on the poster gets read, or everything you put on the poster gets in the attendees brain. And if that was true, you'd want everything on there, and it's so important. And like you said, in science, you're so trained that leaving something out is like lying by omission. If you don't put it on there, how are they supposed to know you did it?
00:08:34
Speaker
When in reality, there's a threshold to people's attention spans, especially when they're trying to process a room full of 50 posters, right? And that threshold is very, very low. And so if your poster content goes over that, people will just ask you to explain it. And so the most common phrase you hear in poster sessions is like, so tell me about your poster. And they're just asking for a summary because it's easier to ask you even to try to read this thing. And so it's really that question of, if no one reads it, why put it on your poster? And I think people,
00:09:02
Speaker
Like they don't realize how little content is actually used. Whereas a designer kind of approaches it as like, if it's not actually used, you don't, it doesn't belong on the poster. Um, even though it makes you feel, it makes you feel better to put it on there. Yeah. Right. Right. Cause you need everything on there all the time. Right. Exactly. Um, that's good science.
00:09:20
Speaker
Along with the posters, you also talk to people about how to do that little summary, that little elevator pitch. So when someone comes up to you and says, tell me about your, you know, you're standing in front of your poster and they say, tell me about your research. When you're talking about designing better posters, there's obviously the second part of it, which is the researchers standing there and have to give this 30 second, one minute little summary. Have you talked to folks about that and how they can improve doing that aspect of the presentation?
00:09:44
Speaker
So actually, I kind of think that that problem of having an elevator page, people asking you a summary is almost like a symptom of the disease of bad designs. Because if people are coming up to you and they're being like, so tell me about your poster. What that means is they have no idea what's on your poster and they're asking a general question. And your poster literally did no work for you. It prepared them not at all for anything.
00:10:06
Speaker
And I think when you use a better poster, which we'll probably talk about in a second, I've noticed that if you teach somebody something before they walk up, like if your poster actually does some work for you, when they walk up, they won't ask that. They won't ask like for a general summary or what I've also had people do is just start ranting about
Better Poster Design Features and Engagement
00:10:22
Speaker
the subject they picked out of my title.
00:10:23
Speaker
Um, and so like they won't do that. They'll ask a specific question. Like they'll be like, Oh, did you consider like, like I had one of my, one of my better posters where the finding was like people, uh, who find their work meaningful, like, uh, identify or like speak more using identity language. And this guy came up and he was like, Oh, did you consider collectivist cultures? That was the first words out of his mouth. Did you consider collectivist cultures? Not tell me what you did, tell me everything, but a very thoughtful, specific question. And you'll, when you provide a stronger information scent, you'll get
00:10:50
Speaker
Better questions like that and most people a lot of people are using better posters report that they report much deeper conversation So I think you should if you're giving elevator pictures and people asking you these generic summary questions your posters not doing anything for
00:11:03
Speaker
Your poster should at least delete them. Yeah, that's really good. So let's talk about your poster designs. You have a particular design that you've developed and people are obviously using it and I'll link to the hashtag on the show notes. But can you talk about the overall design of the poster template that you have and also how you developed it and why you went in the direction that you did?
00:11:26
Speaker
Sure. And the real backstory behind Better Poster is there are a lot of inefficient communication mediums in science. Really, there isn't a lot of design in science. And so I think I saw that coming in as a next designer.
00:11:41
Speaker
And I didn't really care. I was like, that's frustrating. It's annoying. But I got my career to think about, like everybody. And then I got a really bad health scare. And I think if you've ever been in that position of waiting on science to fix you or knowing somebody in your life where you want science to hurry up.
00:11:57
Speaker
I think it's a terrible position, and if you know if you're in science and you know how inefficient it is for stupid reasons, it's even more frustrating. And so the poster was really me trying to address a low-hanging fruit, just be like, you know what? I could speed up the whole system if I could just do a better PowerPoint template than these people are using, right?
00:12:15
Speaker
It doesn't even have to be perfect, just like better than the wall of text, which is a really low bar, because I mean, scientists, they're very brilliant people. But like, they don't have design, like a lot of them, like very few of them have any sort of design skill, they're just beginners at design as brilliant as they are at curing cancer or whatever, right? And so they make a mistake beginners makes really like an intern at a UX company could improve most scientific posters. But um,
00:12:35
Speaker
that was sort of the motivation behind it. And then was there something easy I could fix? I can't fix publishing. Maybe I could take a crack at posters. And then the poster layout itself is like,
00:12:46
Speaker
It's sort of like a TV with speakers on the side. So in the middle you have like your main findings stated in plain English, and then you can use imagery and graphs and things to back that up. And then if the person wants more detail, they can skim a sidebar where you have sort of a tight, like one minute summary of like your intro methods and results. And people call that like the introvert bar, because it's like the opposite from where the presenter is standing. So you can kind of keep your personal space and like skim the sidebar.
00:13:11
Speaker
And then if you want to engage the presenter, then the presenter has a sidebar by them called like the animal bar of a cheat sheet where they can point to things they need for presenting. And if you want even more information than that, then there's a QR code you can scan and get a copy of the whole paper. And it really was just sort of.
00:13:28
Speaker
it wasn't meant to be like the perfect end-all template. It would just sort of be like, here's an example of how we could use UX principles to transmit knowledge a little bit better. Here's a default you could build from using the principles. So I guess, does that cover it?
00:13:42
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I think so. And I'm curious. So I love this idea of, you know, building the poster. So the presenter or the, I guess presenter would be the right word, knows where to stand. So I was curious about why putting it in the center and the big headline box part is in the center. And from what I gather, that's because you want people to be able to gather on the edges as you get the more information. Is that right?
00:14:06
Speaker
Yeah, I think, I think so. And I think it was, um, it was basically just like looking at how people used posters. Like I saw, I would see people like pointing to things right by them. And then there's, there's a big like awkwardness factor in poster sessions. Right. So like when you go to a poster session, like, like the person sitting next to the poster has this sort of like bubble around them that if you go in that bubble, you're going to have to engage. You're gonna have to talk to them for five or 10 minutes. Right. And like, you're just like, you want to kind of engage a little bit more with the poster, but maybe like, just like not quite fully engaged yet.
00:14:32
Speaker
And there's also the case of like you'll be like if the person is talking to somebody already. Normally what you have to do is you have to wait on them to finish or wait on a new like elevator pitch because you can't read the poster, it's too overwhelming. But with a better poster, the idea was you're standing far away anyway, you could just sort of skim their sidebar while they're talking and read the details. Right. So that's that was the idea.
00:14:54
Speaker
Yeah, that's really interesting. So have you gotten any main complaints about how to make the actual poster? I wonder in particular, like, cause some people say, I don't know how to make a QR code. Like what are the pain points people find? I mean, it's a pretty simple layout, but it's, but I'm sure, especially wrong academics, there are lots of pain points. I'm just curious what they are.
00:15:14
Speaker
Sure. Yeah. I think that you hit that on the QR codes, definitely been the biggest barrier. I think at first people were like, no one's going to use the QR code. Nobody knows how to use them. It's like, well, we haven't had a use case for it. There has been no reason to learn. And now you're seeing it more. People are like, okay, I get it. I just point my phone at it.
00:15:31
Speaker
I think creating the QR code is probably the really the biggest barrier. It's just sort of like you go to the site, put in a link, understanding what it is, how it works. And it really is like the least important part of the poster. A lot of the better poster design features, including the ammo bar, were really just me saying, get your need for like just complete comprehensiveness and like over detail out of the way using the ammo bar and the QR code so that you feel like you're free to focus the rest of your poster, most of the poster's real estate on like communicating very efficiently.
00:15:59
Speaker
because you've gotten your insecurities out of the way. So the QR code's kind of a catch-all. But yeah, that's been a barrier. Let me think of what else. I think it is a dead simple layout. I think it's funny that there's been parodies of it on Twitter and things. And it's like, well, if you can parody it, it's probably simple enough. Yeah, right.
00:16:20
Speaker
I don't know. It's hard to answer pain points in the presentation experience and the presenting experience because I've had such good feedback on that. One of the things about Better Poster is it forces you to spend your time on the right things. That was part of the idea is that scientists shouldn't worry about where do I put this or how do I put this wall of text next to this wall of text? It should just be like, how do I really concentrate my research findings? How do I really condense what I found and what I learned?
00:16:45
Speaker
into something like people will actually absorb right which is very difficult and like that's where the pain comes from like it really cutting you know when you're used to splattering your paper all over a poster forcing yourself to cut it down to like a quarter of that content is painful it is great it goes against everything you're trained like over detail everything right.
00:17:03
Speaker
But that's where learning to be a good science communicator comes from is that pain. And a good designer is really learning how to cut things and how to summarize. And that's hard. But in terms of creating the poster itself, most of our surveys so far have found that people rated just much, much easier, much, much faster. I've even seen one guy do it where I think he found that people were able to create posters in something like a third of the time.
00:17:27
Speaker
and spend their time on better things. I think that was the secret sauce to better poster is it's the right way and it's the lazy way. If it's easy and it's better, why not? If it was harder, they'd never do it.
00:17:40
Speaker
No, right. Well, it's interesting, right? Because there's a trade-off in the time that you need to put into it. You need to put a lot more time in upfront because you need to narrow it down to the core elements of the paper. But it's really easy to make in the template. On the other hand, you don't have to think that hard about what you're going to show because you're going to show everything. But then you have to worry about how you're going to get it into the actual framework to actually print the thing. That's a great way to think about it. Yeah, it's flipped.
00:18:05
Speaker
it's flipped yeah it's actually yeah it's totally it's totally flipped um so you have this template out and i'm curious how you think about templates and whether they're a good thing or a bad thing i mean obviously you have a template so my my guess would be you know these are lean towards being a good thing but i do wonder whether you know there are some downsides to have in the templates where maybe it constrains some creativity so how do you think about
00:18:27
Speaker
that and giving people templates and then letting them branch out. I mean, you've already mentioned that it's a pretty basic template, so I would guess it's easy to go beyond that, but how do you think about it? I really did mean it. I really wanted to talk about this for a while.
00:18:45
Speaker
Look, if you have that kind of creative mentality, you want to see a lot of novelty, a lot of different things, a lot of variation. And I think for poster sessions, one of the things I found with better poster, and it's something I learned by it being all the same. When everybody uses the same template, there's this concern that it'll be too uniform, it'll be too boring. And I've been to a conference where it was all better poster. Every single poster was a better poster. And you do get that. It's like, OK, they're all the same background color. People didn't feel comfortable enough to really build on top of it enough yet.
00:19:15
Speaker
That's the downside, but the trade-off is using, and I'm going to bash templates in a second, but the good things first, using a template, it's a consistent location for everything. I didn't realize this, but I think people spend a lot of time in poster sessions learning the layout of each poster. Every layout is different. You have to dedicate cognitive resources to like, okay, where did they put this thing? Where did they put that thing?
00:19:35
Speaker
Whereas if it's all the same layout, you know where everything is. And so what that does is it reduces poster fatigue, which I didn't even think about. But I found it like the All Better poster conference, people were coming up to me and they were like, Oh, I can I find myself like looking at more posters because I get worn out, like I don't get worn out as fast, I can just keep going, right?
Benefits of Consistent Poster Templates
00:19:53
Speaker
So it's worth it right now, I think, to the trade-off there, getting less poster fatigue at the expense of a little bit less novelty is better, but it's not perfect. So I think the ultimate answer to that is what we want is we want that reduced poster fatigue and we want the engagement, the bigger engagement and the bigger fun you get out of all this creativity and all these variable novel layouts.
00:20:16
Speaker
is where we wanna go. But I think in the beginning, getting people off the old way, like I had to do a template because most people, the way they design posters is they get a template, right? They get basically their old poster or a poster from a senior grad student or something like that. And that is effectively a template. It's one that's local to their like program or whatever, right? But they're just copy and pasting their own crap into this old layout that one person created, right? And a lot of times it's like the school created one or something, right?
00:20:46
Speaker
or the conference or something. And so everybody uses templates already because it's very easy. And because they don't have the design training, it's very hard to start from scratch. And so I think creating a template was extremely necessary to get this to catch on and to get us over that old kind of design thinking or that old non-design thinking. And I think that, like,
00:21:06
Speaker
If you're not going to go further, if you're not going to get really creative and understand the UX principles, I think defaulting to a better template than the template you were using before is great. I think, to your point, where I'd like to see it go is maybe something like the better poster version 1 default as just sort of like, if you're pressed for time and you're rushed, which most grad students are, just here. Here's something that's decent. And maybe providing a few different alternatives, maybe several different alternatives, as many as I can fit in that template file.
00:21:35
Speaker
And just here's some variations, try one. And that's what I've tried to do is I put different mods in there. It's like, here's some ones you can just just grab them and go, right? You don't got time to worry about to just stick your content in here. But for the people who want to really understand and do a really exceptional job, providing them like some guidance on like, well, here are the principles, here are just the basic rules, you know, go nuts and, and encouraging that creativity.
00:21:56
Speaker
to get more engagement, which will reduce poster fatigue even more. That was a long answer. So I guess the short answer would be, I think templates are 100% necessary to get actual adoption. But I think long term, we really do want to see a lot of creativity and a lot of variation to get more engagement.
00:22:13
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that sounds about right. You mentioned a few minutes ago that you were you had done some survey work. And I'm curious, you know, you're coming from a from a research background. I'm curious how you've thought about testing some of these hypotheses that the posters are better that they reduce fatigue, you know, have you done any work
Proving Poster Design Effectiveness
00:22:35
Speaker
on there? Are you thinking about doing work on there? Like, where's the next step for you and in the better poster area?
00:22:39
Speaker
I think, so it's two things. One is doing that formal study testing. So we've had exit surveys so far, which we're trying, we have to get them published first before I can really talk about them in detail. But I mean, short answer, like better posters is coming ahead versus the old traditional wall of text. Poster fatigue is not the study formally. The poster fatigue thing's brand new to me. I didn't even think about that being a thing.
00:23:06
Speaker
until I started going to more of these conferences and getting the feedback from people using better posters. Next up from number one is doing for the formal studies. We've got our first big data collection this weekend at a major conference in Philadelphia. Our next big data collection is going to be in April.
00:23:21
Speaker
Um, and we have, we have a team of, um, of psychologists and educational, uh, researchers who are working on this, um, with me really, they're leading it. Um, I'm just for the cheerleader, but, um, they're, you know, they're doing a really good job of coming up with like how to measure these outcomes. And the key is like the exit surveys we've done so far have just been like preference, you know, like, like, do you prefer a better poster or the old design, like why, you know, like that, that kind of stuff, which is great, you know, but I think really what we'd love to get at is these objective measures, like.
00:23:50
Speaker
People report they get more conversations, more people stop at better posters. Can we make that objective? Can we get an objective count of that? People report better conversations. How the hell do we measure that? And then getting these learning outcomes. Is there really a longer life for the learning you get from a better poster? Do you learn more from better posters?
00:24:11
Speaker
which is what we want. And so those are those are our plan for the data collection. And then for me, it's also like, creating, I'm working on the sequel video to better poster right now, to really, really, the idea behind the sequel video is like, to the template point, like, there is no such thing as one idiot proof layout, right? Like better post is considerably better performing, and I'm more convinced now after seeing data than I was before even.
00:24:33
Speaker
considerably better than what we were doing. But really like the perfect poster is going to be different for everybody. And it's more important to teach these principles and encourage that creativity. So the better poster sequel video is really more of a lesson in user experience design for posters. And then you take it from here and here's 50 different ways you could do it, right? And across different fields. That's what's next. Formal study and a sequel.
00:24:56
Speaker
Nice. And the formal study, it sounds like you're going to be talking to both the producer of the research, producer of the poster and the audience members, the people who are walking around talking to the presenters and then reading the post. Oh, absolutely. I kind of, I kind of think of it like, I don't know, you've heard of, heard of like how Lego builds their toys, but like, I don't know why I think of that, but like they always talk about how like, like the build experience for a Lego is as thought through as like the play experience, right?
00:25:22
Speaker
And I think I really want a better poster to be a really good build experience. And so far it's shown to be that, and also be a good attendee experience. So absolutely, we're definitely studying both.
00:25:35
Speaker
Now have you, just one last thing and I'm curious, have you thought about creating these templates and other tools and other software tools? So I mean, it makes sense to me that most people probably find it easier, easiest maybe to work in PowerPoint to create these sort of things. But have you thought about trying to create templates and other tools? I mean, I don't know how many researchers are using Keynote, probably some.
00:25:58
Speaker
but like R Markdown or some of the other software tool, presentation tools that are out there. Have you played around with that? Google Slides might be a good example. Have you thought about creating these templates in other places? Oh, definitely. The Better Poster template file right now already has versions that people have made in R Markdown in LaTeX, and I've got one up there in InDesign. It's been a difficult thing for me because
00:26:23
Speaker
Yes, it'd be great if we could get scientists using something besides PowerPoint to design, using design software that's built for designing things, whereas PowerPoint's built for presentations. But I don't know how to approach it almost. I've included the R Markdown and the Latex versions. Those are in the template file. You can download those now.
00:26:40
Speaker
But I think I'd love to see scientists maybe at least get to Adobe XD, which is a free mock-up app from Adobe if you want to pay for it. That alone, just getting them a sense of grid and guides and alignment and things like that that are built into Adobe XD that aren't in PowerPoint as well, would start getting them better posters just by default and helping them do these more complex design patterns and things very easily without with a very
00:27:05
Speaker
Easy learning curve. I think that'd be step one. I don't, do you think it's possible? Do you think like we could, like, if I was like, if we could get people using, get off, get off PowerPoint, I don't know how we'd do it. I think it's, it's pretty like field specific too, right? Like I think there's some fields that use SPSS primarily. There's some fields that use data primarily. Um, I mean, it seems to me, I would guess that a lot of people who are building presentation slides aren't accustomed to at least in the academic world, or at least in economics, I should say, aren't used to building them via code.
00:27:34
Speaker
But there's no reason why they couldn't learn, right? And there's a lot to be said for being able to do it in code. But I think a lot of people, at least in the fields that I work in, are used to working in the Microsoft Office suite. And there's nothing inherently
00:27:49
Speaker
as I've argued many times, there's nothing inherently wrong with PowerPoint. But I think just like you said, you have these other platforms, these other tools that only serves to broaden the base of people who could use them. And so inherently, I think it's only a good thing because you get more people involved. And part of this is just making it social, kind of like a social network that you get people to buy in, they do a better job, and then their friends start to do it.
00:28:15
Speaker
they say, well, I don't use PowerPoint, you know, you get that little thing you say, well, hey, you could go do it in our markdown, or you could do it in Google Slides, whatever. And I think that's only only a good thing. That's, that's a great point. I think that just that sold me on it being worthwhile. That was while trying to capture everybody, you know, right, just getting the people who already use it, or who will is enough to
00:28:33
Speaker
to maybe start them talking about it.
Beyond PowerPoint: Encouraging Design Software
00:28:35
Speaker
Adobe XT is free and it's actually easier. I think I'll try to do that more, especially with some of the new layouts I'm introducing in the sequel video. I doubt it'd be difficult to do them in PowerPoint. Right. This conversation leads me to, I think, now what I want to do is one last question. We can talk about this for a while. I know. I feel like we could do two hours on this stuff.
00:28:56
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So we talked a little bit about pushback that you've heard about the template itself. But I'm curious about when you talk to people who are using the template who are making posters. Have you heard pushback that they've received from
00:29:12
Speaker
colleagues. No, there's such a massive contrast between the feedback I get from people who have tried it and people who haven't tried it, you know, it's like the feedback from people who have tried it has been overwhelmingly positive. I mean, it is true that like they're, they do get some pushback from like my advisor won't let me use it, right?
00:29:28
Speaker
And when they use it, I hope the formal data shows half of what I'm seeing just anecdotally. And not just individually using it. Conferences will email me and be like, we rolled it out. It went amazing. People loved it and things like that. And then individually, people are like, my voice went hoarse from talking so much.
00:29:48
Speaker
And yeah, I think the people who've used it, the negative feedback people have used it have been like,
Positive Feedback and Increased Engagement
00:29:55
Speaker
one guy was like my, I needed sort of a bigger graph area, right? Or for my study, or like, I think my conference, it was super, super crowded, and maybe like moving to finding up higher, things like that are like really, those are very useful. But overall, it's been just incredible.
00:30:16
Speaker
Yeah, I hope the formal data shakes out half as good as what I'm seeing in everything else. Yeah, that's great. Well, I'm looking forward to seeing the study because, you know, researchers, especially when you can say, hey, here's a study that shows this thing is better. We're not just making this up. Yeah, exactly. I got to back it up now. Right. And like, right. The final push, right. I think is I think the funny thing, though, is that there's a lot of studies showing the old design doesn't work.
00:30:38
Speaker
Like, it's sort of like, okay, so like almost literally anything besides that crap, like, but like, maybe, you know, maybe I did worse, maybe I did worse than zero. And so like, I'm actively poisoning people with this layout. But like,
00:30:53
Speaker
Because nothing gets it on there. To me, it's pretty evident. People are asking you, summarize your whole poster. It means they don't know what's on it. It can be nothing. So I'm trying to beat zero. But yeah, I'm hoping that if we get some data that's compelling, it'll convince even more people. But so far, people have been really, really good about trying it. And I think because there isn't a lot of evidence either way, I think one of the best things conferences can do is just encouraging any alternative layout. Forget better poster. Just letting people know that they don't have to conform, I think, is really powerful.
00:31:23
Speaker
Yeah, and I'll make one last comment on that because I just came back from a conference and the posters that often win, you know, they have like a poster competition. And the posters that often win are based on the content, not on the view. And I am a little torn about that, right?
00:31:42
Speaker
because is that what we're supposed to be judging when it comes to, you know, and maybe we shouldn't be judging at all, right? Maybe there shouldn't be a competition, but given that there is one, like, is that the right thing to judge? Or is it how much interaction someone has had with people who are there and the people are there looking at the poster because the poster itself is more engaging?
00:32:00
Speaker
That's, I would love to, yeah, we could talk more about that one because I'm getting that question, right? I'm starting to get this question from conferences like, look, we're trying to evolve our coding scheme for judging to incorporate, like to encourage really like more better poster style layouts, right? And like, what criteria should we look at?
00:32:18
Speaker
First off, I've seen better poster, plenty of people, the first ever better poster, one best poster in the whole show. It's still pretty awarded, but I think that is an important variable because I've seen so many amazing studies. That's the worst part about this to me, about
00:32:34
Speaker
people clinging to the old design is some of these really brilliant grad students and scientists that will have this really world-altering study, they'll put it on a poster that transmits no information. They'll just cover it in graphs and text and things like that. People will walk by it. You'll have 50 cancer researchers walking by the greatest cancer poster ever made and not even seeing it because it's just too overloading.
00:32:54
Speaker
And I wonder how many really great research study findings are just completely lost and they don't get seen at all by the people that should see them because of design issues. And I think how many people you actually affect with your poster is a huge variable in how you do it, right? Because if you have a brilliant study that no one reads, did you do a good job?
00:33:14
Speaker
You did a great job on the study. Um, but it's just a different, it's an interesting question. And I think probably a balance is probably the right answer, but that's kind of a, I don't know. No, that's right. Maybe I'll email you later. We'll talk about some criteria. Yeah. Yeah. That'd be great. That's great. Uh, Mike, thanks so much for coming on the show. This is really, this is really great. Uh, I'm looking forward to seeing, uh, the, the, the research come out and whenever it does and, uh, it sounds great. So thanks for coming on. Yeah. Thanks for having me. It's great.
00:33:45
Speaker
And thanks to everyone for tuning in this year. I hope you've enjoyed the show over the last 12 months. I've hope you learned a lot about data visualization, about presentation skills, about using data to effectively help people do their jobs better, make decisions and inspire others. So until next time, and that will be in early 2020, this has been the policy of this podcast. Thanks so much for listening.