poster presentation template

poster presentation template

Enhancing Poster Presentations: A Persuasive Guide

1. Introduction

Creating and presenting a research poster is a common way for undergraduate researchers to share their work at a research conference. It offers an opportunity to engage with conference attendees and discuss your research in a way that is more interactive than an oral presentation. A research poster is a visual and oral means of conveying the details of your research to others. It usually includes a summary of your research, a hypothesis, the research methodology, and a conclusion. The main goal of a research poster is to succinctly articulate your research in a way that the viewer can understand the background of your research, the research itself, and the conclusion that the research yielded. However, there is a difference between a good research poster and a bad one. High-quality posters are not just ordinary research papers blown up onto a large piece of paper. They should be designed to clearly communicate your research and should also not be too text-heavy. Effective posters often have a good visual impact. This can be done by choosing a unique, eye-catching research topic or it can be accomplished through the use of visual aids such as graphs or tables. Most importantly, the presenter must be able to explain their research effectively while standing in front of their poster. Effective oral communication with the poster can greatly enhance the viewers’ understanding of the research.

2. Designing an Effective Poster

People confuse a poster with a visual abstract. An abstract is only a digest of a much longer report. The next day when you pass your poster, will you remember what it was about, or will you need to read the paper in order to understand it? If the latter, that’s a clear sign that your poster needs to be more clear and efficient in communicating the main message of your work. A poster should quickly and efficiently communicate what the work is about – what question was asked, why was it important, what did you do, what did you find, and what does it mean.

Keep your poster brief and visually stimulating. As a general rule, do not report more than you would put into a 15-minute talk. Too much information can be as bad as too little. Passersby will appreciate a clear, quick presentation. Too much text is boring and tough on the eyes; excessive details can be discussed one-on-one during question period. A poster is a conversation starter, not a display of your thesis or complete work. In some cases, you may bring data you have gathered from a longer piece of work, and you may create a smaller and more focused version of that poster, and bring different versions to different meetings.

By now, you probably have a sense of what a poster is: a brief, stand-alone summary of your work which a viewer can take in quickly and easily. A poster uses a different, visual grammar. It takes advantage of the fact that our brains process images faster than words. A poster is more than a standard research paper glued to a board. A well-designed poster uses a combination of visual and text elements to represent your work in a way that is interesting, clear, and accessible. You can use the strategies below to make your visual presentation of your work the best it can be.

Using a persuasive tone.

3. Captivating Content Strategies

The main goal of any communication tool is to convey information that can be understood and remembered. Your poster must therefore strike a balance between too much text (which will be ignored) and too little text (which will fail to communicate your message effectively). To achieve this balance, your poster should have a title which poses a question, states a problem, or invites discussion. Below this, a brief (2-3 sentence) overview should summarize your poster’s main point. A methods section is also important in order to convey to the audience exactly how the research was conducted, and what the conclusions were. The questions on the minds of those who view your poster will be “What did you do?” and “Why should I believe your conclusions?”. These questions could be answered using an illustrated flowchart, or by use of the more traditional bulleted list. Actual data collected from your research is probably the most important element of your poster. This can often be presented in the form of graphs, figures, tables etc, and should be accompanied by a brief description. The reader will then be drawn into the finer details of your research through the effective use of visuals with minimal text. Note that it is very inefficient to have large sections of your poster taken up by pages of written text. Finally, all posters should have a conclusion. This summarises what was learned from the research, the implications of these findings, and any new questions raised. Posters which omit this section leave the reader with the impression that the research is incomplete.

4. Engaging Visual Elements

After identifying their audience, authors should select photos, images, graphs, or other visuals that best communicate their message. In doing so, they need to consider the technical (size, quality) and the content attributes of visuals. Ask yourself: Would this image help explain my study to someone who had never heard of it? Would I use this picture in a slideshow presentation? If the answer is no to either of these questions, you might want to rethink your image choice. Too often, posters contain good visuals that are overshadowed by poor quality or inappropriate size. These key attributes generally correspond to the original size of the image file. You can generally determine the size and quality of an image by clicking on it in the saved folder where you can be provided information such as the size, type, and dimensions of the image. If this information indicates a small size (30kb to 100kb), it would be best to find a larger one for free rather than trying to enlarge the original. A great feature for free online searching and obtaining images is copernious.com, which can narrow the search using license filtering.

5. Delivering a Compelling Presentation

Third, it is important to have eye contact and greet people as they come by, so you can determine their interest in your research. Give a short pitch and have handouts ready to give to those who are interested. Finally, thank your viewers and always be prepared to provide a quick explanation of your research as the timing is often unpredictable towards the end of a session.

Second, consider the flow of traffic of the people viewing your poster. Avoid creating barriers, such as a picture on the left side of the poster taking attention away from the title, or complex graphs that are too difficult to understand. Likewise, avoid clustering your poster with too much information. There is a temptation to say as much as possible with the hope that someone will see something that interests them. This strategy can be quite damaging as the viewer is likely to be influenced to read excessive information to find content to interest them. Anything that takes greater than 10 minutes to read is better suited for a talk or private discussion. Finally, attract viewers to your poster with a quick overview of your findings. Only then, if they are interested, guide them into the particulars of your data.

First, articulate your ideas. This might sound elementary, but presenters often become so immersed in preparing the visual elements of a poster that they forget the need to explain them. Think of the poster as an illustration of your research and not a page-for-page representation of your manuscript. Present it in a way that you find interesting and think how you might best convey the concepts to others. Usually this will mean your verbal explanation will be somewhat different to the content of the poster but it is important to think about how you can be concise with what you say.