why are presentation aids important during public speaking

Aesthetics and Delivery

Learning Objectives

• Explain reasons why presentation aids are important in public speeches;
• Detail how presentation aids function;
• Discuss strategies for implementing and integrating presentation aids.

When you give a speech, you are presenting much more than just a collection of words and ideas. Because you are speaking live, your audience members will aesthetically experience your speech through all five of their senses: hearing, vision, smell, taste, and touch. In addition to your verbal and nonverbal embodiment, presentation aids assist in amplifying your content for the audience’s overall experience.

Presentation aids are the resources beyond the speech itself that a speaker uses to enhance the message conveyed to the audience. The type of presentation aids that speakers most typically make use of are visual aids: pictures, diagrams, charts and graphs, maps, and the like. Audible aids include musical excerpts, audio speech excerpts, and sound effects. A speaker may also use fragrance samples or food samples as olfactory (sense of smell) or gustatory (sense of taste) aids. Finally, presentation aids can be three-dimensional objects or they can change over a period of time, as in the case of a how-to demonstration. As you can see, you have a range of presentation aids at your disposal.

Effective presentation aids are guided by two questions:

• How can I best represent an idea in my speech through a presentation aid?
• When is best to introduce it to the audience?

If you’re able to answer these two main questions, the audience is more likely to understand your idea more fully. Each presentation aid a speaker uses must be a direct, uncluttered example of a specific element of the speech. It is understandable that someone presenting a speech about Abraham Lincoln might want to include a photograph of him, but if there’s a high probability that the audience knows what Lincoln looked like, the picture would not contribute much to the message unless, perhaps, the message was specifically about the changes in Lincoln’s appearance during his time in office.

In this example, other visual artifacts may be more likely to deliver relevant information—a diagram of the interior of Ford’s Theater where Lincoln was assassinated, a facsimile of the messy and much-edited Gettysburg Address, or a photograph of the Lincoln family, for example. The key is that each presentation aid must directly express an idea in your speech.

Moreover, presentation aids must be used at the time when you are presenting the specific ideas related to the aid. For example, if you are speaking about coral reefs and one of your supporting points is about the location of the world’s major reefs, it would make sense to display a map of these reefs while you’re talking about location. If you display it while you are explaining what coral actually is, or describing the kinds of fish that feed on a reef, the map will not serve as a useful aid—in fact, it’s likely to be a distraction.

In this chapter, we will discuss some principles and strategies to help you incorporate effective presentation aids into your speech. We will begin by discussing the functions that good presentation aids fulfill. Next, we will explore some of the many types of presentation aids and how best to design and utilize them. We will also describe various media that can be used for presentation aids.

Functions of Presentation Aids

Why should you use presentation aids? If you have prepared and rehearsed your speech adequately, shouldn’t a good speech with a good delivery be enough to stand on its own? While it is true that impressive presentation aids will not rescue a poor speech, it is also important to recognize that a good speech can often be made even better by the strategic use of presentation aids. Remember that your speech is an experience rather than the isolated transmission of information, so presentation aids can enhance or detract from the aesthetics.

Presentation aids can fulfill several functions:

• improve your audience’s understanding of the information you are conveying;
• enhance audience memory and retention of the message;
• add variety and interest to your speech;
• enhance your credibility as a speaker.

Let’s examine each of these functions.

Improving Audience Understanding

Human communication is a complex process that often leads to misunderstandings. If you are like most people, you can easily remember incidents when you misunderstood a message or when someone else misunderstood what you said to them. Misunderstandings happen in public speaking just as they do in everyday conversations.

One reason for misunderstandings is that perception and interpretation are highly complex, individual processes (remember that communication is always cultural and contextual rather than a universal set of symbols). Most of us have seen the image in which, depending on your perception, you see either the outline of a vase or the facial profiles of two people facing each other, known as the Rubin’s vase (Hasson et al, 2001). Or you may have listened to a song for years only to have a friend say, “uh, those aren’t the lyrics!” These examples demonstrate how interpretation can differ, and it means that your presentations must be based on careful thought and preparation to maximize the likelihood that your listeners will understand your presentation as you intend them to.

As a speaker, one of your basic goals is to help your audience understand your message. To reduce misunderstanding, presentation aids can be used to clarify or to emphasize. Use table 10.1 to identify questions that underly clarifying or emphasizing ideas.

Aiding Retention and Recall

The second function that presentation aids can serve is to increase the audience’s chances of remembering your speech. An article by the U.S. Department of Labor (1996) summarized research on how people learn and remember. The authors found that “83% of human learning occurs visually, and the remaining 17% through the other senses—11% through hearing, 3.5% through smell, 1% through taste, and 1.5% through touch.”

For this reason, exposure to an image can serve as a memory aid to your listeners. When your graphic images deliver information effectively and when your listeners understand them clearly, audience members are likely to remember your message long after your speech is over.

An added plus of using presentation aids is that they can boost your retention and memory while you are speaking. Using your presentation aids while you rehearse your speech will familiarize you with the association between a given place in your speech and the presentation aid that accompanies that material.

Adding Variety and Interest

A third function of presentation aids is simply to make your speech more interesting. For example, wouldn’t a speech on community gardens have a greater impact if you accompanied your remarks with pictures of such gardens? You can imagine that your audience would be even more enthralled if you had the ability to display produce for your audience live. Similarly, if you were speaking to a group of gourmet cooks about spices, you might want to provide tiny samples of spices that they could smell and taste during your speech.

Enhancing a Speaker’s Credibility

The final function of a presentation aid is to increase your ethos, or credibility. A high-quality presentation will contribute to your professional image. This means that in addition to containing important information, your presentation aids must be clear, clean, uncluttered, organized, and large enough for the audience to see and interpret correctly. Misspellings and poorly designed presentation aids can damage your credibility as a speaker. Even if you give a good speech, you run the risk of appearing unprofessional if your presentation aids are poorly executed.

In addition, make sure that you give proper credit to the source of any presentation aids that you take from other sources. Using a statistical chart or a map without proper credit will detract from your credibility, just as using a quotation in your speech without credit would. This situation will usually take place with digital aids such as PowerPoint slides. The source of a chart or the data shown in a chart form should be cited at the bottom of the slide and orally in your speech.

If you focus your efforts on producing presentation aids that contribute effectively to your meaning, that look professional, and that are handled well, your audience will most likely appreciate your efforts and pay close attention to your message. That attention will help them learn or understand your topic in a new way and will thus help the audience see you as a knowledgeable, competent, and credible speaker. With the prevalence of digital communication, the audience expectation of quality visual aids has increased.

Avoiding COMMON PRESENTATION AID PITFALLS

Using presentation aids can come with some risks. However, with a little forethought and adequate practice, you can choose presentation aids that enhance your message and boost your professional appearance in front of an audience.

One principle to keep in mind is to use only as many presentation aids as necessary to present your message or clarify a component of your idea. Too often, speakers fall into a “must have long and detailed presentational aids for the entire speech” – in these cases, the aid can overshadow or distract from the content, rather than to clarify or add emphasis. Instead, simplify as much as possible, emphasizing the information you want your audience to understand rather than overwhelming them with too much text and too many images.

Another important consideration is context. Remember to survey the literal context of your speech to decide what aid is possible – is there technology? Is there a poster stand or a white board? Are there speakers? Is there WiFi? Keep your presentation aids within the limits of the working technology available to you. Whether or not your technology works on the day of your speech, you will still have to present. As the speaker, you are responsible for arranging the things you need to make your presentation aids work as intended. Carry a roll of duct tape so you can display your poster even if the easel is gone. Find an extra chair if your table has disappeared. Test the computer setup. Have your slides on a flash drive AND send it to yourself as an attachment or post to a cloud service. Have an alternative plan prepared in case there is some glitch that prevents your computer-based presentation aids from being usable. And of course, you must know how to use the technology.

Finally, presentation aids do not “speak for themselves.” When you display a visual aid, you should explain what it shows, pointing out and naming the most important features. If you use an audio aid such as a musical excerpt, you need to tell your audience what to listen for. Similarly, if you use a video clip, it is up to you as the speaker to point out the characteristics in the video that support the point you are making—but probably beforehand, so you are not speaking over the video. At the same time, a visual aid should be quickly accessible to the audience. This is where simplicity comes in. Just as in organization of a speech you would use 3-5 main points, not 20 main points, you should limit categories of information on a visual aid.

Types of Presentation Aids

Now that we’ve explored some basic hints for preparing presentation aids, the next step is determining what type of presentation aid is best. We’ll discuss types of aids that fall into two categories: representations of data and/or representations that display a real process, idea, person, place, or thing. In other words, ask yourself: “what type of information do I think needs to be accentuated? A statistic? An image of an idea?” Once you answer, the categories below can help you determine which aid would be the best to display that type of information.

Representations of Data

If you are looking to clarify a complex piece of data or piece of evidence from your speech, you may decide that a chart, graph, or diagram is best. Charts, graphs, and diagrams help represent statistics, processes, figures, or other numeric evidence that may be otherwise difficult to comprehend if just spoken.

Chart : A chart is commonly defined as a graphical representation of data or a sketch representing an ordered process. Whether you create your charts or do research to find charts that already exist, it is important for them to exactly match the specific purpose in your speech. Figure 10.1 (“Acupuncture Chart”) shows a chart related to acupuncture and may be useful in a speech about the history and development of acupuncture. However, if your goal is to show the locations of meridians (the lines along which energy is thought to flow) and the acupuncture points, you may need to select an alternative image.

There are two common types of charts: statistical charts and sequence-of-steps chart.

• Statistical Charts : For most audiences, statistical presentations must be kept as simple as possible, and they must be explained. When visually displaying information from a quantitative study, you need to make sure that you understand the material and can successfully and simply explain how one should interpret the data. This is surely an example of a visual aid that, although it delivers a limited kind of information, does not speak for itself. As with all other principles of public speaking, KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE.
• Sequence-of-Steps Charts : Charts are also useful when you are trying to explain a process that involves several steps. If you are working with a scientific or medical argument, you may need to visually map the sequence because the process is otherwise difficult to follow.

Graph: A graph is a pictorial representation of the relationships of quantitative data using dots, lines, bars, pie slices, and the like. Graphs show how one factor (such as size, weight, number of items) varies in comparison to other items. Whereas a statistical chart may report the mean (or average) ages of individuals entering college, a graph would show how the mean age changes over time. A statistical chart may report the number of computers sold in the United States, while a graph will use bars or lines to show the breakdown of those computers by operating systems such as Windows, Macintosh, and Linux.

Public speakers can show graphs using a range of different formats. Some of those formats are specialized for various professional fields. Very complex graphs often contain too much information that is not related to the purpose of a speech. If the graph is cluttered, it becomes difficult to comprehend. If you find a graph that has useful information, ask: “do I need to represent this graph as-is or can I represent a key portion of the graph that’s most relevant to my data?”

There are 3 types of graphs that we’ll introduce: line graphs, bar graphs, and pie graphs.

• Line Graph : A line graph is designed to show trends over time. You could, for example, use a line graph to chart Enron’s stock prices over time.
• Bar Graph: Bar graphs are useful for showing the differences between quantities. They can be used for population demographics, fuel costs, math ability in different grades, and many other kinds of data. The graph in Figure 10.2 (“Suicide vs. Homicide”) is well designed. It is relatively simple and is carefully labeled, making it easy for you to guide your audience through the recorded numbers of each type of death. The bar graph is designed to show the difference between rates of suicides and homicides across various age groups. When you look at the data, the first grouping clearly shows that eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds are more likely to die because of a homicide than any of the other age groups.
• Pie Graph: Pie graphs are usually depicted as circles and are designed to show proportional relationships within sets of data; in other words, they show parts of or percentages of a whole. They should be simplified as much as possible without eliminating important information.

Figure 10.2

Diagrams : Diagrams are visual representations that simplify a complex process. They may be drawings or sketches that outline and explain the parts of an object, process, or phenomenon that cannot be readily seen. When you introduce a diagram, you are working to label parts of a process for your audience. For example, you may decide to diagram how human communication occurs because simply describing that process would be too complex.

Charts, graphs, and diagrams can present challenges in being effective but also in being ethical. To be both ethical and effective, you need a good understanding of what statistics mean, and you need to create or use graphs that show amounts clearly. Remember that clarifying is a key goal of presentational aids, so ask: is my graph or chart making my information more or less difficult to comprehend?

Representations of Real Processes or Things

In contrast, a second set of presentational aids represents real processes, things, persons, places, or ideas. While charts and graphs simplify more complex or abstract ideas, data, or evidence, this set of presentational aids attempts to add emphasis to real, literal stuff. This includes: maps, photos, videos, audio recordings, and objects (diagrams can also fall into this category, depending on what you’re mapping).

Maps: Maps are extremely useful if the information is clear and limited. There are all kinds of maps, including population, weather, ocean current, political, and economic maps, so you should find the right kind for the purpose of your speech. Choose a map that emphasizes the information you need to deliver and are trying to represent. For example, you might decide that a map outlining the Hawaiian Islands would be helpful to clarify the spatial dimensions of the state. Although the map may not list the names of the islands, it is helpful in orienting the audience to the direction and distance of the islands to other geographic features, such as the Pacific Ocean.

Photographs and Drawings: Sometimes a photograph or a drawing is the best way to show an unfamiliar but important detail. For example, if you gave a speech about the impact of plastics on ocean life, you may decide to include a photo of a beached whale who had suffered from plastic inhalation. The photo may emphasize the impact of plastic that speaking otherwise doesn’t capture.

Video or Audio Recordings: Another very useful type of presentation aid is a video or audio recording. Whether it is a short video from a website such as YouTube or Vimeo, a segment from a song, or a piece of a podcast, a well-chosen video or audio recording may be a good choice to enhance your speech.

There is one major warning to using audio and video clips during a speech: do not forget that they are supposed to be aids to your speech, not the speech itself! In addition, be sure to avoid these four mistakes that speakers often make when using audio and video clips:

• Avoid choosing clips that are too long for the overall length of the speech.
• Practice with the audio or video equipment prior to speaking. If you are unfamiliar with the equipment, you’ll look foolish trying to figure out how it works. Be sure that the speakers on the computer are on and at the right volume level.
• Cue the clip to the appropriate place prior to beginning your speech, and try to avoid any advertisement interruptions (which can make the aid look unprofessional).
• The audience must be given context before the video or audio clip is played, specifically what the clip is and why it relates to the speech. At the same time, the video should not repeat what you have already said, but add to it.

Objects: Objects refer to anything you could hold up and talk about during your speech. If you’re talking about the importance of not using plastic water bottles, you might hold up a plastic water bottle and a stainless-steel water bottle as examples.

Ways to Display Your Presentation Aid

Above, we’ve discussed why you might use a presentation aid and what aid might work best. “How do I display these?” you might be wondering. For example, if you decide that a graph would be helpful in clarifying a complex idea, you have options on how to present that graph to the audience, including presentation software or more low-tech means. We’ll talk through each below.

Using Presentation Software

Presentation software and slides are a common mechanism to display information for your audience. You are likely familiar with PowerPoint, but there are several others:

• Prezi, available at www.prezi.com
• Slide Rocket, available at www.sliderocket.com
• Google Slides, available in Google Drive and useful for collaborative assignments
• Keynote, the Apple presentation slide software on Macs
• Impress, an Open Office product (http://www.openoffice.org/prod-uct/impress.html)
• AdobeAcrobat Presenter

Each software allows you to present professional-looking slides. For example, you can use the full range of fonts, although many of them are not appropriate for presentations because they are hard to read. Use Table 10.3 to track advantages and disadvantages of using slides.

Remember that presentation software aids are a way to display what you want your audience to know—a graph, an idea, an image. Presentation software is not the only way to display these, so slides should be a purposeful choice. W hat you display is the top priority.

Before we continue, we have one note: You’ll notice that “text from the speech” is not included in our list of types of presentation aids in the section above. You may decide that adding emphasis to a key word or concept from your speech is needed – and that’s OK! You may even decide that providing that concept, visually, for the audience is worthwhile by writing or displaying the words, and that’s OK, too. However, remember that presentation aids are included for a reason, and it’s often unnecessary to provide an entire outline of your speech’s text through a presentation software like PowerPoint slides. Speakers, too often, copy and paste parts of their speech onto a PowerPoint slide and think, ‘There! A presentation aid!” Ask: what purpose does this text serve for my audience? If your answer doesn’t result in clarifying, emphasizing, or retaining, it’s likely not needed.

Creating Quality Slide Shows

Slides should show the principles of good design, which include unity, emphasis or focal point, scale and proportion, balance, and rhythm (Lauer & Pentak, 2000). Presenters should also pay attention to tone and usability. With those principles in mind, here are some tips for creating and then using presentation software.

• Unity and Consistency: use a single (readable) sans serif font, single background, and unified animations for your visuals so that they look like a unified set. Each slide should have one message, photo, or graphic.
• Emphasis, Focal Point, and Visibility: all information should be large enough—at least 24-point font— for audiences. To guarantee visibility, follow the 7X7 rule: no more than seven horizontal lines of text (including the heading) and the longest line should not exceed seven words. Finally, provide higher contrast between text and slides.
• Tone : Fonts, color, clip art, photographs, and templates all contribute to tone, which is the attitude being conveyed in the slides. Make sure the tone of the presentation software matches the overall aesthetic tone of the speech.
• Scale and Proportion : Use numbers to communicate a sequence. If bullet points are used, the text should be short. Adjust graphs or visuals on the slide, avoiding small or multiple visuals on the same image.
• Balance and rhythm : Work to create symmetry and balance between each slide. When presenting, think about what’s being displayed on the slide to the audience and when. If you aren’t using it, insert a black screen between images.
• Usability : With any image or graphic, make sure to include “alt text” – or a description of what the image is. Proving alt text is helpful for users with screen readers.

We recommend that you survey your university’s resources for assistance with creating quality and accessible presentation slides.

Low-Tech Presentation Aids

In addition to presentation slides, there are other “low-tech” ways to display. Instead of providing a diagram on PowerPoint, you may decide that drawing it live is more beneficial. Below, we talk through a few additional means to display your information to the audience.

Dry-Erase Board

If you use a chalkboard or dry-erase board, what you display should still be thought-out, rehearsed, and clearly professional. You run the risk of appearing less prepared, but numerous speakers do utilize chalk and dry-erase boards effectively. Typically, these speakers use the chalk or dry-erase board for interactive components of a speech. For example, maybe you’re giving a speech in front of a group of executives. Chalk or dry-erase boards are very useful when you want to visually show information that you are receiving from your audience. If you ever use a chalk or dry-erase board, follow these five simple rules:

• Write large enough so that everyone in the room can see (which is harder than it sounds; it is also hard to write and talk at the same time!).
• Print legibly; don’t write in cursive script.
• Write short phrases; don’t take time to write complete sentences.
• Never turn your back to the audience while you’re talking.
• Be sure you have markers that will not go dry, and clean the board afterward.

A flipchart is useful for situations when you want to save what you have written for future reference or to distribute to the audience after the presentation. As with whiteboards, you will need good markers and readable handwriting, as well as a strong easel to keep the flipchart upright.

Posters often represent a key graph, idea, or visualization. For a poster, you likely want to display one key piece of information at one key part of your presentation. Otherwise, posters are probably not the best way to approach presentation aids in a speech. There are problems with visibility as well as portability. Avoid producing a presentation aid that looks like you simply cut pictures out of magazines and pasted them on.

Handouts are appropriate for delivering information that audience members can take away with them. As we will see, handouts require a great deal of management if they are to contribute to your credibility as a speaker.

First, make sure the handout is worth the trouble of making, copying, and distributing it. Does the audience really need the handout? Second, make sure to bring enough copies of the handout for each audience member to get one. Having to share or look on with one’s neighbor does not contribute to a professional image. Third, consider timing. We recommend providing the handout at the conclusion of your speech.

Reminders for Integrating Presentation Aids

Regardless of what presentation aid you choose—a photo, chart, map— and the medium that you’ll display it—a handout, slide deck, audio device— all presentation aids require rehearsal. While we’ve included tips on integrating presentation aids in your speech throughout this chapter, use the following list of strategies to integrate your aid into the speech.

• Gather all citation information and provide it both visually and orally to your audience.
• In your speaking notes, mark where you will integrate the presentation aid so that you don’t forget about it due to nervousness.
• Determine where the presentation aid will be when it’s not being displayed.
• For a PowerPoint presentation, include blank/black slides that are used when your visual aid isn’t in use.
• Store other objects in non-distracting locations.
• Rehearse your transitions into and out of the presentation aid.

The Mythical Norm and Presentation Aids

In Chapter 8 on nonverbal delivery, we introduced the idea of the mythical norm. As you remember, when you’re an audience member, it’s important to reflect on the assumptions that we hold about the speaker. Are we judging a speaker based on our own assumptions of what’s normal?

Similarly, when you’re making decisions about presentation aids as a speaker, it’s important to be reflexive about who is in the audience. Are you making decisions about presentation aids based on our own assumptions about what’s normal and who’s normal? Are you assuming, for example, that all audience members are able-bodied and able to visually and audibly experience your presentation aid?

Creating an accessible experience for audience members must be a priority. For example, you may want to avoid red and green colors on your visual aids as they’re not perceivable to all audience members. While constructing presentation software of slides, make sure you include alt-text for images, especially if you provide the slides to the presentation. These are for audience members who may be sight-impaired. Check out guidelines for the presentation software you’re using on how to embed alt-text. Additionally, be weary of smells that may be intense or irritate audience members. Overall, be careful not to assume that audience members also fit the mythical norm as you construct your presentation aid.

To finish this chapter, we will recap a few key pieces of information. Whether your aid is a slide show, object, or dry erase board, these standards are essential:

• Presentation aids must be easily experienced by your audience.
• Presentation aids must be portable, easily handled, and efficient. They should disappear when not in use.
• Presentation aids should be aesthetically pleasing, which includes in good taste. Additionally, electronic media today allows you to create very “busy” slides with varieties of fonts, colors, collages of photos, etc. Keep in mind the principles of unity and focal point.
• Color is another aesthetic aspect. Some colors are just more soothing, readable, and appropriate than others. Also, the color on your slides may be different when projected from what is on your computer.
• Provide credit when using images that aren’t your own.
• Finally, presentation aids must support your speech and have high relevance to your content.

This chapter has covered a wide range of information about all kinds of audio and visual aids, but audiences today expect and appreciate professionally designed and handled presentation aids. The stakes are higher now, but the tools are many.

Media Attributions

• Acupuncture Chart is licensed under a Public Domain license
• Homicide_suicide_USA © Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is licensed under a Public Domain license

Speak Out, Call In: Public Speaking as Advocacy Copyright © 2019 by Meggie Mapes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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12 Chapter 12: Presentation Aids

Victoria Leonard, College of the Canyons

Adapted by Katharine O’Connor, Ph.D., Florida SouthWestern State College

Figure 12.1: Katherine Maher 1

Introduction

We are sure that there are days when you just throw your clothes on to go to school or work, and that is all that is important! But, there are other days when you may choose to wear jewelry, hats, belts, or other accessory items. Presentation aids can be looked at as those accessory items. They don’t detract from what you are wearing, but rather the goal is to enhance what you are wearing! In writing a speech we all tend to put our greatest effort into the construction of the speech outline. That is still your primary goal. However, your instructor may ask you to also construct a presentation aid , which is anything that helps you convey the meaning of your speech to the audience. A presentation aid is a resource that goes beyond the words you say in a speech and enhances the message for the audience. This is not a “busy-work” activity! There are important reasons to construct presentation aids.

The Power of Presentation Aids

If you recall back to your youth, or even now, this may resonate with you. If you ever asked a parent why you had to do something, the answer you might have received would have been “Because I said so!” We hope that in looking at the value and power of presentation aids you will see that our reasons for telling you to use them in your speech go beyond what your professors have as requirements for your speech. There are six important reasons to use presentation aids.

Presentation Aids Add Clarity to Your Speech

Imagine a speech on how to do yoga. Would you know how to position your body without seeing either a picture, video, or human demonstration? Probably not. You would need something to see to be able to then go home and duplicate their movements. Presentation aids make your speech easier to understand.

Figure 12.2: Scorpion Pose 2

Presentation Aids Add Interest to Your Speech

This does not mean you are not interesting! When we have something to look at that is interesting, unique, and meaningful, there is the “ah-ha” moment that makes the speech more exciting. Later in this chapter, you will read more about the types of things you can do, but here’s an example of some of my favorite presentation aids. One student doing a speech on Harry Potter created a book that was three feet high. The cover of the book was a hand-drawn picture of Harry Potter and each subsequent page showed each of the books of the series. The detail and creativity were so compelling that the class was truly mesmerized.

Figure 12.3: Harry Potter’s Cupboard under the Stairs 3

Presentation Aids Help the Audience Remember What You Said

Before we had WAZE or GOOGLE MAPS , people would often give directions on how to get somewhere. Some of those directions could be complicated (especially if you live in a busy city). If you ever learned CPR, you probably remembered it for a short time, but could you replicate the process? Simply showing someone a map or watching a YouTube video on CPR can make it so much easier! You won’t need to give long explanations when you have a visual. Many of us are visual learners. When we engage more than our sense of hearing, we are more apt to remember facts and details.

Figure 12.4: Demonstration of CPR 4

Presentation Aids Make You a Credible Speaker

The effort you put into a quality visual will simply make YOU look better. Whether you design a simple PowerPoint, dress in a costume (or in appropriate business casual attire), or create posters, well-designed presentation aids will impress your audience and show that you cared enough about your speech to put in the effort.

Figure 12.5: Business Attire 5

Presentation Aids Prove Your Point

If you’ve ever heard the phrase “seeing is believing” then this will make sense to you. Whether the point is to believe that a friend can stand on their head, or a much more serious situation that might be represented in print media, presentation aids help everyone understand and believe what you say. Can you do splits while standing on one leg like Olympic ice skater Kamila Valieva? Perhaps you can, but telling an audience you can as opposed to seeing it done proves your point.

Figure 12.6: Kamila Valieva 6

Presentation Aids Can Help with Speech Anxiety

The more you use any form of presentation aid, you have something else to focus on aside from your anxiety. Some might argue that having something else to focus on will create more anxiety, but with practice, you will find that having something to hold or show an audience will calm your nerves. If you have ever used a stress ball, that squishy object that you can hold in your hand to help minimize stress, focusing on something within your speech that is outside of yourself can result in the same effect.

Types of Presentation Aids

There are many different types of presentation aids available. In this next section, we will explore the types of presentation aids you can use, and then we will look at the media for your presentation aids; what to put them on. It is always best to check with your instructor if you are unsure about the use of any presentation aid for your particular assignment.

Depending on your topic, objects can be very effective presentation aids. Objects consist of any item that you can hold up to show an audience. However, there are important guidelines. Objects need to be large enough to show your audience. If you are presenting a speech on how to string a necklace, chances are your necklace will not be large enough. Students presenting in a classroom need to keep in mind the distance of the audience; however, presenting in Zoom would allow you to show a smaller object because you can easily hold it up to the webcam.

Figure 12.7: Beaded Necklace 7

When it is not possible to bring an object into a classroom or a Zoom room, models are excellent alternatives. Models are small or large-scale representations of an object. For example, I once had a student who wanted to show the class a rollercoaster that he designed. Since it was not workable to show the entire rollercoaster, he made an image using digital software. We are all only limited by our own creativity!

Figure 12.8: Toy Airplane

Charts consist of information that is listed or represented in some way on your presentation aid. Charts could be designed simply in a PowerPoint or could be designed on a poster board. If you are doing a speech on depression, stress, or a disease, a chart could simply list the symptoms for your audience. They can be an effective presentation aid when you have a block of text that you want to show. Just be cautious not to put too much information on the chart. For example, the Symptoms of Stress chart included below provides you with a good guideline. A header with three to five bullet points is substantial enough to make a point and will not be too much information for an audience to comprehend.

Figure 12.9: Symptoms of Stress 9

Infographics

Infographics are visual representations that may use icons, diagrams, illustrations, and some limited text. These have become popular due to the ease of understanding the content and the creative way in which you can use different approaches to create them. For example, an infographic can be used to show the audience information about the COVID-19 pandemic, stress, or any topic that might include data. Infographics can present complex information in a way that is easy to understand.

Figure 12.10: Covid-19 PSA 10

Figure 12.11: Symptoms of Stress 11

Understanding what numbers or statistics mean can be difficult for anyone. Graphs are visual representations of data. They present important, factual information to your audience to help them better understand what statistics and numbers mean. Three common types of graphs used in speeches are pie graphs, bar graphs, and line graphs.

Pie graphs allow you to show “slices” of the pie in a visually appealing and impactful way. Using color to represent different areas of the graph will help your audience make the distinction between all data points.

Figure 12.12: Pie Graph of World Population 12

Bar Graphs show your data using rectangular bars that have varying heights that are proportional to what they are representing. These can be used to show comparisons between demographic information, inflation, social media, or other kinds of information.

Figure 12.13: Bar Graph of Preventable Causes of Death 13

Line Graphs use specific markers along a path to represent how trends occur over time. More than one line can be used to show how one variable has increased over time, and how another has decreased.

Figure 12.14: U.S. Votes for President from 1789 to 2020 14

Diagrams/Drawings

You no longer have to be an artist in order to use a diagram or drawing as a presentation aid. A diagram or drawing is a picture of what you are trying to explain. Often people say, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” You can save words if you use the right picture. Drawings or diagrams can be found online if you want to give a clear depiction of an object, process, or some other concept that cannot be easily represented in some other way.

Figure 12.15: Diagram of the Human Eye 15

As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, maps can be used instead of providing directions to a location. But maps do much more than that. Depending on your speech, you may use a very specific type of map. If you were doing an informative speech on Disneyland, you might show a map of the park. You might show a map of U.S. voters for a persuasive speech on why people should vote.

Figure 12.16: 2004 U.S. Election Map

Photographs

One of the easiest types of presentation aids to use are photographs . Whether you have photos on your phone, or you download photos from an online source, these can be one of the most effective types of visual aids. For example, if you are doing a speech on author Maya Angelou, your audience will not experience the depth of your speech without seeing what she looked like. If you do use an image from online or any other copyrighted material, make sure to cite the photo as you have seen in this book. The copyright should go beneath the photo.

Also, make sure your photo is large enough for the audience to see. As you will see when you read about media for presentation aids, you will have a few different ways to present your photos.

Figure 12.17: Maya Angelou 17

On occasion, you may choose to use yourself or others as presentation aids. For example, you can add to the tone of your speech on Salsa dancing by doing a bit of Salsa in front of the class. You can dress the part as well. Perhaps you are doing your speech on the fictional character Harry Potter. You can find a costume and dress like his character.

At times you may want to ask another student to volunteer to participate in your speech. This student might be your Salsa partner! Or, if your speech is on How to Braid Hair , you might ask a classmate in advance if they will participate in the speech.

Figure 12.18: Ecuador Salsa Contest 18

Audio or Video Recordings

Audio or video recordings can be used to highlight different points of your speech. You might find a podcast that supports your speech, or a piece of music. You might have a segment from a famous speech, such as Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream.

Video has been made easier now through the use of YouTube . Many students rely on YouTube to find specific clips that can be utilized once or more in the speech. You might show a segment of the I Have a Dream speech. YouTube has just about everything available from movies, television shows, TedEx presentations, and music videos.

Media for Presentation Aids

So far, we have discussed the different types of presentation aids you can use in a speech. You may have been wondering what we put those presentation aids on! There are a variety of media that can be used for these presentation aids, ranging from high tech to low tech. The choice you make should be based on where you will deliver your speech and assignment requirements.

High Tech Presentation Aids

High tech presentation aids include the use of computer-based media and audiovisual media, such as PowerPoint , Google Slides, and Canva . Most instructors will let you know which they prefer you to use. Microsoft PowerPoint has been around for a long time and allows you to easily create animations. Some campuses provide students with free PowerPoint access through their student accounts. PowerPoint has a variety of design options that users can edit for font and color. Google slides also allow you to embed animations and it also has excellent template options. One advantage of Google slides is that it is accessible from the cloud at any time. Canva is a more unique program as it allows you numerous options for the creation of presentations that use templates and designs not available on PowerPoint or Google Slides.

One of the benefits of using one of these methods is that you can create a presentation in minutes. You can add a chart, graph, diagram, drawing, map, or photo onto your slides quickly. You can easily find images online and download those to use. When adding an image that has a copyright it will be important to cite the source at the bottom of the image, just as you see the images cited in this textbook. When you read about the guidelines for using presentation aids you will see additional tips for creating your slideshow.

Low-Tech Presentation Aids

Low-tech presentation aids include posters or foam boards, flip charts, whiteboards, or handouts and are known for their dependability. You will never have to worry about your technology failing! These presentation aids are not reliant upon good Wi-Fi!

Figure 12.19: U.S. Army Posterboard NMAAHC 19

Presenting in Zoom

Zoom CEO Eric Yuan began his technological journey at WebEx. In 2011 he left WebEx to launch Zoom In 2011. By 2013, Zoom had one million users. By the time the Coronavirus pandemic hit in 2020, there were over 300 million users as people were forced to stay home to work. Public speaking courses all over the world met in Zoom so students could still present their speeches to their classmates. When using presentation aids in Zoom , the most important areas that we need you to think about include screen sharing, virtual backgrounds, and holding visuals in front of the camera effectively.

Screen Sharing

If you have created a slideshow with either PowerPoin t, Google Slides , or Canva , you will need to learn how to share your screen. Find the “share screen” button on your device; it may look different from phone to laptop to iPad or tablet. If you have embedded any audio into your slideshow, make sure to click the box that says, “share sound.”

Virtual Backgrounds

Many people have begun to create virtual backgrounds using their slideshow. Although this is a more advanced technology, it is a creative way to have the screen in the back of you show everything in your PowerPoint . Since all computers are different, and some computers are newer than others, you will need to see what is best for your presentation. One word of caution in using a virtual background is that any movement on your part may lead to you disappearing or floating in and out of view from your audience. You need to remain virtually still if using a Zoom background.

Holding Presentation Aids in Zoom

If you plan to hold up objects or photos while presenting in Zoom , it is best not to use a virtual background since a lot of movement can lead to your visuals disappearing from view depending on your position. As discussed in the chapter on delivery, it is important to find the most neutral background you can in your home so that both you and your presentation aids are the focal points.

Hold your presentation aid up to the camera for a minimum of four seconds. You want to give your audience a chance to see it and take it in. Depending on what you need to say about your presentation aid, you may need to hold it up longer.

Checklist for Effective Use of Presentation Aids

Having clear and professional-looking presentation aids is important to enhance your credibility and ensure that your speech is supported by your presentation aids. Remember, presentation aids are used to support the body of the speech but can also be used as part of your attention-getter or conclusion. Practical guidelines will make sure that you prepare thoroughly. The following list conveys best practices for the use of presentation aids. We hope you will check them off as you go!

Guidelines for Using a Slideshow Live or Virtually

• Use a minimal number of slides; perhaps one per main point and limit the amount of text per slide.
• Label any images that you embed on a slide (where the image came from). Ask your instructor what they want you to put on the slide because some instructors will ask for more detail.
• Do not use a title slide, rather use a blank slide at the beginning so that your audience will still be captured by your attention-getter rather than focusing on your speech title.
• Also, use a blank slide in between slides so that the audience does not spend a lot of time focusing on something you have moved on from.
• Put your presentation on a USB/Flash Drive. As a backup, have your slides in your email, Google Drive, DropBox , etc.

Guidelines for Using Presentation Aids in a Classroom

• Avoid presentation aids that require you to turn back to the audience.
• Make presentation aids large enough for everyone to see from a distance.
• Display objects, posters, etc. where everyone can see.
• Display presentation aids only while discussing the point you are on.
• Do not pass anything around because this will distract your audience and they won’t focus on the speech.
• Talk to the audience, not the presentation aids.

Guidelines for Using Fonts

• Use plain fonts that are easy to read, such as Arial, Times New Roman, Cambria, Palatino, Garamond, Georgia, or Helvetica. Avoid using any script font because those are harder for people to read.
• Use fonts sparingly; there is no need to use four different fonts on your slides.
• Use fonts that are large enough to read. Key ideas should be 32-point for titles. The recommended size for supporting points is 24-point font.

Guidelines for Using Color

• Create contrast on your slide. If you are using a white background, you can use black or blue font. If you have a black background, you can use a white font.
• Avoid font colors that are often difficult to read for individuals with any vision impairment, such as yellow, red, or green.

Guidelines for Preparation of Presentation Aids

• If your speech will be given in a classroom, check the room in advance and plan for emergencies (prepare to be without presentation aids if they should fail!)
• PRACTICE with your presentation aids so you know how much extra time they add to your speech.
• Proofread all materials – spelling errors affect your credibility.

Guidelines for Using Presentation Aids During your Speech

• Explain presentation aids clearly and concisely (don’t just put them up and expect the audience to understand them).

The use of presentation aids is a critical part of your speech if your instructor requires them. Remember, presentation aids are not designed to replace what you say in your speech. Just as you put your clothes on daily, you can choose to “dress” yourself up with accessory items, such as a watch, earrings, or hat, your speech is like your clothing, and your presentation aids are like your accessories. They only add to your speech. We hope you will be creative in the process and make your presentation aids look as though you put time into them. Remember that presentation aids will add clarity and interest, help the audience understand and remember your speech, and add credibility to your speech. We encourage you to practice with them as much as you can, and that way you can also minimize your anxiety and present an impactful speech.

Reflection Questions

• What do you feel your primary goal will be for using presentation aids in your next speech?
• How can you use presentation aids to help the audience remember what you said?
• What technology challenges do you have that you want to resolve early during your preparation process?
• After reviewing the checklist for effective presentation aids, are there any boxes you could not check off? If not, why? How can you make sure you meet all of the guidelines?

Diagram/Drawing

Line Graphs

Presentation Aid

Introduction to Public Speaking Copyright © by Jamie C. Votraw, M.A.; Katharine O'Connor, Ph.D.; and William F. Kelvin, Ph.D. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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12.1 What Are Presentation Aids?

When you give a speech, you are presenting much more than just a collection of words and ideas. Because you are speaking “live and in person,” your audience members will experience your speech through all five of their senses: hearing, vision, smell, taste, and touch. In some speaking situations, the speaker appeals only to the sense of hearing. They more or less ignore the other senses except to avoid visual distractions by dressing and presenting themselves in an appropriate manner. But the speaking event can be greatly enriched by appeals to the other senses. This is the role of presentation aids.

Presentation aids are the resources beyond the speech words and delivery that a speaker uses to enhance the message conveyed to the audience. The type of presentation aids that speakers most typically make use of are visual aids: pictures, diagrams, charts and graphs, maps, and the like. Audible aids include musical excerpts, audio speech excerpts, and sound effects. A speaker may also use fragrance samples or food samples as olfactory (sense of smell) or gustatory (sense of taste) aids. Finally, presentation aids can be three-dimensional objects, animals, and people.

As you can see, the range of possible presentation aids is almost unlimited. However, all presentation aids have one thing in common: To be effective, each presentation aid a speaker uses must be a direct, uncluttered example of a specific element of the speech. It is understandable that someone presenting a speech about Abraham Lincoln might want to include a photograph of him, but because everyone already knows what Lincoln looked like, the picture would not contribute much to the message unless, perhaps, the message was specifically about the changes in Lincoln’s appearance during his time in office.

Other visual artifacts are more likely to deliver information more directly relevant to the speech—a diagram of the interior of Ford’s Theater where Lincoln was assassinated, a facsimile of the messy and much-edited Gettysburg Address, or a photograph of the Lincoln family, for example. The key is that each presentation aid must directly express an idea in your speech.

Moreover, presentation aids must be used at the time when you are presenting the specific ideas related to the aid. For example, if you are speaking about coral reefs and one of your supporting points is about the location of the world’s major reefs, it would make sense to display a map of these reefs while you’re talking about location. If you display it while you are explaining what coral actually is, or describing the kinds of fish that feed on a reef, the map will not serve as a useful visual aid—in fact, it’s likely to be a distraction.

To be effective, presentation aids must also be easy to use and easy for the listeners to see and understand. In this chapter, we will present some principles and strategies to help you incorporate effective presentation aids into your speech. We will begin by discussing the functions that good presentation aids fulfill. Next, we will explore some of the many types of presentation aids and how best to design and utilize them. We will also describe various media that can be used for presentation aids. We will conclude with tips for successful preparation and use of presentation aids in a speech.

the resources beyond the speech words and delivery that a speaker uses to enhance the message conveyed to the audience

of or relating to the sense of smell

of or relating to the sense of taste

It’s About Them: Public Speaking in the 21st Century Copyright © 2022 by LOUIS: The Louisiana Library Network is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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6 Presentation Aids

Angela Elbanna, M.S.Ed.

Learning Objectives

• List and explain reasons why presentation aids are important in public speaking.
• Select the appropriate type of presentation aid that most effectively supports the speech.
• Maximize the benefits and recognize the pitfalls of using popular presentation aids such as PowerPoint.
• Exercise restraint when choosing content and design features for visual aids.
• Display slides and other visual aids effectively and at the right time.
• Evaluate how and when to use presentation aids for online presentations.
• Critique and identify how to improve the quality and appeal of visual aids.

“What I hear, I forget; What I see, I remember; What I do, I understand.”

–Old Chinese proverb, sometimes attributed to Confucius 

Presentation aids are tools that help speakers effectively deliver their message while engaging the audience. The steps that a speaker takes to prepare a speech are detailed and culminate in the goal of delivering an effective speech. Speakers often spend time carefully considering possible topics, then researching the topic, drafting an outline, preparing a speech and finally practicing the delivery of that speech. You may wonder why it would be necessary to take the extra step of using a presentation aid; if a speaker has adequately researched, prepared, and practiced their speech, wouldn’t that be enough? The fact is that even impressive presentation aids won’t enhance a poor speech; presentation aids can only enhance a well-crafted speech. The final step that can make a speech even mor e effective is having some type of presentation aid to go along with the speech.

People remember more information when it is presented both visually and verbally. According to psychologist Richard Mayer, “The Multimedia Principle states that humans learn best from words and pictures rather than just words alone.” This principle is the foundation of all Mayer’s principles, that images and words are more effective than words alone. Studies show that peopl e recall approximately 10-20 percent of information given three days after a spoken lecture. That number increases dramatically to 65 percent when visuals are used.

Presentation aids help to gain the audience’s attention and keep them interested in what the speaker is saying. If you are a speaker who is apprehensive or nervous about public speaking, utilizing presentation aids can help take some of the pressure off of you and focus the audience’s attention on the aids themselves. Presentation aids are also beneficial because they enhance clarity and therefore comprehension. Your audience will not only be engaged by good visual aids, but having them will clarify their understanding of the information given. Additionally, presentation aids increase efficiency. As the famous saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” While presentation aids may not necessarily be pictures or even visual in nature, the idea remains that using some type of prese ntation aid will help a speaker effectively and efficiently relay their message.

It is extremely important to keep in mind the fact that presentation aids are just that: aids. They are used to help the speaker deliver an effective speech. They are not the main focus and should not stand alone. It is your job as speaker to use them effectively and to communicate to your audience what they are and the message that you are trying to send. Presentation aids should not distract or confuse the audience; simplifying your presentation aids is a good tip to keep in mind – less is more. Exercise restraint when using PowerPoint or other slides, don’t play audio/video clips for too long,  and don’t put charts and graphs up and leave it to the audience to figure out what is being represented. Keep in mind that your goal is to deliver clear information to the audience; distracting them by elaborate, complicated aids will interfere with that. Above all, carefully evaluate your speech topic and determine which type of presentation aid will most efficiently help you communicate your message; let’s take a look at the variety of types now.

Types of Presentation Aids

Good presentation aids appeal to the five senses: sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell. The most common type of presentation aid that speakers use are visual aids , ones that the audience can see. Things like pictures, diagrams, charts, graphs, and maps are types of visual aids. These visual aids can be in a physical format or electronic.  Audio aids are another type of presentation aid. They include audio clips, music clips, speech samples, and sound effects. A presentation aid that appeals to the sense of taste would be food; while ones that appeal to the sense of smell may be the scent of a perfume or fragrance. Presentation aids may also be objects that are three-dimensional or ones that change over the course of a demonstration speech. The variety of aids available are numerous and the best way to decide which type of presentation aid to use is to evaluate your speech topic and ask yourself which type of aid will actually enhance your speech.

For example, if you are doing an informative speech, and your topic is “the importance of sle ep,” begin by asking yourself: what is the best presentation aid I can use to help deliver my ideas to the audience? You obviously can’t bring in an actual sleeping person to demonstrate what a good sleep looks like! Similarly, videos or audio recordings of such a thing wouldn’t be very effective. You consider the options, evaluate their value and ease of use, and decide to show bar graphs of sleep statistics to illustrate how important sleep is.

Let’s take a look at the variety of presentation aids you may choose to use:

Physical Objects and Props

Items like physical objects and props can allow your audience to see exactly what you are talking about. In his famous TED Talk on “Mosquitos, Malaria, and Education,” Bill Gates did something that shocked the audience. He  released mosquitoes from a jar. In doing this, he wanted the audience to experience what millions of people experience in the developing world. This prop gave the audience the opportunity to view something that may not be easily explainable verbally or even through a picture.

https://ed.ted.com/lessons/mosquitos-malaria-and-education-bill-gates

Using an object or a prop will help your audience understand your meaning and connect with you, the speaker. When using a prop, carefully consider when to display it and whether or not it should be passed around. Passing the object around may be distracting to your audience and therefore may distract you, so using your judgement based on the size of the audience and the type of object is important.

Charts, Graphs, Diagrams, Maps

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Conceptual_Diagram_-_Example.svg

If your audience is relatively small then using physical, not electronic, charts, graphs, diagrams, and maps may be a good option. Prior to social distancing regulations it was common for team members or small groups to gather in conference rooms for presentations. In such a closed setting, physical charts, graphs, diagrams, and maps are effective in allowing the audience to collaborate with the speaker. Charts, graphs, and diagrams should always be related to what you are presenting. When using them, stand to the side of your aids while facing the audience.

Depending on your speech topic, audio and video aids may be the best choice for a presentation aid. Audio and video aids are also wonderful due to the fact that people with disabilities can follow your presentation much more effectively with the use of these types of aids. With the use of visual aids, audience members who experience deafness or are hard of hearing can follow your visual aids, be sure to enable captioning for your videos ahead of time. People who experience blindness or vision impairment will be able to appreciate audio aids that complement your presentation.

It’s important to remember that the presentation aid is just that: an aid. It should not be the main focus of your presentation. You, the speaker, are the main focus. Don’t play a video or an audio clip for the majority of your presentation time, instead play short clips that highlight your main points. If you are giving a 5 to 7 minute speech, your presentation aid should at the most be 60 seconds long. Be sure to have the video or audio clip ready to play and if there happen to be any technical difficulties, be prepared to continue without your aid. Spending time trying to get the technology to work is distracting and a waste of time.

Handouts are excellent presentation aids because they allow the audience to take a part of your speech home with them after you have finished the speech. Having something to refer back to can be extremely beneficial for helping audience members retain the information presented. The issue with handouts is determining the best time to hand them out. If you do it at the beginning of your speech, the audience may be so focused on reading the handout, that they don’t pay attention to the speaker who is giving the speech. If you pass them out during the speech, that may interrupt your flow in delivery and distract you. And if you pass the handout at the end, the audience may be missing relevant information to stay engaged in your presentation. There is no recommended or perfect time in which to pass handouts out. The suggestion is to use your judgement on a case-by-case basis. Perhaps handing out the handouts at the beginning and giving the audience a few minutes to digest the information before beginning your speech would be suitable.  When designing a handout, pay attention to style and font choices. Choose options that are easy to read for all audience members, including those who experience low vision. Make sure to bring enough copies of the handout for the entire audience.

Demonstrations

This is discussed in much more detail in the chapter on Demonstration Speeches. Certain topics work best when the speaker demonstrates how to do something; rather than just tell the audience how to do something, the speaker  actually shows them. For example, if you wanted to explain how to cook a certain recipe, it would be beneficial to show the audience the steps involved. It is important to have all of your demonstration items/props ready and to have adequately practiced using them. In the event that something doesn’t work or go according to plan, be prepared to continue with your speech.

Digital Slides 

The most common type of presentation aid used is some digital version of slideware. Software by PowerPoint, Prezi, Google Slides, and Keynote are probably the most popular methods for creating digital slides. These tools are excellent ways to enhance your presentation and help your audience comprehend your main points beyond simply delivering your message verbally. However, it is important to use these digital aids correctly.

First of all, it is important not to overload each slide with too much information. Too much information or items to examine on a slide is distracting. As a speaker, you want to stay connected with your audience; if your audience is too busy reading everything you have up on slides, they will lose that connection with you. Putting too much information on a slide is also counterproductive because you are signaling to the audience that everything is equally important. You should be using your slides to highlight the important parts of your message.

Second, adding too much text to your slides also puts you in danger of simply reading to your audience. Reading to your audience puts the speaker at risk for losing the connection with the audience. Due to direct reading, your vocal quality will likely suffer and you will sound monotonous and thus boring to your audience. Besides which, reading to your audience signals that you aren’t adequately prepared which will hurt your credibility.

Furthermore, it is important to keep in mind that your slides should not ‘steal the show.’ You are the main focus, not your presentation aid. Due to the overwhelming number of options that digital slideware offers – options to display text, images, charts, graphs, and even to play audio and video files – presenters can become sidelined by their own presentation aid! Prezi in particular offers multiple animations and transitions; limit these so that it doesn’t become too distracting. Don’t let your presentation aid ‘steal the spotlight’ from you, make sure that you are in control of your presentation aid.

Aim to be inclusive when designing your slides. Choose appropriate colors for your slides to ensure that everyone in the audience will be able to see them. Avoid clashing or contrasting colors so that audience members with vision impairments are also able to see your slides. Similarly font style/size is also important, don’t be tempted to choose fancy and thus possibly illegible fonts. Choose font sizes that everyone in the audience will be able to see and read. Microsoft offers this guide to help design accessible slides in PowerPoint:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/make-your-powerpoint-presentations-accessible-to-people-with-disabilities-6f7772b2-2f33-4bd2-8ca7-dae3b2b3ef25

Once you have designed appropriate slides that actually enhance your message, take adequate time to practice delivering your speech while flipping through your slides. Knowing when to display a slide in relation to what you are saying is important. When you are finished with the slide, take it away so that the audience’s focus goes back to you, the speaker.

Also, always be prepared for the fact that technology fails – the slides may not load, you may have password restrictions, you might lose the USB that your presentation aid is saved on, any multitude of issues may arise; being prepared and ready to continue without your presentation aid is crucial.

People as Presentation Aids

The speaker is the first thing the audience sees. In a way, you are the first presentation aid that is being presented to the audience. Dressing appropriately/professionally lends to your credibility. Also, being prepared before beginning your speech signals to the audience that you are confident and ready to deliver the speech; have your notes and presentation aids available. If you are using your own body to demonstrate how to do a dance step or how to apply makeup, for example, then practicing ahead of time is key. If you are using another person to help you demonstrate something, then be clear to the person beforehand what is involved, especially if your demonstration necessitates touching another person.

Your credibility also comes into play during the question and answer period of a speech. You have the opportunity to  call on audience members; be sure to include as many people as time will allow, and always repeat the person’s question so that the entire audience can hear it.

Using Presentation Aids Online

When delivering a speech in person, you will have the opportunity to evaluate your topic and decide which type of presentation aid will best meet your needs. Presenting a speech online may limit you in some ways, however, again carefully considering your topic and evaluating the type of aid to use is important.

When presenting slides online, you will have the option to turn your camera off and have the focus be the slides, or to keep the camera on and be minimized in the corner of the screen. It is recommended that you do not turn your camera off, because again, you are the main focus, you are the speaker, and your presentation aids should not take center stage. Aim to remain visible to your audience for the entire presentation. When you are finished with the slides, take them down and maximize the audience’s view of yourself.

It is also recommended that you begin your speech without the slides, give the audience your introduction, and then share your screen with them. Keep in mind that you are the speaker and should be the audience’s main focus. In order to be engaged with what you are saying, the audience needs to connect with you, the speaker; they can’t do that if they don’t see you and are looking at slides. As with any presentation, ample practice will be key to your success. Practicing your speech while maximizing and minimizing your slides will help you smoothly deliver your speech without any interruptions.

At the beginning of the chapter, I mentioned my experience many years ago with students using ineffectual presentation aids. The student who wrote their speech out word-for-word and displayed it on slide after slide made a poor choice in this presentation aid for many reasons. Mainly, too much text on a slide is either overwhelming for the audience, or they do end up reading it and don’t focus on the speaker. In this case, the audience was bored by being read to.

To summarize, presentation aids are extremely effective ways to engage your audience and highlight key points from your speech. Carefully consider your topic and ask yourself which type of presentation aid will best allow you to represent your topic and main points. Evaluate the types of presentation aids that you have at your disposal, consider the size/needs of your audience, the ease of use of the actual aid, and then determine which type of aid will best help you relay your message effectively. Keep in mind that your aid is just a helper and not the main focus of the speech. You are!

Class Activities

• Give students a list of speech topics and have them discuss/decide which type of presentation aid would be most effective.
• Show students the following slide and have them identify what is wrong with it and how it can be improved:

• Share the following link with the class and discuss ways to make slides more inclusive.

Works Cited

Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2011). E-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven. Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning (3rd ed.) . San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons.

“Make your PowerPoint presentations accessible to people with disabilities.” Microsoft Support , https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/make-your-powerpoint-presentations-accessible-to-people-with-disabilities-6f7772b2-2f33-4bd2-8ca7-dae3b2b3ef25. Accessed 29 November 2021.

“Mosquitos, malaria and education – Bill Gates.” TED-Ed , 11 October 2013, https://ed.ted.com/lessons/mosquitos-malaria-and-education-bill-gates. Accessed 30 November 2021.

Presentation Aids Copyright © by Angela Elbanna, M.S.Ed. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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9 Chapter 9: Presentation Aids in Speaking

The materials below are attributed fully to the free online Open Education Resource, Exploring Public Speaking: The Free Dalton State College Public Speaking Textbook, 4th Edition (Chapter 11).

Chapter 9 Learning Objectives

After reading this chapter, the student will be able to:

• List and explain reasons why presentation aids are important in public speaking
• Explain how presentation aids function in public speaking
• Describe the various computer-based and non-computer-based types of presentation aids available to the students
• Explain the correct use of various types of presentation aids
• Design professional-looking slides using presentation software

Chapter Preview

9.1 – What are Presentation Aids?

9.2 – Functions of Presentation Aids

9.3 – Types of Presentation Aids

9.4 – Using Presentation Slides

9.5 – Low-Tech Presentation Aids

9.1 –  What Are Presentation Aids?

When you give a speech, you are presenting much more than just a collection of words and ideas. Because you are speaking “live and in person,”  your audience members will experience your speech through all five of their senses: hearing, vision, smell, taste, and touch . In  some speaking situations, the speaker appeals only to the sense of hearing. They more or less ignore the other senses except to avoid visual distractions by dressing and presenting themselves in an appropriate manner. But the speaking event can be greatly enriched by appeals to the other senses. This is the role of presentation aids.

Professor West: What makes for an effective visual aid?

Presentation aids  are the resources beyond the speech words and delivery that a speaker uses to enhance the message conveyed to the audience .  The type of presentation aids that  speakers most typically make use of are  visual aids: pictures, diagrams, charts and graphs, maps, and the like.  Audible aids include musical excerpts, audio speech excerpts, and sound effects .  A speaker may also use   fragrance samples or food samples as  olfactory  (sense of smell) or  gustatory  (sense of taste) aids.  Finally,  presentation aids can be three-dimensional objects, animals, and people; they can also change over a period of time, as in the case of a how-to demonstration .

P resentation aid s

the resources beyond the speech words and delivery that a speaker uses to enhance the message conveyed to the audience

of or relating to the sense of smell

of or relating to the sense of taste

As you can see, the range of possible presentation aids is almost unlimited. However, all presentation aids have  one thing in common:  To be effective, each presentation aid a speaker uses must be a direct, uncluttered example of a specific element of the speech .  It is understandable that someone presenting a speech about Abraham Lincoln might want to include a photograph of him, but because everyone already knows what Lincoln looked like, the picture would not contribute much to the message unless, perhaps, the message was specifically about the changes in Lincoln’s appearance during his time in office.

Other visual artifacts are more likely to deliver information more directly relevant to the speech—a diagram of the interior of Ford’s Theater where Lincoln was assassinated, a facsimile of the messy and much-edited Gettysburg Address, or a photograph of the Lincoln family, for example.  The key is that each presentation aid must directly express an idea in your speech.

Moreover,  presentation aids must be used at the time when you are presenting the specific ideas related to the aid . For example, if you are speaking about coral reefs and one of your supporting points is about the location of the world’s major reefs, it would make sense to display a map of these reefs while you’re talking about location. If you display it while you are explaining what coral actually is, or describing the kinds of fish that feed on a reef, the map will not serve as a useful visual aid—in fact, it’s likely to be a distraction.

To be effective,  presentation aids must also be easy to use and easy for the listeners to see and understand .   In this chapter, we will present some principles and strategies to help you incorporate effective presentation aids into your speech. We will begin by discussing the functions that good presentation aids fulfill. Next, we will explore some of the many types of presentation aids and how best to design and utilize them. We will also describe various media that can be used for presentation aids. We will conclude with tips for successful preparation and use of presentation aids in a speech.

Why should you use presentation aids? If you have prepared and rehearsed your speech adequately, shouldn’t a good speech with a good delivery be enough to stand on its own? While it is true that impressive presentation aids will not rescue a poor speech,  a good speech can often be made even better by the strategic use of presentation aids .  Presentation aids can fulfill several functions:  they can serve to improve your audience’s understanding of the information you are conveying, enhance audience memory and retention of the message, add variety and interest to your speech, and enhance your credibility as a speaker.  Let’s examine each of these functions.

Improving Audience Understanding

Human communication is a complex process that often leads to misunderstandings. If you are like most people, you can easily remember incidents when you misunderstood a message or when someone else misunderstood what you said to them. Misunderstandings happen in public speaking just as they do in everyday conversations.

One reason for misunderstandings is the fact that perception and interpretation are highly complex individual processes .  Most of us have seen the image in which, depending on your perception, you see either the outline of a vase or the facial profiles of two people facing each other. Or perhaps you have seen the image of the woman who may or may not be young, depending on your frame of reference at the time. This shows how interpretations can differ, and it means that  your  presentations must be based on careful thought and preparation to maximize the likelihood that your listeners will understand your presentations as you intend them to do so .  (You can see these images at http://members.optusnet.com.au/~charles57/Creative/Drawing/vases.htm and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9iv173VtGM.)

As a speaker,  one of your basic goals is to help your audience understand your message.  To  reduce misunderstanding, presentation aids can be used to clarify or to emphasize.

Clarification is important in a speech because  if some of the information you convey is unclear, your listeners will come away puzzled or possibly even misled.   Presentation aids can help clarify a message if the information is complex  or if the point being made is a visual one .

If your speech is about the impact of the Coriolis Effect on tropical storms, for instance, you will have great difficulty clarifying it without a diagram because the process is a complex one. The diagram in Figure 9.1 (“Coriolis Effect”) would be effective because it shows the audience the interaction between equatorial wind patterns and wind patterns moving in other directions.   The  diagram allows the audience to process the information in two ways: through your verbal explanation and through the visual elements of the diagram . By the way,  t he  Coriolis Effect i s defined as “an effect whereby a mass moving in a rotating system experiences a force (the Coriolis force ) acting perpendicular to the direction of motion and to the axis of rotation .  On the earth, the effect tends to deflect moving objects to the right in the northern hemisphere and to the left in the southern and is important in the formation of cyclonic weather systems.” You can see why a picture really helps with this definition.

Figure 9.2 (“Model of Communication”) is another example of a diagram that maps out the process of human communication. In this image you clearly have a speaker and an audience with the labels of source, channel, message, receivers, and feedback to illustrate a basic model of human communication. As with most models, it is simplified. (Can you remember what two components of the communication process, explained in Chapter 1, that are missing here?)

Another aspect of clarifying occurs  when a speaker wants to help audience members understand a visual concept.  For example, if a speaker is talking about the importance of petroglyphs in Native American culture, just describing the petroglyphs won’t completely help your audience to visualize what they look like. Instead, showing an example of a petroglyph, as in Figure 9.3 (“Petroglyph”) can more easily help your audience form a clear mental image of your intended meaning.

Emphasizin g

When you use a presentational aid for emphasis,  you impress your listeners with the importance of an idea .   In a speech on water conservation, you might try to show the environmental proportions of the resource. When you use a conceptual drawing like the one in Figure 9.4 (“Planetary Water Supply”), you show that if the world water supply were equal to ten gallons, only ten drops would be available and drinkable for human or household consumption. This drawing is effective because it emphasizes the scarcity of useful water and thus draws attention to this important information in your speech.

Another way of emphasizing that can be done visually is to zoom in on a specific aspect of interest within your speech .  In Figure 9.5 (“Chinese Lettering Amplified”), we see a visual aid used in a speech on the importance of various parts of Chinese characters. On the left side of the visual aid, we see how the characters all fit together, with an emphasized version of a single character on the right.

So,  clarifying  and  emphasizing  are two roles that support the “Improving Audience Understanding” purpose of presentation aids .   What are other purposes?

Aiding Retention and Recall

The second function that presentation aids can serve is to increase the audience’s chances of remembering your speech.   An article by the U.S. Department of Labor (1996) summarized research on how people learn and remember.  The authors found that “83% of human learning occurs visually, and the remaining 17% through the other senses—11% through hearing, 3.5% through smell, 1% through taste, and 1.5% through touch.”

For this reason, exposure to an image can serve as a memory aid to your listeners. When your graphic images deliver information effectively and when your listeners understand them clearly, audience members are  likely to remember your message long after your speech is over.  Moreover,  people often are able to remember information that is presented in sequential steps more easily than if that information is presented in an unorganized pattern.   When you use a presentation aid to display the organization of your speech (such as can be done with PowerPoint slides), you will help your listeners to observe, follow, and remember the sequence of information you conveyed to them.  T his is why some instructors display a lecture outline for their students to follow during class and why a slide with a preview of your main points can be helpful as you move into the body of your speech.

An added plus of using  presentation aids is that they can boost  your  memory while you are speaking .   Using your presentation aids while you rehearse your speech will familiarize you with the association between a given place in your speech and the presentation aid that accompanies that material.

Adding Variety and Interest

A third function of presentation aids is simply  to make your speech more interesting .  For example, wouldn’t a speech on varieties of roses have greater impact if you accompanied your remarks with a picture of each rose? You can imagine that your audience would be even more enthralled if you had the ability to display an actual flower of each variety in a bud vase. Similarly, if you were speaking to a group of gourmet cooks about Indian spices, you might want to provide tiny samples of spices that they could smell and taste during your speech.

Enhancing a Speaker’s Credibilit y

Presentation aids alone will not be enough to create a professional image . As we mentioned earlier, impressive presentation aids will not rescue a poor speech .  Even if you give a good speech, you run the risk of appearing unprofessional if your presentation aids are poorly executed. Conversely, a high quality presentation will contribute to your professional image.  This means that in addition to containing important information, your presentation aids must be  clear, clean, uncluttered, organized, and large enough for the audience to see and interpret correctly .   Misspellings and poorly designed presentation aids can damage your credibility as a speaker.

In addition, make sure that you  give proper credit to the source of any presentation aids that you take from other source s.  Using a statistical chart or a map without proper credit will detract from your credibility, just as using a quotation in your speech without credit would. This situation will usually take place with digital aids such as PowerPoint slides.  The source of a chart or the data shown in a chart form should be cited at the bottom the slide.

If you focus your efforts on producing presentation aids that contribute effectively to your meaning, that look professional, and that are handled well, your audience will most likely appreciate your efforts and pay close attention to your message . That attention will help them learn or understand your topic in a new way and will thus help the audience see you as a knowledgeable, competent, and credible speaker. With the prevalence of digital communication, the audience expectation of quality visual aids has increased .

Avoiding Problems with Presentation Aids

Using presentation aids can come with some risks. However, with a little forethought and adequate practice, you can choose presentation aids that enhance your message and boost your professional appearance in front of an audience.  One principle to keep in mind is to use only as many presentation aids as necessary to present your message or to fulfill your classroom assignment.   The number and the technical sophistication of your presentation aids  should never overshadow your speech .

Another important consideration is technology.  Keep your presentation aids within the limits of the working technology available to you.  Whether or not your classroom technology works on the day of your speech, you will still have to present. What will you do if the computer file containing your slides is corrupted? What will you do if the easel is broken? What if you had counted on stacking your visuals on a table that disappears right when you need it? Or the Internet connection is down for a YouTube video you plan to show?

You must be prepared to adapt to an uncomfortable and scary situation .  This is why we urge students to go to the classroom well ahead of time to test the equipment and ascertain the condition of items they’re planning to use. As the speaker, you are responsible for arranging the things you need to make your presentation aids work as intended.  Carry a roll of masking tape so you can display your poster even if the easel is gone. Test the computer setup. Have your slides on a flash drive AND send it to yourself as an attachment or upload to a Cloud service. Have an alternative plan prepared in case there is some glitch that prevents your computer-based presentation aids from being usable.  And of course, you must know how to use the technology.

More important than the method of delivery is the audience’s ability to see and understand the presentation aid.   It must deliver clear information, and it must not distract from the message. Avoid overly elaborate presentation aids. Instead, simplify as much as possible, emphasizing the information you want your audience to understand.

Another thing to remember is that  presentation aids do not  “speak for themselves.”   When you display a visual aid, you should explain what it shows, pointing out and naming the most important features .  If you use an audio aid such as a musical excerpt, you need to tell your audience what to listen for. Similarly, if you use a video clip, it is up to you as the speaker to point out the characteristics in the video that support the point you are making—but probably beforehand, so you are not speaking over the video. At the same time, a visual aid should be quickly accessible to the audience. This is where simplicity comes in. Just as in organization of a speech you would n ot want to use 20 main points, but more like 3-5, you should limit categories of information on a visual aid.

9.3 –  Types of Presentation Aids

Now that we’ve explored some basic hints for preparing visual aids, let’s look at the most common types of visual aids:  charts, graphs, representations, objects/models, and peopl e.

A  chart  is commonly defined as a graphical representation of data (often numerical) or a sketch representing an ordered process.  Whether you create your charts or do research to find charts that already exist, it is important for them to exactly match the specific purpose in your speech. Figure 9.6 (“Acupuncture Charts”) shows two charts related to acupuncture. Although both charts are good, they are not equal. One chart might be useful in a speech about the history and development of acupuncture while the other chart would be more useful for showing the locations of meridians (the lines along which energy flows) and the acupuncture points.

graphical representation of data (often numerical) or a sketch representing an ordered process

The rest of this section will explore three common types of charts: statistical charts, sequence-of-steps chart, and decision trees.

Statistical Charts

For most audiences,  statistical presentations  must be kept as simple as possible , and they must be explained.  The statistical chart shown in Figure 9.7 (“Birth Weight Chi-Square”) is from a study examining the effects of maternal smoking on a range of congenital birth defects. Unless you are familiar with statistics, this chart may be very confusing. When visually displaying information from a quantitative study, you need to  make sure that you understand the material and can successfully and simply explain how one should interpret the data.  If you are unsure about the data yourself, then you should probably not use this type of information. This is definitely an example of a visual aid that, although it delivers a limited kind of information, does not speak for itself. On the other hand, if you are presenting to an upper level or graduate class in health sciences or to professionals in health occupations, this chart would be appropriate. As with all other principles of public speaking, KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE.

Sequence-of-Steps Charts

Charts are also useful  when you are trying to  explain a process that involves several steps .   The two visual aids in Figure 9.8 (“Steps in Cell Reproduction”) both depict the process of cell division called mitosis using a sequence-of-steps chart, but they each deliver different information. The first chart lacks labels to indicate the different phases of cell division. Although the first chart has more visual detail and may look more scientific, the missing information may confuse your audience. In the second chart, each phase is labeled with a brief explanation of what is happening, which can help your audience understand the process.

Decision Trees

Decision trees are  useful for showing the relationships between ideas .  The example in Figure 9.9 (“Open Educational Resource Decision Tree”) shows how a decision tree could be used to determine whether to use open-source textbook material. As with the other types of charts, you want to be sure that the information in the chart is relevant to the purpose of your speech and that each question and decision is clearly labeled. This particular tree is pertinent to this textbook, which is an open educational resource drawing from other open educational resources, and the decision tree shows some of the processes the authors went through to decide on the content of this text.

Strictly speaking, a   graph  may be considered a type of chart, but graphs are so widely used that we will discuss them separately . A  graph is a pictorial representation of the relationships of quantitative data using dots, lines, bars, pie slices, and the like.   Graphs show how one factor (such as size, weight, number of items) varies in comparison to other items .  Whereas a statistical chart may report the mean ages of individuals entering college, a graph would show how the mean age changes over time.  A statistical chart may report the amount of computers sold in the United States, while a graph will use bars or lines to show their breakdown by operating systems such as Windows, Macintosh, and Linux.

a pictorial representation of the relationships of quantitative data using dots, lines, bars, pie slices, and the like

Public speakers can show graphs using a range of different formats. Some of those formats are specialized for various professional fields. Very complex graphs often contain too much information that is not related to the purpose of a student’s speech.  If the graph is cluttered, it becomes difficult to comprehend. In this section, we’re going to analyze the common graphs speakers utilize in their speeches: line graphs, bar graphs, pie graphs, and pictographs.

Line Gra ph

A  line graph  is designed to show trends over time .  In Figure 9.10 (“Enron’s Stock Price”), we see a line graph depicting the fall of Enron’s stock price from August 2000 to January 2002. Notice that although it has some steep rises, the line has an overall downward trend clearly depicting the plummeting of Enron’s stock price. This is far more effective in showing the relationship of numbers than a chart (as in Figure 9.7) or reading the numbers aloud.

a graph designed to show trends over time

Bar graphs  are useful for showing the differences between quantities .  They can be used for population demographics, fuel costs, math ability in different grades, and many other kinds of data.  The graph in Figure 9.11  (“Suicide vs. Homicide”) is well designed. It is relatively simple and is carefully labeled, making it easy for the speaker to guide the audience through the recorded numbers of each type of death. The bar graph is designed to show the difference between rates of suicides and homicides across various age groups. When you look at the data, the first grouping clearly shows that eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds are more likely to die because of a homicide than any of the other age groups.

a graph designed to show the differences between quantities

The graph in Figure 9.12 (“Distribution of Income and Wealth in the United States”) is a complicated bar graph depicting the disparity between the so-called “haves” and the “have nots” within the United States. On the left hand side of the graph you can see that the Top 20% of people within the United States account for 84.7% of all of the wealth and 50.1% of all of the income. On the other hand, those in the bottom 40% account for only 0.2% of the wealth and 12.1% of the actual income.

While the graph is very well designed, it presents a great deal of information. For example, it shows “wealth” and “income,” for several groups; however, these are related but different concepts.  In a written publication, readers will have time to sit and analyze the graph, but  in a speaking situation, audience members need to be able to understand the information in a graph very quickly. For that reason, this graph is probably not as effective for speeches as the one in  Figure 9.11 (“Suicide vs. Homicide”).

Pie graphs  are usually depicted as circles and are designed to show proportional relationships within sets of data; in other words, they show parts of or percentages of a whole.   They should be simplified as much as possible without eliminating important information . As with other graphs,  the sections of the pie need to be plotted proportionally . In the pie graph shown in Figure 9.13 (“Causes of Concussions in Children”) we see a clear and proportional chart that has been color-coded.  Color-coding is useful when it’s difficult to fit the explanations in the actual sections of the graph; in that case, you need to include a legend, or key, to indicate what the colors in the graph mean.  In this graph, audience members can see very quickly that falls are the primary reason children receive concussions. However, the pie graph in Figure 9.14 (“World Populations”) is jumbled, illegible, confusing, and overwhelming in every way. The use of color coding doesn’t help. Overall, this graph simply contains too much information and is more likely to confuse an audience than help them understand something.

a graph designed to show proportional relationships within sets of data

Similar to bar graphs,   pictographs  use numbers and/or sizes of iconic symbols to dramatize differences in amounts.  An example is found in Figure 9.15. Pictographs, although interesting, do not allow for depiction of specific statistical data. If you were trying to show the output of oil from various countries through oil wells, each oil well representing a ten million barrels a day, it might be hard for the audience to see the difference between a third of an oil well and a fourth of one, but that is a significant difference in amounts (3.3 million versus 2.5 million).

P ictograph

a graph using iconic symbols to dramatize differences in amounts

Graphs can present challenges in being effective but also in being ethical.  To be both ethical and effective,  you need a good understanding of what statistics mean, and you need to create or use graphs that show amounts clearly . If you were showing GPAs of freshmen, sophomore, junior, and senior students at your college, and the bottom number on the graph was 2.25 rather than 0.0, that would result in a visually bigger difference than what really exists (see Figure 9.16).

Diagrams  are drawings or sketches that outline and explain the parts of an object, process, or phenomenon that cannot be readily seen.  Like graphs, diagrams can be considered a type of chart, as in the case of organizational charts and process-flow charts .

drawings or sketches that outline and explain the parts of an object, process, or phenomenon that cannot be readily seen

When you use a diagram, be sure to explain each part of the phenomenon, paying special attention to elements that are complicated or prone to misunderstanding.  In the example shown in Figure 9.17 (“The Human Eye”), you might wish to highlight that the light stimulus is reversed when it is processed through the brain or that the optic nerve is not a single stalk as many people think.

Maps are extremely useful if the information is clear and limited.  There are all kinds of maps, including population, weather, ocean current, political, and economic maps, so you should find the right kind for the purpose of your speech.  Choose a map that emphasizes the information you need to deliver.  The map shown in Figure 9.18  (“African Map with Nigerian Emphasis”) is simple, showing clearly the geographic location of Nigeria. This can be extremely valuable for some audiences who might not be able to name and locate countries on the continent of Africa. The map also shows the relative size of Nigeria compared to its neighbors. Figure 9.19 (“Rhode Island Map”) is a map of the state of Rhode Island, and it emphasizes the complicated configuration of islands and waterways that characterize this state’s geography.

Photographs and Drawings

Sometimes a photograph or a drawing is the best way to show an unfamiliar but important detail .  Figure 9.20 (“Wigwam Photograph”) is a photograph of a wigwam, a dwelling used by Native Americans in the North East. Audiences expect high quality in photographs now, and as with all presentation aids they should enhance the speech and not just “be there.” It is common to put stock photographs on PowerPoint slides as “clip art,” but they should be relevant and not detract from the message of the slide.

Video or Audio Recordings

Another very useful type of presentation aid is a video or audio recording.  Whether it is a short video from a website such as YouTube or Vimeo, a segment from a song, or a piece of a podcast, a well-chosen video or audio recording may be a good choice to enhance your speech.  Imagine, for example, that you’re giving a speech on how Lap-Band surgeries help people lose weight. One of the sections of your speech could explain how the Lap-Band works, so you could easily show a forty-three second video available on YouTube to demonstrate the part of the surgery. Maybe you could include a recording of a real patient explaining why they decided to get the Lap-Band.

There is one major warning to using audio and video clips during a speech: do not forget that they are supposed to be aids to your speech, not the speech itself . In addition,  be sure to  avoid these five mistakes that speakers often make when using audio and video clips:

• Avoid choosing clips that are  too long  for the overall length of the speech .  Your instructor can give you some guidelines for how long video and audio clips should be for the speeches in your class, if they are allowed (and make sure they are).
• Practice with the audio or video equipment  prior to speaking.  If you are unfamiliar with the equipment, you’ll look foolish trying to figure out how it works . This fiddling around will not only take your audience out of your speech but also have a negative impact on your credibility. It also wastes valuable time. Finally, be sure that the speakers on the computer are on and at the right volume level.
• Cue the clip  to the appropriate place prior to beginning your speech.   We cannot tell you the number of times we’ve seen students spend valuable speech time trying to find a clip on YouTube or a DVD. You need to make sure your clip is ready to go before you start speaking. Later in this chapter we will look at using video links in slides.
• In addition to cuing the clip to the appropriate place,  the  browser window should be open and ready to go .  If there are advertisements before the video, be sure to have the video cued to play after the ad. The audience should not have to sit through a commercial. There is a website called TubeChop that can allow you to cut a segment out of a YouTube video, then creating a new link. It has limitations but can be useful.
• The audience must be  given context  before a video or audio clip is played,  specifically what the clip is and why it relates to the speech.  At the same time, the video should not repeat what you have already said, but add to it.

Objects or Models

Objects and models are another form of presentation aid that can be very helpful in getting your audience to understand your message .  O bjects refer to anything you could hold up and talk about during your speech.  If you’re talking about the importance of not using plastic water bottles, you might hold up a plastic water bottle and a stainless steel water bottle as examples.

Models, on the other hand, are re-creations of physical objects that you cannot have readily available with you during a speech . If you’re giving a speech on heart murmurs, you may be able to show how heart murmurs work by holding up a model of the human heart. As will be discussed in the section on handouts below, a  speaker should not pass an object or model around during a speech. It is highly distracting.

People and Animals

The next category of presentation aids are people and animals. We can often use ourselves or other people to adequately demonstrate an idea during our speeches.

Animals as Presentation Aids

When giving a speech on a topic relating to animals, it is often tempting to bring an animal to serve as your presentation aid. While this can sometimes add a very engaging dimension to the speech, it carries some serious risks that you need to consider.

The first risk is that animal behavior tends to be unpredictable.  You may think this won’t be a problem if your presentation aid animal is small enough to be kept confined throughout your speech—for example, a goldfish in a bowl or a lizard or bird in a cage. However, even caged animals can be very distracting to your audience if they run about, chirp, or exhibit other agitated behavior.  The chances are great that an animal will react to the stress of an unfamiliar situation by displaying behavior that does not contribute positively to your speech or to the cleanliness of the physical environment.  Additionally, the animal’s behavior may not only affect audience attention during your speech, but potentially during your classmates’ speeches as well.

The second risk is that some audience members may respond negatively to a live animal .  In addition to common fears and aversions to animals like snakes, spiders, and mice, many people have allergies to various animals.  One of the authors had an experience where a student brought his six-foot yellow python to class for a speech. As a result, one of the other students refused to stay in the room because of her snake phobia (the instructor was not too comfortable either).

The third risk is that some locations may have regulations about bringing non-service animals onto the premises . If animals are allowed, the person bringing the animal may be required to bring a veterinary certificate or may be legally responsible for any damage caused by the animal.

For these reasons, before you decide to use an animal as a presentation aid, ask yourself if you could make your point equally well with a picture, model, diagram, or other representation of the animal in question.

Speaker  as Presentation Aid

Speakers can often use their own bodies to demonstrate facets of a speech . If your speech is about ballroom dancing or ballet, you might use your body to demonstrate the basic moves in the cha-cha or the five basic ballet positions.

Other People  as Presentation Aids

In some cases, such as for a demonstration speech, you might want to ask someone else to serve as your presentation aid. You should arrange ahead of time for a person (or persons) to be an effective aid— do not assume that an audience member will volunteer on the spot . If you plan to demonstrate how to immobilize a broken bone, your volunteer must know ahead of time that you will touch them as much as necessary to splint the break.

You must also  make certain that they will arrive dressed presentably and that they will not draw attention away from your message through their appearance or behavior.   The transaction between you and your human presentation aid must be appropriate,  especially if you are going to demonstrate something like a dance step. In short,  make sure your helper will know what is expected of them and consents to it.

9.4 –  Using Presentation Slides

Ever since the 1990s and the mainstreaming of personal computer technology, speakers have had the option of using slide presentation software to accompany their speeches and presentations. The most commonly known one is PowerPoint, although there are several others:

• Prezi, available at www.prezi.com
• Slide Rocket, available at www.sliderocket.com
• Google Slides, available in Google Drive and useful for collaborative assignments
• Keynote, the Apple presentation slide software on MACs
• Impress, an Open Office product (http://www.openoffice.org/product/impress.html)
• AdobeAcrobat Presenter

These products, some of which are offered free for trial or basic subscriptions (called a “freemium), allow you to present professional-looking slides.   Each one is “robust,” a word used to mean it has a large number of functions and features,  some of which are helpful and some of which are distracting.   For example, you can use the full range of fonts, although many  of them are not appropriate for presentations because they are hard to read. In this section we will discuss the proper use of presentation slides, with the assumption that you understand the basics of cutting, pasting, inserting, etc. involved in these products. You may have taken a class in high school where you learned to use the technology, but that is not the same as learning to use them for actual presentations.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Presentation Slides

In some industries and businesses, there is an assumption that speakers will use presentation slides. They allow visualization of concepts, they are easily portable, they can be embedded with videos and audio, words can dance around the screen —why wouldn’t a speaker use them? You will probably also be expected to have slide presentations in future assignments in college. Knowing how to use them, beyond the basic technology, is vital to being a proficient presenter.

But why not use them?  F ranck Frommer, a French journalist and communication expert, published the book  How PowerPoint Makes You Stupid  (2012), whose title says it all. He criticizes the “linearity” of PowerPoint and similar presentation software, meaning that audiences are not encouraged to see the relationship of ideas and that PowerPoint hurts critical thinking in the audience.  Slide follows slide of bulleted information without one slide being more important or the logical connections being clear.

As recently as the mid-2000s, critics such as well-known graphic expert and NASA consultant  Edward Tufte (2005) charged that  PowerPoint’s tendency to force the user to put a certain number of bullet points on each slide in a certain format was a serious threat to the accurate presentation of data.  As Tufte put it, “ the rigid slide-by-slide hierarchies, indifferent to content, slice and dice the evidence into arbitrary compartments, producing an anti-narrative with choppy continuity.”

Tufte argues that poor decision making, such as was involved with the 2003 space shuttle  Columbia  disaster, may have been related to the shortcomings of such presentation aids in NASA meetings. While more recent versions of PowerPoint and similar programs allow much more creative freedom in designing slides,  this freedom comes with a responsibility— the user needs to take responsibility for using the technology to support the speech and not get carried away with the many special effects the software is capable of producing.

It should be mentioned here that Prezi helps address one of the major criticisms of PowerPoint. Because Prezi, in its design stage, looks something like a mind map on a very large canvas with grid lines, it allows you to show the relationship and hierarchy of ideas better. For example, you can see and design the slides so that the “Big Ideas” are in big circles and the subordinate ideas are in smaller ones.

In addition to recognizing the truth behind Frommer’s and Tufte’s critiques, we have all sat through a presenter who committed the errors of putting far too much text on the slide. When a speaker does this, the audience is confused— do they read the text or listen to the speaker?  An audience member cannot do bot h.  (Remember the pipeline graphic in Chapter 7.)  Then, the speaker feels the need to read the slides rather than use PowerPoint for what it does best, visual reinforcement and clarification .  We have also seen many poorly designed PowerPoint slides, either through haste or lack of knowledge: slides where the graphics are distorted (elongated or squatty), words and graphics not balanced, text too small, words printed over photographs, garish or nauseating colors, or animated figures left up on the screen for too long and distracting the audience. What about you? Can you think about PowerPoint “don’ts” that have hurt your reception of a presentation or lecture? This would be a good discussion for class, and a good way to know what not to do with your own slides.

Creating Quality Slide Shows

Slides should show the principles of good design, which include unity, emphasis or focal point, scale and proportion, balance, and rhythm  (Lauer & Pentak, 2000).  Presenters should also pay attention to tone and usability.  With those principles in mind,  here are some tips for creating and then using presentation software .

Unity and Consistency

Generally it is best to  use a single font  for the text on your visuals so that they look like a unified set .  Or you can use two different fonts in consistent ways, such as having all headings and titles in the same font and all bullet points in the same font . Additionally, the  background should probably remain consistent,  whether you choose one of the many design templates or if you just opt for a background color .

In terms of unity, the adage, “ Keep It Simple, Speaker”  definitely applies to presentation slides.  Each slide should have one message, one photo, one graphic .  The audience members should know what they are supposed to look at on the slide. A phrase to remember about presentation slides and the wide range of design elements available is “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.”

Another area related to unity and consistency, as well as audience response, is the use of animation or movemen t. There are  three types of animation in slideshows. First, you can embed little characters or icons that have movement.  These may seem like fun, but they have limited use and should not stay on the screen very long—you can use the second type of animation to take them off the screen.

That second type is the designed movement of text or objects on and off the screen .  Although using this function takes up time in preparing your slides , especially if you want to do it well and be creative with it, it is very useful. You can control what your audience is seeing.  It also avoids bringing up all the text and material on a slide at one time, which tempts the audience again to pay more attention to the screen than to you.  Movement on the screen attracts attention (see Factors of Attention in Chapter 7), for better or worse. PowerPoint, for example, allows bouncing words, pulsating text, swirling phrases, even  Star Wars  scroll, which may or may not serve your purpose.

The third type of animation is called slide transitions, which is the design of how the next slide appears . In PowerPoint you can have the slides appear automatically or as blinds, as little checkerboards, from different sides of the screen, in opening circles, etc. (You can also use sound effects, but that is strongly discouraged.) In Prezi, the slides transition by zooming in and out, which is a clever effect but does make some audience members experience motion sickness.  In general, you want to use a consistent and efficient pattern of movement with the second and third types of animation.

Emphasis, Focal Point, and Visibility

Several points should be made about how to make sure the audience sees what they need to see on the slides.

• It  is essential to make sure the information is  large enough  for the audience to see ; and since the display size may vary according to the projector you are using, this is another reason for practicing in advance with the equipment you intend to use.
• T he standard rule is for text is 7 X 7, or sometimes (if the screen is smaller) 6 X 6. Does this mean 49 or 36 words on the slide? No. It means, in the case of 7 X 7, that you should have  no more than seven horizontal lines of text (this does not mean bullet points, but lines of text, including the heading) and the longest line should not exceed seven words.
• Following the 7 X 7 rule will keep you from putting too much information on a slide, and you should also avoid too many slides . Less sometimes really is more. Again, there is no hard and fast rule, but a ten-minute speech probably needs  fewer than ten slides, unless you can make a good argument for more based on the content of the speech.  If, however, the slides are just text, more than ten is too many.
• Do not assume that all the templates feature visible text.  Text should not be smaller than 22 point font for best visibility,  and some of the templates use much smaller fonts than 22 point.   This is especially important in those situations where the speaker creates handouts. Text smaller than 22 is very difficult to see on handouts of your slides. (However, handouts are not recommended for most situations.)
• H igh contrast between the text and slides is extremely important . White fonts against very dark backgrounds and black fonts against very light backgrounds are probably your safest bet here . Remember that the way it looks on your computer screen is not the exactly how it will look when projected—the light is coming from a different place.  Avoid words on photos.  Figure 9.21 shows a photo with the words placed across the center of the image. Not only does this obviously obscure some of the picture, it also makes the words difficult to read . Figure 9.22, by contrast, has the accompanying text placed just blow the image, making both much easier to see, and a citation is provided.

• Al so in terms of visibility, most experts say that  sans serif fonts  such as Arial, Tahoma, and Verdana are better for reading from screens than serif fonts such as Times New Roman, Bookface, Georgia, or Garamond.  Merriam-Webster (2018) defines “serif” as “any of the short lines stemming from and at an angle to the upper and lower ends of the strokes of a letter.” Serifs are additions to the letters on different fonts that give them a different appearance and help the flow of eye when reading .

How does the slide in Figure 9.23 stack up beside these rules for visibility? You probably noticed that slide is a “fail” in terms of high contrast between the font and background and the use of a block of text not broken up for easy reading. The audience would feel like they are supposed to read it but not be able to. Also, since the text is a quotation from John Dewey, the text should have quotation marks around it.

F onts, color, clip art, photographs, and templates all contribute to  tone , which is the attitude being conveyed in the slides.  If you want a light tone, such as for a speech about cruises, some colors (springtime, pastel, cool, warm, or primary colors) and fonts (such as Comic Sans) and lots of photographs will be more appropriate . For a speech about the Holocaust, more somber colors and design elements would be more fitting, whereas clip art would not be.

the attitude of a given artifact (humorous, serious, light-hearted, etc.)

Scale and Proportion

Although there are several ways to think about scale and proportion, we will discuss three here.  First, bullet points.  Bullet points infer that the items in the bulleted list are equal and the sequence doesn’t matter.   If you want to communicate order or sequence or priority, use numbers.  Do not mix outline points or numerical points with bullet points. Also, you should not put your outline (Roman numerals, etc.) on the slide.

Bullet points should be short—not long, full sentences—but at the same time should be long enough to mean something . In a speech on spaying and neutering pets, the bullet point “pain” may be better replaced with “Pet feels little pain.”  Second, when you are designing your slides, it is best to choose a template and stick with it . If you input all your graphics and material and then change the template, the format of the slide will change, in some cases dramatically, and you will have distorted graphics and words covered up. You will then have to redesign each slide, which can be unnecessarily time-consuming.

The third aspect of scale and proportion is the relationship between the graphics and text in terms of size.  This aspect is discussed below in the next section on “Balance.” Also, a graphic should be surrounded by some empty space and not just take up the whole slide.

In general you want symmetrical slides . Below are four examples of slides that are unbalanced  (Figures 9.24-9.27); the last one (Figure 9. 28) achieves a better symmetry and design.

Rhythm in Presenting

The rhythm of your slide display should be reasonably consistent—you would not want to display a dozen different slides in the first minute of a five-minute presentation and then display only one slide per minute for the rest of the speech .  Timing them so that the audience can actually take them in is important.  Presenters often overdo the number of slides, thinking they will get a better grade, but  too many slides just causes overkill.

If you can obtain a remote mouse to change slides, that can help you feel independent of the mouse attached to the computer . However, you have to practice with the remote “clicker.” But if you have to use the mouse to change slide, keep your hands off of it between clicks. We have seen students wiggle the little arrow all over the screen. It is extremely annoying.

Whether using a remote “clicker” or the attached mouse, you must attend to the connection between what is on the screen and what you are actually talking about at the moment. Put reminders in your notes about when you need to change slides during your speech.

For better or worse, we have become very screen-oriented in our communication, largely because screens change often and that changing teaches us to expect new stimuli, which we crave. If the screen is up but you are not talking about what is on the screen, it is very confusing to the audience.

If you are using PowerPoint and if you are not talking about something on a slide, hit the “B” key or the blank screen button on the remote mouse. This action will turn the screen to black. You can also hit the “W” key, which turns the screen to white, but that will make the audience think something is coming. Unfortunately, the downside of the “B” key action is that it will return you to the previous screen. To avoid this, some presenters put a black slide between slides in the presentation so that hitting the forward key gives the same effect, but hitting it again takes them to a new screen. (Other programs have similar functions; for example, if using Prezi, the “B” key also shows a black screen.)

In fact, a basic presentation rule is to only  show your visual aid when you are talking about it , and  remove it when you no longer are talking about it.   Some other practical considerations are as follows:

• Be sure the file is saved in a format that will be  “readable” on the computer  where you are presenting.   A common example is that a Keynote presentation (Apple) does not open on all PCs. You can save Keynote as a .ppt file for use on a PC. Likewise, if you chose to use Prezi or other web-based presentation software, you will need a strong, reliable Internet connection to show the slides.
• Any borrowed graphic must be cited on the slide where it is used; the same would be true of borrowed textual material.  Putting your sources only on the last slide is insufficient.
• A very strong temptation for speakers is to look at the projected image rather than the audience during the speech.   This practice cuts down on eye contact, of course, and is distracting for the audience. Two solutions for that are to print your notes from the presentation slides and/or use the slides as your note structure. Also remember that if the image is on the computer monitor in front of you, it is on the screen behind you.
• Always remember—and this cannot be emphasized enough—technology works for you, not you for the technology.  The presentation aids are aids, not the speech itself.
• As mentioned before, sometimes life happens—technology does not work. It could be that the projector bulb goes out or the Internet connection is down.  The show must go on.
• If you are using a video or audio clip from an Internet source, it is probably best to hyperlink the URL on one of the slides rather than minimize the program and change to the Internet site.   You can do this by highlighting a key word on the slide, right clicking to find “hyperlink,” and then  pasting the URL there. Although you can also embed video in a PowerPoint, it makes the file extremely large and that may cause problems of its own.
• Finally, it is common for speakers to think “the slide changes, so the audience know there is a change, so I don’t need a verbal transition.”  Please do not fall into this trap.  Verbal transitions are just as, and maybe more, necessary for a speech using slides.

9.5 –   Low-Tech Presentation Aids

One reason for using digital media is that they can’t be prone to physical damage in the form of smudges, scratches, dents, and rips.  Unlike posters and objects, presentation software can be kept professional looking if you have to carry them through a rainstorm or blizzard. However, there are times when it makes sense to use “low-tech” media for presentations. Here are some directions for those times.

Dry-Erase Board

If you use a chalkboard or dry-erase board, you are not using a prepared presentation aid.  Your failure to prepare visuals ahead of time can be interpreted in several ways, mostly negative. If other speakers carefully design, produce, and use attractive visual aids, yours will stand out by contrast. You will be seen as the speaker who does not take the time to prepare even a simple aid.  Do not use a chalkboard or dry-erase board and pretend it’s a prepared presentation aid .

However, numerous speakers do utilize chalk and dry-erase boards effectively. Typically, these speakers use the chalk or dry-erase board for interactive components of a speech.   For example, maybe you’re giving a speech in front of a group of executives. You may have a PowerPoint all prepared, but at various points in your speech you want to get your audience’s responses. (More recent technologies, such as on iPads, allow you to do the interaction on the screen, but this would have to be supported by the environment.) Chalk or dry-erase boards are very useful when you want to visually show information that you are receiving from your audience.  If you ever use a chalk or dry-erase board, follow these four simple rules:

• W rite large enough so that everyone in the room can see  (which is harder than it sounds; it is also hard to write and talk at the same time!).
• Pr int legibly; don’t write in cursive script.
• Write short phrases; don’t take time to write complete sentences.
• Be  sure you have markers that will not go dry, and clean the board afterward.

A flipchart is useful for situations when you want to save what you have written for future reference or to distribute to the audience after the presentation .  As with whiteboards, you will need good markers and readable handwriting, as well as a strong easel to keep the flipchart upright.

You may have the opportunity in your college years to attend or participate in a “poster session.” These are times during an academic conference where visitors can view a well-designed poster depicting a research project and discuss it one-on-one with the researcher. These kinds of posters are quite large and involve a great deal of work. They can be generated from PowerPoint but often require a special printer.  Otherwise, posters are probably not the best way to approach presentation aids in a speech .  There are problems with visibility as well as portability. Avoid producing a presentation aid that looks like you simply cut pictures out of magazines and pasted them on. Slapping some text and images on a board looks unprofessional and will not be viewed as credible or effective.

Handouts are appropriate for delivering information that audience members can take away with them.  As we will see, handouts require a great deal of management if they are to contribute to your credibility as a speaker.

First, make sure the handout is worth the trouble of making, copying, and distributing it.  Does the audience really need the handout?  Second, make sure to bring enough copies of the handout for each audience member to get one . Having to share or look on with one’s neighbor does not contribute to a professional image.  Under no circumstances should you ever provide a single copy of a handout to pass around.  It is distracting and everyone will see it at different times in the speech, which is also true about passing any object around the room.

There are three possible times to distribute handouts: before you begin your speech, during the speech, and after your speech is over.  Naturally,  if you need your listeners to follow along in a handout, you will need to distribute it before your speech begins .  If you have access to the room ahead of time, place a copy of the handout at or on each seat in the audience . If not, ask a volunteer to distribute them as quickly as possible while you prepare to begin speaking. If the handout is a “ takeaway,” leave it on a table near the door so that those audience members who are interested can take one on their way out; in this case, don’t forget to tell them to do so as you conclude your speech.   It is almost never appropriate to distribute handouts during your speech, as it is distracting, takes up time, and interrupts the pace of your presentation.

To finish this chapter, we will recap and remind you about the principles of effective presentation aids. Whether your aid is a slide show, object, a person, or dry erase board, these standards are essential:

• Presentation aids must be easily seen or heard by your audience.  Squinting and head-cocking are not good reactions. Neither should they look at the screen the whole time and ignore the speaker.
• Presentation aids must be portable, easily handled, and efficient.
• Presentation aids should disappear when not in use.
• Presentation aids should be aesthetically pleasing, which includes in good taste. Avoid shock value just for shock value . You might want to show pictures of diseased organs and teeth, deformities, or corpses for your speech to make a point, but context is everything. Will your audience react so strongly that the overall point is missed? Additionally, electronic media today allows you to create very “busy” slides with varieties of fonts, colors, collages of photos, etc. Keep in mind the principles of unity and focal point.
• Color is another aesthetic aspect . Some colors are just more soothing, readable, and appropriate than others. Also, the color on your slides may be different when projected from what is on your computer. Finally, presentation aids must support your speech and have high relevance to your content.

This chapter has covered a wide range of information about all kinds of audio and visual aids, but audiences today expect and appreciate professionally designed and handled presentation aids. The stakes are higher now, but the tools are many.

Something to Think About

What are some attention problems caused by using projection equipment during a speech?

Which kind of presentation aid would be most useful for the following?

• data on how the average American family uses its income
• discussing the number of wind turbines in five Midwestern states
• explaining the changes in enrollment of minority students at your college over 20 year
• a speech on the chambers of the human heart
• a speech on the differences between North and South Korea
• a speech the Sutton Hoo archaeological dig in England

Chapter Nine Attribution:

Manley, J. A., & Rhodes, K. (2020). Exploring Public Speaking: The Free Dalton State College Public Speaking Textbook, 4th Edition. Manifold. Retrieved from https://alg.manifoldapp.org/read/exploring-public-speaking-the-free-dalton-state-college-public-speaking-textbook-4th-edition/

Also, thank you to Professor Dan West for generously sharing your Public Speaking videos.

Creative Commons License

Authors and Contributors

Barbara G. Tucker (Editor and Primary Author)

As chair of the Department of Communication at Dalton State College, Dr. Tucker oversees programs in communication, general studies, music, theatre, and interdisciplinary studies. She is a Professor of Communication and has worked in higher education for over 40 years. She lives in Ringgold, Georgia, with her husband; they have one son. She is a novelist and playwright. Her research areas are the basic course, open educational resources, historical perspectives on rhetoric, and gratitude.

Matthew LeHew (Editor)

As Assistant Professor at Dalton State College, Matthew LeHew teaches courses in public relations, integrated marketing communication, film studies, and video production. His research interests include various areas of media studies, especially examination of virtual communities for online games. He is currently writing his dissertation for the Ph.D. in Communication (Media and Society track) at Georgia State University. He lives in Marietta, Georgia with his wife, son, and two dogs.

The Public Speaking Resource Project Copyright © 2018 by Lori Halverson-Wente and Mark Halverson-Wente is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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9 Presentation Aids to Use to Make Your Presentation Stand Out

Written by: Caleb Bruski

Looking for a way to make your presentation stand out from the crowd?

When it comes to presentations, your ultimate goal is to communicate clearly and effectively with your audience.

By adding visual aids to your presentations, your audience will more easily understand and connect with your ideas.

Throughout this article, we’re going to cover what presentation aids are, why you should consider using them plus nine different types of presentation aids to test.

Here’s a short selection of 8 easy-to-edit presentation templates you can edit, share and download with Visme. View more templates below:

Table of Contents

What are presentation aids, why use presentation aids, 9 types of presentation aids.

Presentation aids, or sensory aids, are any additional resources used to enhance your speech. 

On a very basic level, a presentation is a bunch of words used to convey ideas to an audience. Presentation aids are additional devices, techniques, resources or materials used to enhance the presentation. 

For example, this four-step process model can be a great presentation aid to showcase a step-by-step guide to your audience.

Rather than just talking about the process, a diagram like this actually details it out, making it easier for your audience to understand.

Visual aids help clarify and contextualize your points for your audience.

Whether you deliver your presentation in person or over the web, the goal is to clearly communicate with your audience. Presentation aids help achieve this goal.

Visual aids also help a presenter stay on a predefined train of thought while presenting. 

The entire experience of presenting can be rather nerve-wracking. Studies show that one of the greatest phobias throughout the world  is public speaking. 

When our words fail us, a clear presentation aid can help fill in the gaps and help us be understood. 

Take this slide example. It can be a great way to walk an audience through features. Each bullet can be clicked to take viewers to a video that provides even more information.

Presentation aids help the presenter stay within an allotted set of time. 

For those of us who have a hard time sticking to the main points, visual presentation aids help us progress forward in our thought process and give a good presentation .

Here, we have a second illustration of a presentation aid — this time in the form of a timeline. Mapping out your content like this helps make it even more digestible and can help your audience learn and remember it.

A sense of authority and trust can also be established when using visual aids.

By delivering hard facts and data in a simple way, trust is established with the audience. The authority and expertise of the presenter is also established. 

Visual aids should help your audience understand the data in your presentation.

When used correctly, presentation aids increase the chance of receiving a positive response when making a call to action. 

In summary, presentation aids are useful for the presenter, the audience and all other parties involved. Best of all, using them is easy and effective.

Create a stunning presentation in less time

• Hundreds of premade slides available
• Add animation and interactivity to your slides
• Choose from various presentation options

Sign up. It’s free.

Ready to wow your audience with your next presentation? We’re here to help. In this list, you’ll find nine different types of presentation aids that you might consider using to help demonstrate your main points.

1. Charts and Graphs

Charts and graphs are a form of presentation aid used to visually compare statistics and figures. These are some of the most used forms of visual aids in the business world.

Listening to long strings of numbers can be a challenging task. Comparing long strings of numbers without reference can be near impossible. Overwhelmed with this type of data, most audience members will mentally check out.

Comparing simple shapes or lines is an easier task for most people. 

Consider adding a chart like the one below as a presentation aid for your audience.

A simple chart or graph will drastically help your audience comprehend numbers in a way that is easier to understand.

It’s important to select a chart or graph that helps exemplify your point. Not all charts can communicate with clarity the same information. Learn more in our guide on how to create a chart .

2. Handouts

Handouts are physical objects given to the audience that contain information related to the presentation. 

The greatest advantage of using a handout is the physical interaction your audience has with your presentation.

Your audience has the freedom to interact with these handouts during the presentation — they can touch, smell, read, etc., giving them an edge in actually retaining the information.

The more senses your audience uses during a presentation, the better. 

A handout also lets your audience revisit parts of your presentation that were not clear. This helps everyone stay on the same page.

A bonus to using handouts is that these objects don’t just magically disappear. Long after the presentation is over, the handout will still be around. Your audience will remember your presentation every time they see your handout.

3. Demonstration

Demonstrations are actions performed to exhibit or illustrate a point. The goal of a demonstration is to take an abstract point and anchor it in reality, as well as to ensure your audience comprehends a speaking point.

Demonstrations aren’t limited to just physical demonstrations. Demonstrations may also include allegorical stories or proofs used to prove a point. Sharing personal stories or case studies could be categorized as a demonstration. 

Here’s an example of a presentation slide with a demo video embedded. If you don’t have the resources to perform a live demonstration, using a tactic like this can be a great alternative.

To understand the full potential of demonstrations, think back to your old science teacher. A science teacher's job was to teach to a room filled with easily distracted children. 

Science is one of the most complex subjects to teach and the audience is a tough crowd. How did they do it?

With demonstrations! Or more specifically, with science experiments.

Physical demonstrations are some of the most memorable moments of an entire school year. 

The reason demonstrations are more memorable than a simple speech is because demonstrations invite more of your audience’s senses to take part in the demonstration. 

Not only do you hear the lesson, but you can see, touch, smell and sometimes even taste it as well. 

The audience is also involved when the demonstration is a personal story. When the audience hears the story, they imagine it. By recreating the scenario using their own imagination, the memory lasts longer.

Demonstrations are also powerful communication tools. They have the potential to make your presentation go from mediocre to  memorable. 

While powerful, demonstrations can work for or against you. Adding too many, too large or unrelated demonstrations can distract your audience from the actual topic. Ensure that your demonstrations are connected to and accentuate your main points.

4. Diagrams

A diagram is a visual graphic or sketch focused on presenting the inner workings or relations of a subject. A diagram is different from a basic sketch. While a sketch aims to accurately depict an object's shape, a diagram aims to explain and define its functions and relations. 

Diagrams give you the freedom to list, describe, explain and map out your subject matter in a way that is not limited to its physical form. 

While mixing a diagram and physical sketch together can be cool, it’s not necessary. Diagrams ought to be chosen based on their effectiveness in explaining the subject's construction and relation to other objects.

Diagrams help explain complex relations between objects without the need for physical properties. Diagrams are great to use when sketches, photographs and videos can not capture all the attributes of an object. 

Before settling on which diagram to use, it’s best to experiment with different types of diagrams. Your decision should rely upon which diagram will aid your audience the most.

Diagrams are also great for describing and defining things that do not have form. Instead of giving a long and complex definition that no one will remember, consider using a diagram. 

Diagrams can show how this new thing relates to something familiar to your audience. This will help your audience understand and remember complex portions of your presentation.

5. Video or Audio

Audio and video clips are presentation aids used to expand the dynamic range of input in your speech.

Your audience will find it easier to engage with your presentation when you diversify your method of delivery. 

An easy way to increase audiences’ sensory input is by transitioning from a simple speech into a video or audio clip.

Videos allow you to convey information in a fast and rehearsed manner. Professional camera work captures prearranged images, audio and speech. This means video is capable of conveying emotion and information more effectively than speech. 

For this reason, a short video clip may do a better job at summarizing the main points of a presentation than a speech alone. 

While the benefits of  video are high, there are also some potential problems. The most common issue with video usage in presentations being technical compatibility issues.

A smooth transition between speech and video is necessary for your presentation. 

Rough or elongated transitions can be a major distraction for your audience. If this happens, your audience may find it difficult to reinvest in your presentation.

To ensure smooth transitions, your presentation software must be capable of integrating videos clips directly into your presentation. 

It is important to have dependable presentation software .  By doing so, you’ll be able to transition between video clips and other presentation aids.

The transitioning issue is most noticeable at the end of a presentation. Especially when a speaker attempts to transition from a slide-show into a video clip. 

Consequently, many presentations do not have a strong and official close. Lacking a strong close leaves your audience without a clear understanding of what to do next. Check out this article to ensure you know how to end your presentation on a strong and impressionable note.

Quotations are a type of presentation aid that appeal to outside authority and expertise. Quoting others helps establish a positive rapport with your audience.

Many people fear quoting others makes them appear unoriginal.

The opposite is actually true. Quoting outside sources tends to drastically improve the overall appeal of your presentation.

Quoting others shows that you have listened to others on this subject. This makes the presenter appear as a well thought out and considerate listener. 

It’s recommended that you quote those who both agree and disagree with your conclusion. By doing so, you establish a sense of trust and expertise with your audience.

Quoting those who disagree with your conclusion shows that you have taken the time and effort to engage their thought process. 

Quoting those who agree with you shows your conclusion to be a recurring conclusion.

However, always give credit where credit is due. Not only is plagiarism immoral and possibly illegal, it also damages your personal reputation. This may destroy any trust you established with your audience. Check out this guide about plagiarism to learn more.

Maps are visual representations, generally two-dimensional diagrams, that show the relative position and orientation of something. 

Maps are powerful presentation aids capable of showing valuable information beyond basic geography. 

Because maps are a form of diagram, they can deliver valuable relational information. This is especially true when used in combination with animations or graphical overlays.

Proper presentation software will allow you to update your dataset for your map. The changes should immediately update the output of your map without having to manually manipulate the image.

Visme automatically generates these scalable maps and makes the process of customizing your map easy. With just a few clicks, you can generate and customize maps with your own datasets.

8. Photographs

Photographs are still images captured on a film or digital medium and are a powerful visual aid. When used correctly, photographs can add color and shape to the speech in your presentation.

The saying "a picture is worth a thousand words" is a true statement. A picture is priceless when it’s able to capture and accentuate a point relevant to your presentation.

Photographs are unique presentations aids that give you the power to make a window for your audience to look through. This allows your audience to see and experience particular aspects of your presentation.

While the color red can be described with many words, there’s an experiential gap. Once seen, you can experience the color red.

When a presentation is given, words can help describe an idea, but not experience the idea. Presentation images give you the possibility to close that visual experiential gap.

Even in a world that sells pocket-sized HD 4k 60fps video cameras, the photograph is still the visual aid of choice for most people.

While videos are powerful in their own right, photos give you the power to capture and highlight one particular moment. 

Photos can be less distracting than videos. Videos may have background noises or other distractions. Photographs let you capture and present one image without any distractions.

When presenting, it’s important for your main speaking points to be aided, not hindered, by the presentation aid. 

While planning out your presentation, consider using photographs more frequently than video. This will help your audience experience your presentations without distractions.

Images are also much cheaper and easier to professionally edit than their video counterparts. Capturing and editing a high-quality video may take hours, days or even months. A professional-looking photo can be captured with ease and edited in a matter of minutes. 

Or, you can take advantage of a free stock photo library like you get with Visme. This way, you can ensure your presentation photos are copyright protected and free to use.

9. Volunteers

Volunteers are people selected from the general population to participate in a demonstration. 

Using volunteers in demonstrations is one of the most effective presentation aids available. Using this tactic efficiently comes with all the advantages of a classic demonstration, and so much more.

Human interaction is hardwired into us. We tend to remember faces, body shapes, expressions and emotions. A demonstration with volunteers lets you instantly change the dynamic of the speech.

Ready to create your own presentation in minutes?

• Add your own text, images and more
• Customize colors, fonts and everything else
• Choose from hundreds of slide designs and templates
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Demonstrations with volunteers encourage audience interaction with your subject matter. 

When the audience sees a volunteer interact with your presentation, the barrier to entry is lowered — plus, it gives your audience the chance to become a volunteer that’s doing the interaction themselves.

This makes your subject more approachable and your call to action more likely to succeed.

Be sure your interactions with the volunteer are somewhere between professional and semi-professional. Most people are already afraid to be on stage. An unprofessional or condescending demeanor will only make things even more uncomfortable.

Ensure that your volunteer’s role has a strong connection to your main point. Like all good demonstrations, make sure it is contributing to your presentation. If a particular portion of the presentation is not related to the main point, your audience's mind may begin to wander. 

At the end of the demonstration, be sure to thank and dismiss your volunteers when they are done contributing. There is nothing more distracting for the audience than having an extra person nervously lurking around on stage. 

If done correctly, your audience will remember the demonstration done with volunteers and recall the driving points of your presentation. The volunteer will likely also remember the event for a longer period of time and may even share parts of your presentation with others.

Try Presentation Aids in Your Next Presentation

Creating and utilizing presentation aids can help your presentation go from acceptable to phenomenal. With proper physical and mental preparation, your presentation is sure to impress.

The best way to mentally prepare yourself for your presentation is to be physically prepared. 

Visme makes presentation preparation easy and takes all the guesswork out of the design process. Visme has thousands of high-quality templates for you to customize and choose from. We are certain that with the right tools, you can make an awe-inspiring presentation.

Create a free account and see why Visme is one of the best and easiest ways to create a stunning and engaging presentation.

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About the Author

Caleb is a freelance writer, frontend web developer and photographer who is passionate about all things tech.

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Chapter 12: Presentation Aids

12.1 – what are presentation aids.

When you give a speech, you are presenting much more than just a collection of words and ideas. Because you are speaking “live and in person,” your audience members will experience your speech through all five of their senses: hearing, vision, smell, taste, and touch. A public speaking event can be greatly enriched by appealing to multiple senses: this is the role of presentation aids.

Typical presentation aids include pictures, diagrams, charts and graphs, maps, and the like. Audible aids include musical excerpts, audio speech excerpts, and sound effects.  Short video clips are also popular. A speaker may even use fragrance samples or food samples as aids. Finally, presentation aids can be three-dimensional objects, animals, and people.

To be effective, each presentation aid needs to legitimately add value to the presentation and be used when presenting the relevant, related ideas.

For example, if you are speaking about coral reefs and one of your supporting points is about the location of the world’s major reefs, it would make sense to display a map of these reefs while you’re talking about location. If you display it while you are explaining what coral actually is or describing the kinds of fish that feed on a reef, the map will not serve as a useful visual aid—in fact, it’s likely to be a distraction.

12.2 – Functions of Presentation Aids

While impressive presentation aids will not rescue a poor speech, a good speech can often be made even better by the strategic use of presentation aids.

Presentation aids can improve your audience’s understanding and retention of the message, add variety and interest, and enhance your credibility.

Improving Audience Understanding

As a speaker, one of your basic goals is to help your audience understand your message. To reduce misunderstanding, presentation aids can be used to clarify or to emphasize.

If the information you convey is unclear, your listeners will come away puzzled or possibly even misled. Presentation aids can help clarify a message if the information is complex or if the point being made is a visual one. Another aspect of clarifying occurs when a speaker wants to help audience members understand a visual concept.

When you use a presentational aid for emphasis, you impress your listeners with the importance of an idea. Another way of emphasizing that can be done visually is to “zoom in” on a specific aspect of interest within your speech.

Aiding Retention and Recall

The second function that presentation aids can serve is to increase the audience’s chances of remembering your speech. An article by the U.S. Department of Labor (1996) found that “83% of human learning occurs visually, and the remaining 17% through the other senses—11% through hearing, 3.5% through smell, 1% through taste, and 1.5% through touch.”

For this reason, exposure to an image can serve as a memory aid to your listeners. When your graphic images deliver information effectively, and when your listeners understand them clearly, audience members are likely to remember your message long after your speech is over. Moreover, people often are able to remember information that is presented in sequential steps more easily than if the presentation is disorganized. Using a presentation aid to display the organization of your speech will help your listeners to observe, follow, and remember the sequence of information. This is why some instructors display a lecture outline for their students to follow during class and why a slide with a preview of your main points can be helpful as you move into the body of your speech.

An added benefit of using presentation aids is that they can boost your memory while you are speaking. Using your presentation aids while you rehearse your speech will familiarize you with the association between a given place in your speech and the presentation aid that accompanies that material.

Adding Variety and Interest

A third function of presentation aids is simply to make your speech more interesting. For example, wouldn’t a speech on varieties of roses have greater impact if you accompanied your remarks with a picture of each rose? You can imagine that your audience would be even more enthralled if you had the ability to display an actual flower of each variety in a bud vase. Similarly, if you were speaking to a group of gourmet cooks about Indian spices, you might want to provide tiny samples of spices that they could smell and taste during your speech.

Enhancing a Speaker’s Credibility

Presentation aids alone will not be enough to create a professional image. As mentioned earlier, impressive presentation aids will not rescue a poor speech. Even if you give a good speech, you run the risk of appearing unprofessional if your presentation aids are poorly executed. Conversely, a high quality presentation will contribute to your professional image. This means that, in addition to containing important information, your presentation aids must be clear, clean, uncluttered, organized, and large enough for the audience to see and interpret correctly. Misspellings and poorly designed presentation aids can damage your credibility as a speaker.

In addition, make sure that you give proper credit to the source of any presentation aids that you take from other sources. Using a statistical chart or a map without proper credit will detract from your credibility, just as using a quotation in your speech without credit would.

If you focus your efforts on producing presentation aids that contribute effectively to your meaning, that look professional, and that are handled well, your audience will most likely appreciate your efforts and pay close attention to your message. That attention will help them learn or understand your topic in a new way and will thus help the audience see you as a knowledgeable, competent, and credible speaker. With the prevalence of digital communication, the audience expectation of quality visual aids has increased.

Avoiding Problems with Presentation Aids

Using presentation aids can come with some risks.

One principle to keep in mind is to use only as many presentation aids as necessary to present your message. The number and the technical sophistication of your presentation aids should never overshadow your speech.

Another important consideration is technology. Keep your presentation aids within the limits of the working technology available to you (and know exactly what will be available beforehand).

What will you do if the computer file containing your slides is corrupted? What will you do if the easel is broken? What if you had counted on stacking your visuals on a table that disappears right when you need it? Or the Internet connection is down for a YouTube video you plan to show?

You must be prepared to adapt to an uncomfortable situation. This is why speakers should go to the venue well ahead of time to test the equipment and ascertain the condition of items they’re planning to use. As the speaker, you are responsible for arranging the equipment, props, or other supports you need to make your presentation aids work as intended. Carry a roll of masking tape so you can display your poster even if the easel is gone. Test the computer setup. Have your slides on a flash drive AND send it to yourself as an attachment or upload to a Cloud service. Have an alternative plan prepared in case there is some glitch that prevents your computer-based presentation aids from being usable. And of course, you must know how to use the technology.

More important than the method of delivery is the audience’s ability to see and understand the presentation aid. It must deliver clear information and it must not distract from the message. Avoid overly elaborate presentation aids. Instead, simplify as much as possible, emphasizing the information you want your audience to understand.

Another point to remember is that presentation aids do not “speak for themselves.” When you display a visual aid, you should explain what it shows, pointing out and naming the most important features. If you use an audio aid, such as a musical excerpt, you need to tell your audience what to listen for. Similarly, if you use a video clip, it is up to you as the speaker to point out the characteristics in the video that support the point you are making—but probably beforehand, so you are not speaking over the video. At the same time, a visual aid should be quickly accessible to the audience. This is where simplicity comes in. Limit the categories of information in a visual aid, just as in the organization of a speech.

12.3 – Types of Presentation Aids

Now that we’ve explored some basic hints for preparing visual aids, let’s look at the most common types of visual aids: charts, graphs, representations, objects/models, and people.

A chart is commonly defined as a graphical representation of data (often numerical) or a sketch representing an ordered process. Whether you create your charts or do research to find charts that already exist, match the specific purpose in your speech.

Statistical Charts

For most audiences, statistical presentations must be kept as simple as possible and they must be explained.

When visually displaying information from a quantitative study, you need to make sure that you understand the material and can successfully and simply explain how one should interpret the data. If you are unsure about the data yourself, then you should probably not use this type of information. This is definitely an example of a visual aid that, although it delivers a limited kind of information, does not speak for itself. As with all other principles of public speaking, remember rule number one of communication: know your audience and put them first.

Decision Trees and Sequence-of-Steps Charts

Sequence-of-steps charts are also useful when you are trying to explain a process that involves several steps. Decision trees are useful for showing the relationships between ideas. As with the other types of charts, you want to be sure that the information in the chart is relevant to the purpose of your speech and that each question and decision is clearly labeled. Here, the sequence for making red and white wine—which are very similar, but not identical—can be seen as a flow from the grapes to the bottle, with red wine and white wine taking slightly different routes (and white wine not necessarily going through malolactic fermentation).

Strictly speaking, a graph may be considered a type of chart, but graphs are so widely used that we will discuss them separately. A graph is a pictorial representation of the relationships of quantitative data using dots, lines, bars, pie slices, and the like. Graphs show how one factor (such as size, weight, number of items) varies in comparison to other items. Whereas a statistical chart may report the mean ages of individuals entering college, a graph would show how the mean age changes over time. A statistical chart may report the number of computers sold in the United States, while a graph will use bars or lines to show their breakdown by operating systems such as Windows, Macintosh, and Linux.

Public speakers can show graphs using a range of different formats. Some of those formats are specialized for various professional fields. Very complex graphs often contain too much information that is not related to the purpose of a speaker’s speech. If the graph is cluttered, it becomes difficult to comprehend. In this section, we’re going to analyze the common graphs speakers utilize in their speeches: line graphs, bar graphs, pie graphs, and pictographs.

A line graph is designed to show trends over time. In Figure 10.3 (“Enron’s Stock Price”), we see a line graph depicting the fall of Enron’s stock price from August 2000 to January 2002. Notice that, although it has some steep rises, the line has an overall downward trend clearly depicting the plummeting of Enron’s stock price. This is far more effective in showing the relationship of numbers than a chart (as in Figure 10.1) or reading the numbers aloud.

Bar graphs are useful for showing the differences between quantities. They can be used for population demographics, fuel costs, and many other kinds of data. The graph in Figure 10.4 (World’s Ten Largest Wine Producers) is well designed. It is relatively simple and is carefully labeled, guiding the audience through the changes in market share. The bar graph is designed to show how the three largest wine-producing nations are losing market share to the others. When you look at the chart, you can see Italy, France, and Spain decreasing in market share, while Chile, China, and the USA are gaining global market share.

Pie graphs are usually depicted as circles and are designed to show proportional relationships within sets of data; in other words, they show parts of or percentages of a whole. They should be as simple as possible without eliminating important information.

As with other graphs, the sections of the pie need to be plotted proportionally. In the pie graph shown in Figure 10.5, we see a clear and proportional chart that has been colour-coded. In this graph, audience members can see very quickly that more than half of the world’s population lives in the seven largest countries.

Similar to bar graphs, pictographs use numbers and/or sizes of iconic symbols to dramatize differences in amounts. These are seldom used in professional documents and require a great deal of graphic design skill to do well. Without due care (and skill), they can come off as amateurish.

Diagrams are drawings or sketches that outline and explain the parts of an object, process, or phenomenon that cannot be readily seen. Like graphs, diagrams can be considered a type of chart, as in the case of organizational charts and process-flow charts.

When you use a diagram, be sure to explain each part of the phenomenon, paying special attention to elements that are complicated or prone to misunderstanding. In the example shown in Figure 10.6, you might wish to highlight that the light stimulus is inverted when it is processed in the brain.

Maps are extremely useful if the information is clear and limited. There are all kinds of maps, including population, weather, ocean current, political, and economic maps, so you should find the right kind for the purpose of your speech. Choose a map that emphasizes the information you need to deliver.

The map shown in Figure 10.7 is simple, but may be surprising to many, as it is shows the intense population density of southern and eastern Asia by demonstrating how half of the world’s population lives in a circle that is only a fraction of the world’s total land area.

Photographs and Drawings

Sometimes a photograph or a drawing is the best way to show an unfamiliar but important detail. Audiences expect high quality photographs now and, as with all presentation aids, they should enhance the speech and not just “be there.” Avoid stock images for the sake of an image and never use clip art. Make your images relevant.

Video or Audio Recordings

Another very useful type of presentation aid is a video or audio recording. Whether it is a short video from a website, such as YouTube or Vimeo, a segment from a song, or a piece of a podcast, a well-chosen video or audio recording may be a good choice to enhance your speech. Imagine, for example, that you’re giving a speech on how crowd surges can injure people at concerts or protests. One of the sections of your speech could explain what you’re talking about, but then you could easily show a short video of what a crowd surge looks like.

There is one major warning to using audio and video clips during a speech: do not forget that they are supposed to be aids to your speech, not the speech itself. In addition, be sure to avoid these five mistakes that speakers often make when using audio and video clips:

• Avoid choosing clips that are too long for the overall length of the speech. At most, 10% of your presentation should be clips.
• Practice with the audio or video equipment prior to speaking. If you are unfamiliar with the equipment, you’ll look foolish trying to figure out how it works. This fiddling around will not only take your audience out of your speech but also have a negative impact on your credibility. It also wastes valuable time. Finally, be sure that the speakers on the computer are on and at the right volume level.
• Cue the clip to the appropriate place prior to beginning your speech. We cannot tell you the number of times we’ve seen students spend valuable speech time trying to find a clip on YouTube or a DVD. You need to make sure your clip is ready to go before you start speaking.
• In addition to cuing the clip to the appropriate place, the browser window should be open and ready to go. If there are advertisements before the video, be sure to have the video cued to play after the ad. The audience should not have to sit through a commercial.
• The audience must be given context before a video or audio clip is played, specifically what the clip is and why it relates to the speech. At the same time, the video should not repeat what you have already said, but add to it.

Objects or Models

Objects and models are another form of presentation aid that can be very helpful in getting your audience to understand your message. Objects refer to anything you could hold up and talk about during your speech. If you’re talking about the importance of not using plastic water bottles, you might hold up a plastic water bottle and a stainless steel water bottle as examples.

Models, on the other hand, are re-creations of physical objects that you cannot have readily available with you during a speech. Major real estate development projects are often displayed as scale models to help potential customers, investors, governments, and other stakeholders visualize what the project will look like after completion.

People and Animals

The next category of presentation aids are people and animals. We can often use ourselves or other people to adequately demonstrate an idea during our speeches.

Animals as Presentation Aids

Many are tempted to bring an animal to serve as a presentation aid. While this can sometimes add a very engaging dimension to the speech, it carries some serious risks that you need to consider. Generally speaking, it’s a bad idea.

The first risk is that animal behaviour tends to be unpredictable. With a confined animal, such as a goldfish or a bird in a cage, this will not be a problem. However, even caged animals can be very distracting to your audience if they run about, chirp, or seem agitated. The chances are great that an animal will react negatively to an unfamiliar situation with a large number of new people. Additionally, the animal’s behaviour may not only affect audience attention during your speech, but potentially during other speeches, as well.

The second risk is that some audience members may respond negatively to a live animal. In addition to common fears and aversions to animals like snakes, spiders, and mice, many people have allergies to various animals.

The third risk is that some locations may have regulations about bringing non-service animals onto the premises. If animals are allowed, the person bringing the animal may be required to bring a veterinary certificate or may be legally responsible for any damage caused by the animal.

For these reasons, before you decide to use an animal as a presentation aid, ask yourself if you could make your point equally well with a picture, model, diagram, or other representation of the animal in question. (Stuffed animals go over surprisingly well.)

Speaker as Presentation Aid

Speakers can often use their own bodies to demonstrate facets of a speech. If your speech is about ballroom dancing or ballet, you might use your body to demonstrate the basic moves in the cha-cha or the five basic ballet positions.

Other People as Presentation Aids

In some cases, such as for a demonstration speech, you might want to ask someone else to serve as your presentation aid. You should arrange ahead of time for a person (or persons) to be an effective aid—do not assume that an audience member will volunteer on the spot. If you plan to demonstrate how to immobilize a broken bone, your volunteer must know ahead of time that you will touch them as much as necessary to splint the break.

You must also make certain that they will arrive dressed presentably and that they will not draw attention away from your message through their appearance or behaviour. The transaction between you and your human presentation aid must be appropriate, especially if you are going to demonstrate something like a dance step.

12.4 – Using Presentation Slides

Ever since the 1990s and the mainstreaming of personal computer technology, speakers have had the option of using slide presentation software to accompany their speeches and presentations. The most commonly known one is PowerPoint, although there are several others that are popular:

• Slide Rocket
• Google Slides
• AdobeAcrobat Presenter

These products, some of which are offered free for trial or basic subscriptions (called a “freemium”), allow you to present professional-looking slides. Each one is “robust,” a word used to mean it has a large number of functions and features, some of which are helpful and some of which are distracting. For example, you can use the full range of fonts, although many of them are not appropriate for presentations because they are hard to read.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Presentation Slides

In some industries and businesses, there is an assumption that speakers will use presentation slides. They allow visualization of concepts, are easily portable, and can be embedded with videos and audio. You will probably also be expected to have slide presentations in future assignments in college. Knowing how to use them, beyond the basic technology, is vital to being a proficient presenter.

But why not use them? Franck Frommer, a French journalist and communication expert, published the book How PowerPoint Makes You Stupid (2012); the title says it all. He criticizes the “linearity” of PowerPoint and similar presentation software, meaning that audiences are not encouraged to see the relationship of ideas and that PowerPoint hurts critical thinking in the audience. Slide follows slide of bulleted information without one slide being more important or the logical connections being clear.

As recently as the mid-2000s, critics such as well-known graphics expert and NASA consultant Edward Tufte (2005) charged that PowerPoint’s tendency to force the user to put a certain number of bullet points on each slide in a certain format was a serious threat to the accurate presentation of data. As Tufte put it, “the rigid slide-by-slide hierarchies, indifferent to content, slice and dice the evidence into arbitrary compartments, producing an anti-narrative with choppy continuity.”

Prezi helps address one of the major criticisms of PowerPoint. Because Prezi, in its design stage, looks something like a mind map on a very large canvas with grid lines, it allows you to show the relationship and hierarchy of ideas better. For example, you can see and design the slides so that the “Big Ideas” are in big circles and the subordinate ideas are in smaller ones.

In addition to recognizing the truth behind Frommer’s and Tufte’s critiques, we have all sat through a presenter who committed the errors of putting far too much text on the slide. When a speaker does this, the audience is confused—do they read the text or listen to the speaker? An audience member cannot do both.

Creating Quality Slide Shows

Unity and Consistency

In terms of unity, the adage, “Keep It Simple, Speaker” definitely applies to presentation slides. Each slide should have one message, one photo, one graphic. The audience members should know what they are supposed to look at on the slide. A phrase to remember about presentation slides and the wide range of design elements available is “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.”

Never was this more true than with animation on slides. There are a number of ways to animate a slide, most of which is not helpful. Having text appear line by line could be helpful, but using this tool too much demands too much attention (and you shouldn’t have that much text anyway).

Animation demands audience attention; that’s not good. The audience should be focused on you, drawing on your visual aids  as an aid . They support you; they don’t share the stage with you or distract the audience.

Slide transitions animate the movement from one slide to the next. In PowerPoint you can have the slides appear automatically or as blinds, as little checkerboards, from different sides of the screen, in opening circles, or other methods, but using one simple transition is best. The less jarring, the better. (You can also use sound effects, but that is strongly discouraged.) In Prezi, the slides transition by zooming in and out, which is a clever effect, but does make some audience members experience motion sickness.

With animation, less is more and more is awful.

Emphasis, Focal Point, and Visibility

Several points should be made about how to make sure the audience sees what they need to see on the slides.

• Make information is large enough for the audience; since the display size may vary according to the projector you are using, this is another reason for practicing with the equipment in advance.
• The standard rule is for text is 6 X 6. Does this mean 36 words on the slide? No. It means that you should have no more than six horizontal lines of text (this does not mean bullet points, but lines of text, including the heading) and the longest line should not exceed six words.
• Following the 6 X 6 rule will keep you from putting too much information on a slide and you should also avoid too many slides. Again, less is more. There is no “rule,” but a ten-minute speech probably needs fewer than ten slides, perhaps as few as three.
• Do not assume that all the templates feature visible text. In fact, be warned that many templates are terrible. Text should not be smaller than 22 point font for best visibility and some of the templates use much smaller fonts than 22 point. This is especially important in those situations where the speaker creates handouts. Text smaller than 22 is very difficult to see on handouts of your slides. (However, handouts are not recommended for most situations.)
• High contrast between the text and slides is extremely important. White fonts against very dark backgrounds and black fonts against very light backgrounds are probably your safest bet here. Avoid words on photos.

Rhythm in Presenting

The rhythm of your slide display should be reasonably consistent—you would not want to display a dozen different slides in the first minute of a five-minute presentation and then display only one slide per minute for the rest of the speech. Timing them so that the audience can actually take them in is important. Presenters often overdo the number of slides, thinking they will get a better response, but too many slides just causes overkill.

If you can obtain a remote mouse to change slides, that can help you feel independent of the mouse attached to the computer. However, you have to practice with the remote “clicker.” But if you have to use the mouse to change slide, keep your hands off of it between clicks. We have seen speakers wiggle the little arrow all over the screen. It is extremely annoying.

Graphic designers love to loathe certain fonts and justifiably so. Some fonts are simply not professionally acceptable, Comic Sans, Papyrus, Bradley Hand, and Brush Script being among the worst offenders. Other fonts were once acceptable, but now look like a relic of another age or have been used to death, such as Times New Roman, Courier New, Lucida Console, and Trajan Pro.

Some of the best fonts must be purchased and beware of free font websites; those can be a quick way to install viruses or other malware into your computer.

However, a variety of free fonts that are generally acceptable are available, such as Avenir, Garamond, Helvetica, Cambria, Tahoma, and Calibri.

A good font is easy to read both digitally and in print, provides no distraction to the reader, and is aesthetically consistent with the content.

For a more in-depth discussion of fonts and typefaces, this is a useful primer .

In your design, use a single font for your visuals so that they look like a unified set. Alternately, you can use two different fonts in consistent ways, such as having all headings and titles in the one font and all body text and bullet points in a second font. Additionally, the background should probably remain consistent, whether you choose one of the many design templates or if you just opt for a background colour.

Colour palettes

Choosing an aesthetically appealing colour palette is also necessary for slides. There are a wide variety of websites that offer technical assistance in producing an appealing palette, such as Canva  or Adobe . An image search of “colour palettes” will also yield a wide selection of pre-made palettes to choose from. Ultimately, colour selection is a subjective decision, but that doesn’t mean every colour choice is merely “a matter of opinion.” Pretty much everybody finds the combination of lime green, neon pink, silver, and brown to be a hideous colour palette. Give care and thought to your selections and, especially if art and design are not your forte, take advantage of the attractive colour palettes that others have already assembled and published.

12.5 – Low-Tech Presentation Aids

One reason for using digital media is that they aren’t prone to physical damage in the form of smudges, scratches, dents, and rips. Digital images don’t suffer the effects of weather or accidents. However, there are times when “low-tech” media could work best for a presentation.

Dry-Erase Board

If you use a chalkboard or dry-erase board (a.k.a. “whiteboard”), you are not using a prepared presentation aid. Your failure to prepare visuals ahead of time can be interpreted in several ways, mostly negative. If other speakers carefully design, produce, and use attractive visual aids, yours will stand out by contrast.

However, numerous speakers do use whiteboards effectively. Typically, these speakers use the whiteboard for interactive components of a speech. For example, maybe you’re giving a speech in front of a group of executives. You may have a PowerPoint all prepared, but at various points in your speech you want to get your audience’s responses. (More recent technologies, such as on iPads, allow you to do the interaction on the screen, but this would have to be supported by the environment.) Whiteboards are very useful when you want to visually show information that you are receiving from your audience. If you ever use a whiteboard, follow these four simple rules:

• Write large enough so that everyone in the room can see (which is harder than it sounds; it is also hard to write and talk at the same time).
• Print legibly; don’t write in cursive script.
• Write short phrases; don’t take time to write complete sentences.
• Be sure you have markers that will not go dry and clean the board afterward.
• If possible, have a scribe do the writing for you. (This also applies to flipcharts below.)

A flipchart is useful for situations when you want to save what you have written for future reference or to distribute to the audience after the presentation. As with whiteboards, you will need good markers and readable handwriting, as well as a strong easel to keep the flipchart upright.

You may have the opportunity in your college years to attend or participate in a “poster session.” These are times during an academic conference where visitors can view a well-designed poster depicting a research project and discuss it one-on-one with the researcher. These kinds of posters are quite large and involve a great deal of work. Posters are probably not the best way to approach presentation aids in a speech. There are problems with visibility and portability.

Handouts are appropriate for delivering information that audience members can take away with them.

First, make sure the handout is worth the trouble of making, copying, and distributing it. Second, make sure to bring enough copies of the handout for each audience member to get one.

If you need your listeners to refer to the handout during your speech, place a copy of the handout at each seat before the speech or ask a volunteer to quickly distribute them right before you begin speaking. If the handout is a “takeaway,” leave it on a table near the exit and remind the audience to take one as they leave. Avoid distributing handouts during your speech; doing so is distracting and time consuming.

Attribution

This chapter was adapted from Exploring Public Speaking , 4th Edition by Barbara Tucker and Matthew LeHew, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Public Speaking for Today's Audiences Copyright © 2023 by Sam Schechter is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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7 Presentation Aids To Deliver A Successful Presentation

• By Judhajit Sen
• April 25, 2024

Key Takeaways

• Diverse Tools for Engagement : Different types of presentation aids, including images, graphs, diagrams, maps, audio and video aids, handouts, and demonstrations, enhance engagement by targeting various senses and learning styles and helping the audience to understand your message.
• Enhanced Comprehension : Aids simplify complex ideas, making them easier to understand and remember. They act as a bridge between abstract concepts and  audience comprehension, ensuring more transparent communication.   
• Strategic Selection and Integration : Choosing the right aid aligned with the speech’s purpose is crucial. Quality visuals, such as high-resolution images and clear charts, reinforce key points and maintain audience focus.
• Long-lasting Impact : Effective use of different types of presentation aids extends the presentation ‘s impact beyond its duration. Handouts and memorable demonstrations leave lasting impressions, reinforcing memory recall and audience association with the content.

What Are Presentation Aids?

Presentation aids, also known as sensory aids, are additional tools to boost good presentations. They come in various forms, such as visuals, sounds, and multimedia elements , and enhance the speech’s impact. By targeting different senses like sight and sound, different types of computer-based presentation aids ensure better audience engagement and retention. For instance, combining audio and video clips in a PowerPoint presentation slide can make your presentation more memorable.

Use of different presentation aids go beyond mere words, enriching the message and catering to diverse learning styles. Presentation aids can be used to complement spoken words, making complex ideas easier to understand. Audible aids, such as music or speech excerpts, add depth to the PowerPoint slides and make your speech more interesting.

Presentation aids tap into the psychology of presentation perception, elevating the overall quality from ordinary to extraordinary. They work hand in hand with the speaker’s delivery, enriching the audience’s experience and reinforcing key points.

Why Presenters Use Presentation Aids

Presenters choose presentation aids to enhance their message and engage the audience effectively. Whether in-person or virtual, presentation aids can help clarify complex ideas and ensure an introduction to speech communication. They help maintain focus, especially in nerve-wracking situations like public speaking , and bridge any gaps in understanding.

Use of visual aids, including slides and props, make presentations more engaging, credible, and memorable. They guide transitions, communicate data effectively, and reinforce key points, increasing the likelihood of a positive response to calls to action.

Strategic use of presentation aids helps speakers improve audience understanding, retention, and interest. While a well-prepared speech is crucial, aids further elevate its impact. They add variety, enhance credibility, and emphasize ideas, ultimately contributing to a successful presentation. As a speaker, choosing the right presentation aid tailored to various points in your speech is critical to delivering a compelling message.

Following are seven forms of presentation aids to deliver a successful presentation.

Images serve as your presentation aid in enhancing understanding and evoking emotions. Unlike words, photographs provide visual experiences, bridging the gap between description and reality. They offer a window for audiences to see and experience specific aspects throughout your presentation, ensuring more transparent comprehension.

While videos have their place, photographs capture singular moments without distractions, making them necessary to present your message. Strictly speaking, they are less likely to overwhelm or divert attention, ensuring the main speaking points remain the focus. Visual aids like photographs are cost-effective and easily editable, making them practical choices for presentations.

Quality and relevance are paramount when selecting images. High-resolution images prevent pixelation and maintain clarity, ensuring effective communication. Watermarked images should be avoided to maintain professionalism, with alternatives sought from reputable sources like iStockphoto or Creative Commons databases.

Simple images like silhouettes or diagrams can enhance understanding, particularly for complex topics, while avoiding clutter. However, they must align with the presentation’s message and evoke the desired emotions.

Presenters can create impactful presentations that resonate with audiences and enhance comprehension without distractions by using images judiciously and ensuring their compatibility with the speech.

Graphs And Charts

Graphs and charts serve as essential tools for visually presenting data and comparisons. They simplify complex information, making it easy for audiences to comprehend statistics and figures. In business contexts, they are among the most commonly used visual aids.

Long strings of numbers can overwhelm audiences, leading to disengagement. However, comparing simple shapes or lines in a chart is far easier for most people to understand. Selecting the correct types of charts or graphs is crucial to communicate your message effectively. Whether it’s a pie chart to show proportions, a line graph to illustrate trends over time, or a bar chart for precise comparisons, each presentation aid must serve a specific purpose of your speech.

When designing charts, simplicity is vital. Emphasize clarity over complexity, focusing on delivering a clear conclusion rather than cramming in excessive data. Clear labels, easily distinguishable colors, and consistent formatting enhance comprehension. Complex graphs should be avoided, as they can confuse rather than clarify.

Presenters facilitate audience understanding and engagement by transforming numerical data into visual formats , such as charts and graphs. Visualizing comparisons and trends allows audiences to grasp information more effectively, reinforcing key points and enhancing overall communication.

Diagrams serve as visual aids to elucidate the inner workings and relationships of subjects. They are distinct from mere sketches by their focus on function and connection rather than physical form. They offer flexibility in presenting complex concepts beyond physical attributes, making them invaluable for explaining intricate relationships where other visual mediums fall short.

Experimentation is key in selecting the most effective diagram type for audience comprehension. Diagrams excel in clarifying abstract concepts or unfamiliar entities, bridging understanding by relating them to familiar elements. Their step-by-step breakdown aids in following processes or sequences logically, enhancing audience retention and comprehension.

Unlike charts and graphs, which prioritize data, diagrams emphasize appearance, structure, and flow. They delineate parts, aiding in detailed explanations and mitigating potential confusion.

When incorporating diagrams, it’s crucial to articulate each component, particularly those prone to misunderstanding. Whether illustrating a product’s features or delineating a process’s steps, diagrams ensure clarity and coherence, facilitating audience understanding and engagement.

Diagrams are indispensable tools for dissecting and demystifying complex subjects, transforming abstract ideas into tangible concepts that resonate with audiences.

Maps serve as potent presentation aids, offering more than just geographical information. Maps convey relational data effectively as two-dimensional diagrams, especially when enhanced with animations or overlays. Modern presentation software makes updating map datasets seamless, ensuring real-time accuracy without manual manipulation.

Diverse types of maps, such as population, weather, political, or economic maps, cater to specific informational needs, emphasizing key aspects relevant to the speech’s purpose. In today’s interconnected world, where global interactions are commonplace, maps are crucial in visualizing relationships between nations and regions. Whether showcasing business expansions, disease spread patterns, or cultural trends, maps provide much information into geographical hotspots and trends.

Maps offer perspective, fostering emotional connections by illustrating proximity and spatial relationships. Whether presenting to a global audience or focusing on localized regions, maps help contextualize information and engage audiences more effectively. By incorporating maps into presentations, speakers can enhance comprehension and facilitate a deeper understanding of complex concepts, making them indispensable tools in communication across various domains.

Audio Visual Aids

Audiovisual aids, including video and audio clips, serve as invaluable tools to enrich presentations and enhance audience engagement . By incorporating diverse delivery methods, such as transitioning from speech to audio or video clips, speakers can more effectively captivate their audience’s attention. Videos, in particular, offer a powerful means of summarizing key points and conveying emotions beyond what speech alone can achieve.

However, while audiovisual aids can significantly elevate presentations, they also present potential challenges, such as technical compatibility issues and abrupt transitions. Integrating audiovisual elements into presentations requires adequate preparation, including familiarity with presentation software, checking the video equipment prior to speaking and practice with audio or video equipment.

To maximize the effectiveness of audiovisual aids, speakers should ensure clips are relevant in length and content, avoiding lengthy selections that distract when they give a speech. Prudent planning includes:

• Cueing clips to the appropriate starting point.
• Providing context to the audience.
• Avoiding technical mishaps that detract from credibility.

Ultimately, audiovisual aids should complement and reinforce key points of the speech, enhancing audience comprehension and retention without overshadowing the speaker’s message.

Handouts are tangible resources provided to the audience containing information relevant to the presentation. Their most significant advantage lies in the physical interaction they facilitate, allowing audiences to engage with the material through touch, sight, and reading. By involving multiple senses, handouts enhance information retention.

They also reference unclear points during the presentation, ensuring consistent audience comprehension. Additionally, handouts extend the presentation’s impact beyond its duration, as they persist in the audience’s possession long after the event. This reinforces memory recall and association with the presentation’s content.

Deciding when to distribute handouts is crucial. While providing comprehensive handouts at the end prevents distractions during the speech, offering summarized versions at the beginning aids audience comprehension and participation.

Effective handouts require careful management and consideration. Distributing enough copies for each audience member ensures professionalism and accessibility. Handouts should contain only essential information organized logically to support the presentation’s key points. Informing the audience of their purpose and how to use them effectively fosters engagement and understanding.

Brochures or detailed handouts offer additional depth, particularly in research-intensive presentations like business or healthcare topics. They enable audiences to review information at their own pace and engage in collaborative note-taking, fostering discourse and interaction.

Handouts are valuable tools for reinforcing presentation content, aiding audience comprehension, and extending engagement beyond the live event. Properly managed and designed, they contribute significantly to a speaker’s credibility and audience satisfaction.

Demonstrations

Demonstrations are dynamic tools used to illustrate and reinforce key points in presentations. They encompass various forms, including physical demonstrations, allegorical stories, or live performances, all of which aim to anchor abstract concepts in reality for audience comprehension.

Memorable examples, like those from science classes, highlight the effectiveness of demonstrations in engaging audiences. Demonstrations leave lasting impressions through sensory involvement, as they stimulate multiple senses, enhancing understanding and retention.

Personal stories or case studies serve as powerful demonstrations. They allow audiences to immerse themselves in the narrative, making the message more relatable and memorable.

However, while demonstrations can elevate presentations, they must be used judiciously. Overuse or irrelevant demonstrations can detract from the main message, undermining the presentation’s effectiveness.

Live performances, exemplified by Steve Jobs’ iconic product unveilings, showcase the potential of demonstrations in public relations. They garner attention and media coverage, even in the face of problem if your presentation aid malfunctions, as demonstrated by Tesla’s Cybertruck unveiling.

Despite setbacks, such as the unexpected failure of Tesla’s armored windows, demonstrations often generate significant publicity, underscoring their impact on audience engagement and perception.

Strategically incorporating demonstrations can transform a speaking situation from average to exceptional, leaving a lasting impression on audiences and effectively conveying key messages.

Maximizing Impact with Presentation Aids

Incorporating possible presentation aids into presentations can transform your message from average to unforgettable. From captivating images to informative graphs, these aids enhance audience understanding and engagement. They also act as a bridge between complex ideas and audience comprehension, ensuring your message resonates long after the presentation ends .

Quality visuals, such as high-resolution images and clear charts, are essential for effective communication. They help maintain focus and reinforce key points, guiding your audience through your presentation effortlessly. By strategically selecting and integrating video clips during a speech, you can enhance credibility, emphasize ideas, and leave a lasting impression on your audience.

Remember, choosing the right visual aid prior to beginning your speech is key to delivering a compelling message. So whether you’re presenting in person or virtually, consider incorporating these seven presentation aids to talk about during your speech. The right visuals can contribute positively to your speech and you can deliver a stellar presentation every time.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1.  Why should presenters use presentation aids?

Presenters use aids like visuals and sounds to boost their message and keep the audience engaged at any speaking event. These aids clarify complex ideas, especially in nerve-wracking situations like public speaking , ensuring clear communication and maintaining focus.

2. How do visuals like images contribute to presentations?

Images are powerful tools that enhance understanding and evoke emotions. They provide visual experiences, making presentations more engaging, credible, and memorable. Unlike words, photographs bridge the gap between description and reality, ensuring more transparent comprehension.

3. What role do graphs and charts play in presentations?

A: Graphs and charts simplify complex information, making it easier for audiences to grasp statistics and figures. They prioritize clarity over complexity, guiding transitions and reinforcing critical points effectively. Presenters facilitate audience understanding and engagement by transforming numerical data into visual formats.

4. How can handouts enhance presentations?

Handouts are tangible resources that aid information retention and extend engagement beyond the live event. They reference unclear points, reinforcing memory recall and association with the presentation’s content. Properly managed and designed, handouts significantly contribute to a speaker’s credibility and audience satisfaction.

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How to Start a Presentation in English: 12 Slide Ideas

Introduction to group communication: tips and benefits, shark tank presentation tips: winning shark tank pitch elements.

33 Presentation Aids

Learning objectives.

• Explain reasons to use presentation aids.
• Differentiate between different types of presentation aids.
• Consider effective design for presentation aids.
• Utilize best practices for designing and using presentation aids.

Presentation Aids

If you have prepared and rehearsed your speech adequately, shouldn’t a good speech with a good delivery be enough to stand on its own? While it is true that impressive presentation aids will not rescue a poor speech, it is also important to recognize that a good speech can often be made even better by the strategic use of presentation aids.

Presentation aids are designed to enhance your presentation. We often fall into the “I’ll just make a slide show” mentality. However, this is not always the best choice for a presentation aid. This section will explore reasons to use presentation aids, different types, and tips on how to prepare them.

Slide and slide show design have a major impact on your ability to get your message across to your audience. Numerous books address various design fundamentals and slide design, but there isn’t always consensus on what is “best.” What research has shown, though, is that people have trouble grasping information when it comes at them simultaneously. “They will either listen to you or read your slides; they cannot do both.” This leaves you, the presenter, with a lot of power to direct or scatter your audience’s attention. This section will serve as an overview of basic design considerations that even novices can use to improve their slides.

First and foremost, design with your audience in mind. Your slide show is not your outline. The show is also not your handout. As discussed earlier, you can make a significantly more meaningful, content-rich handout that complements your presentation if you do not try to save time by making a slide show that serves as both. Keep your slides short, create a separate handout if needed, and write as many notes for yourself as you need.

All decisions, from the images you use to their placement, should be done with a focus on your message, your medium, and your audience. Each slide should reinforce or enhance your message, so make conscious decisions about each element and concept you include and edit mercilessly. Taken a step further, graphic designer Robin Williams suggests each element be placed on the slide deliberately in relation to every other element on the slide.

Providing the right amount of information, neither too much nor too little, is one of the key aspects in effective communication. See Figure 3.1 as an example of slides with too little or too much information. The foundation of this idea is that if the viewers have too little information, they must struggle to put the pieces of the presentation together. Most people, however, include too much information (e.g., slides full of text, meaningless images, overly complicated charts), which taxes the audience’s ability to process the message. “There is simply a limit to a person’s ability to process new information efficiently and effectively.” As a presenter, reducing the amount of information directed at your audience (words, images, sounds, etc.) will help them to better remember your message. In this case, less is actually more.

The first strategy to keeping it simple is to include only one concept or idea per slide. If you need more than one slide, use it, but don’t cram more than one idea on a slide. While many have tried to proscribe the number of slides you need based on the length of your talk, there is no formula that works for every presentation. Use only the number of slides necessary to communicate your message, and make sure the number of slides corresponds to the amount of time allotted for your speech. Practice with more and fewer slides and more and less content on each slide to find the balance between too much information and too little.

With simplicity in mind, the goal is to have a slide that can be understood in 3 seconds. Think of it like a billboard you are passing on the highway. You can achieve this by reducing the amount of irrelevant information, also known as  noise , in your slide as much as possible. This might include eliminating background images, using clear icons and images, or creating simplified graphs. Your approach should be to remove as much from your slide as possible until it no longer makes any sense if you remove more.

What is the purpose?

Effective presentation aids are used for a specific purpose. They can help to clarify and emphasize ideas, increase audience recall, and increase interest in your speech. Your job as a speaker is to choose the correct presentation aid to enhance your speech. 

Clarification is important in a speech because if some of the information you convey is unclear, your listeners will come away puzzled or possibly even misled. Presentation aids can help  clarify  a message if the information is complex or if the point being made is a visual one.

If your speech is about the impact of the Coriolis effect on tropical storms, for instance, you will have great difficulty clarifying it without a diagram because the process is a complex one. The diagram below may be an effective presentation aid because it shows the audience the interaction between equatorial wind patterns and wind patterns moving in other directions. The diagram allows the audience to process the information in two ways: through your verbal explanation and through the visual elements of the diagram.

Another example of clarifying occurs when a speaker wants to visually help audience members understand a visual concept. For example, if a speaker is talking about the importance of petroglyphs in Native American culture, just describing the petroglyphs won’t completely help your audience to visualize what they look like. Instead, showing an example of a petroglyph can more easily help your audience form a clear mental image of your intended meaning.

When you use a presentational aid for  emphasis , you highlight the importance of an idea. In a speech on water conservation, you might try to show the environmental proportions of the resource. When you use a conceptual drawing like the one below, you show that if the world water supply were equal to ten gallons, only ten drops would be available and potable for human or household consumption. This drawing is effective because it emphasizes the scarcity of useful water and thus draws attention to this important information in your speech.

Visual images can serve as a memory aid to your listeners. When your graphic images deliver information effectively and when your listeners understand them clearly, audience members are likely to remember your message long after your speech is over.

An added plus of using presentation aids is that they can boost your memory while you are speaking. Using your presentation aids while you rehearse your speech will familiarize you with the association between a given place in your speech and the presentation aid that accompanies that material.

Variety and Interest

Presentation aids make your speech more interesting. While it is true that a good speech and a well-rehearsed delivery will already include variety in several aspects of the presentation, in many cases, a speech can be made even more interesting by the use of well-chosen presentation aids.

For example, you may have prepared a very good speech to inform a group of gardeners about several new varieties of roses suitable for growing in your local area. Although your listeners will undoubtedly understand and remember your message very well without any presentation aids, wouldn’t your speech have a greater impact if you accompanied your remarks with a picture of each rose? You can imagine that your audience would be even more enthralled if you had the ability to display an actual flower of each variety in a bud vase.

Remember, as you are thinking about possible presentation aids, they should be purposeful. You should not have a presentation aid you do not directly use just to have one. If you do not have a purpose for the presentation aid, leave it out.

What should I consider before choosing a presentation aid?

With a little forethought and adequate practice, you can choose presentation aids that enhance your message and boost your professional appearance in front of an audience.

Less is more: One principle to keep in mind is to use only as many presentation aids as necessary to present your message.

• The number and the technical sophistication of your presentation aids should never overshadow your speech. Your presentation aid must deliver clear information, and it must not distract from the message.
• Avoid overly elaborate presentation aids because they can distract the audience’s attention from your message. Instead, simplify as much as possible, emphasizing the information you want your audience to understand.

Technology: You will need to keep presentation aids within the limits of the working technology available to you.

• Know the physical context of the room. Will there be a projector, computer with internet, and sound system? Knowing what is available will help you to plan effective aids.
• Have a back up plan. Whether or not technology works on the day of your speech, you will still have to present. What will you do if the computer file containing your slides is corrupted? You must be prepared to adapt to an uncomfortable and scary situation.

It is an AID:  Presentation aids do not “speak for themselves.” You need to use it. Don’t think you can just show it and it makes the point you want it to make. If you do not use it, then it probably isn’t necessary.

• When you display a visual aid, you should explain what it shows, pointing out and naming the most important features.
• If you use an audio aid such as a musical excerpt, you need to tell your audience what to listen for.
• If you use a video clip, it is up to you as the speaker to point out the characteristics in the video that support the point you are making.

Best Choice: Think about the purpose of your presentation aid (see above) to help you determine which is the best option.

What types of presentation aids can I use?

Now that you know why you are using a presentation aid, let’s look at your options.

In most careers in business, industry, and other professions for which students are preparing themselves, computer-based presentation aids are the norm today. Whether the context is a weekly department meeting in a small conference room or an annual convention in a huge amphitheater, speakers are expected to be comfortable with using slideshow software to create and display presentation aids.

Slides show design and theme should be consistent. It should be easy to read, free of clutter, and enhance your message. Below are several common slideshow software programs.

Slide Layout

It is easy to simply open up your slideware and start typing in the bullet points that outline your talk. If you do this, you will likely fall into the traps for which PowerPoint is infamous. Presentation design experts Reynolds and Duarte both recommend starting with paper and pen. This will help you break away from the text-based, bullet-filled slide shows we all dread. Instead, consider how you can turn your words and concepts into images. Don’t let the software lead you into making a mediocre slide show.

Regarding slide design, focus on simplicity. Don’t over-crowd your slide with text and images. Cluttered slides are hard to understand (see Figure 3.1). Leaving empty space, also known as white space , gives breathing room to your design. The white space actually draws attention to your focus point and makes your slide appear more elegant and professional. Using repetition of color, font, images, and layout throughout your presentation will help tie all of your slides together. This is especially important if a group is putting visuals together collaboratively. If you have handouts, they should also match this formatting in order to convey a more professional look and tie all your pieces together.

Another general principle is to use contrast to highlight your message. Contrast should not be subtle. Make type sizes significantly different. Make contrasting image placements, such as horizontal and vertical, glaringly obvious. A general principle to follow: if things are not the same, then make them very, very different, as in Figure 3.3.

A common layout design is called the  rule of thirds . If you divide the screen using two imaginary lines horizontally and two vertically, you end up with nine sections. The most visually interesting and pleasing portions of the screen will be at the points where the lines intersect.

Aligning your text and images with these points is preferred to centering everything on the screen. See Figure 3.4. Feel free to experiment with the right and left aligned content for contrast and interest. Sticking with a centered layout means more work trying to make the slide interesting.

Understanding how people view images (and thus slides) can help you direct the viewer’s attention to the main point of your slide. In countries that read text from left to right and top to bottom, like English-speaking countries, people tend to also read images and slides the same way. Starting in the upper left of the screen, they read in a  Z pattern , exiting the page in the bottom right corner unless their vision is side-tracked by the objects they are looking at (as in Figure 3.5).

Viewers’ eyes are scanning from focus point to focus point in an image, so you need to consciously create visual cues to direct them to the relevant information. Cues can be created subtly by the placement of objects in the slide, by showing movement, or more obviously by using a simple arrow. Make sure all people and pets are facing into your slide and preferably at your main point, as in Figure 3.6. If your slide contains a road, path, car, plane, etc., have them also facing into your slide. When the natural motion or gaze of your images points away from your slide, your viewers look that way too. Being aware of this and addressing the natural tendencies of people when viewing images can help you select images and design slides that keep the viewer engaged in your message.

Nothing is more hotly debated in slide design than the amount of text that should be on a slide. Godin says “no more than six words on a slide. EVER.” Other common approaches include the 5×5 rule — 5 lines of text, 5 words per line—and similar 6×6 and 7×7 rules. Even with these recommendations, it is still painfully common to see slides with so much text on them that they can’t be read by the audience. The type has to be so small to fit all the words on the slide that no one can read it. Duarte keenly points out that if you have too many words, you no longer have a visual aid. You have either a paper or a teleprompter, and she recommends opting for a small number of words.

Once you understand that the words on the screen are competing for your audience’s attention, it will be easier to edit your slide text down to a minimum. The next time you are watching a presentation and the slide changes, notice how you aren’t really grasping what the speaker is saying, and you also aren’t really understanding what you are reading. Studies have proved this split-attention affects our ability to retain information; so when presenting, you need to give your audience silent reading time when you display a new slide. That is: talk, advance to your next slide, wait for them to read the slide, and resume talking. If you consider how much time your audience is reading rather than listening, hopefully you will decide to reduce the text on your slide and return the focus back to you, the speaker, and your message.

There are several ways to reduce the number of words on your page, but don’t do it haphazardly. Tufte warns against abbreviating your message just to make it fit. He says this dumbs down your message, which does a disservice to your purpose and insults your audience’s intelligence. Instead, Duarte and Reynolds recommend turning as many concepts as possible into images. Studies have shown that people retain more information when they see images that relate to the words they are hearing. And when people are presented information for a very short time, they remember images better than words.

The ubiquitous use of bulleted lists is also hotly debated. PowerPoint is practically designed around the bulleted-list format, even though is it regularly blamed for dull, tedious presentations with either overly dense or overly superficial content. Mostly this format is used (incorrectly) as a presenter’s outline. “ No one can do a good presentation with slide after slide of bullet points. No One. ” Reserve bulleted lists for specifications or explaining the order of processes. In all other cases, look for ways to use images, a short phrase, or even no visual at all.

Quotes, on the other hand, are not as offensive to design when they are short, legible, and infrequently used. They can be a very powerful way to hammer a point home or to launch into your next topic. See Figure 3.10 for an example. If you do use a quote in your slide show, immediately stop and read it out loud or allow time for it to be read silently. If the quote is important enough for you to include it in the talk, the quote deserves the audience’s time to read and think about it. Alternately, use a photo of the speaker or of the subject with a phrase from the quote you will be reading them, making the slide enhance the point of the quote.

Images can be powerful and efficient ways to tap into your audience’s emotions. Use photographs to introduce an abstract idea, to evoke emotion, to present evidence, or to direct the audience attention, just make sure it is compatible with your message. Photos aren’t the only images available. You might consider using simplified images like  silhouettes ,  line art , diagrams, enlargements, or  exploded views , but these should be high quality and relevant. Simplified can be easier to understand, particularly if you are showing something that has a lot of detail. Simple images also translate better than words to a multicultural audience. In all cases, choose only images that enhance your spoken words and are professional-quality. This generally rules out the clip art that comes with slideware, whose use is a sign of amateurism. Select high-quality images and don’t be afraid to use your entire slide to display the image. Boldness with images often adds impact.

When using images, do not enlarge them to the point that the image becomes blurry, also known as  pixelation . Pixelation, (Figure 3.11) is caused when the resolution of your image is too low for your output device (e.g. printer, monitor, projector). When selecting images, look for clear ones that can be placed in your presentation without enlarging them. A good rule of thumb is to use images over 1,000 pixels wide for filling an entire slide. If your images begin to pixelate, either reduce the size of the image or select a different image.

Never use an image that has a  watermark on it, as in Figure 3.2. A watermark is text or a logo that is placed in a digital image to prevent people from re-using it. It is common for companies that sell images to have a preview available that has a watermark on it. This allows you, the potential customer, to see the image, but prevents you from using the image until you have paid for it. Using a watermarked image in your presentation is unprofessional. Select another image without a watermark, take a similar photo yourself, or pay to get the watermark-free version.

You can create images yourself, use free images, or pay for images from companies like iStockphoto for your presentations. Purchasing images can get expensive quickly, and searching for free images is time consuming. Be sure to only use images that you have permission or rights to use and give proper credit for their use. If you are looking for free images, try searching the  Creative Commons database  for images from places like Flickr, Google, and others. The creators of images with a  Creative Commons License  allow others to use their work, but with specific restrictions. What is and isn’t allowed is described in the license for each image. Generally, images can be used in educational or non-commercial settings at no cost as long as you give the photographer credit. Also, images created by the U.S. government and its agencies are copyright free and can be used at no cost.

One final consideration with using images: having the same image on every page, be it part of the slide background or your company logo, can be distracting and should be removed or minimized. As mentioned earlier, the more you can simplify your slide, the easier it will be for your message to be understood.

Backgrounds and Effects

PowerPoint and other slideware has a variety of templates containing backgrounds that are easy to implement for a consistent slide show. Most of them, however, contain distracting graphics that are counter to the simplicity you are aiming for in order to produce a clear message. It is best to use solid colors, if you even need a background at all. For some slide shows, you can make the slides with full-screen images, thus eliminating the need for a background color.

Graphic design is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, abnormality, hobbies and humors. ~ George Santayana

Should you choose to use a background color, make sure you are consistent throughout your presentation. Different colors portray different meanings, but much of this is cultural and contextual, so there are few hard and fast rules about the meaning of colors. One universal recommendation is to avoid the color red because it has been shown to reduce your ability to think clearly. Bright colors, such as yellow, pink, and orange, should also be avoided as background colors, as they are too distracting. Black, on the other hand, is generally associated with sophistication and can be a very effective background as long as there is sufficient contrast with the other elements on your slide.

When designing your presentation, it is tempting to show off your tech skills with glitzy transitions, wipes, fades, moving text, sounds, and a variety of other actions. These are distracting to your audience and should be avoided. They draw attention away from you and your message, instead focusing the audience’s attention on the screen. Since people naturally look at what is moving and expect it to mean something, meaningless effects, no matter how subtle, distract your audience, and affect their ability to grasp the content. Make sure that all your changes are meaningful and reinforce your message.

Graphs and Charts

If you have numerical data that you want to present, consider using a graph or chart. You are trying to make a specific point with the data on the slide, so make sure that the point—the conclusion you want your audience to draw — is clear. This may mean that you reduce the amount of data you present, even though it is tempting to include all of your data on your slide.

It is best to minimize the amount of information and focus instead on the simple and clear conclusion. You can include the complete data set in your handout if you feel it is necessary. Particularly when it comes to numerical data, identify the meaning in the numbers and exclude the rest. “Audiences are screaming ‘make it clear,’ not ‘cram more in.’ You won’t often hear an audience member say, ‘That presentation would have been so much better if it were longer.” In some cases you can even ditch the graph altogether and display the one relevant fact that is your conclusion.

Different charts have different purposes, and it is important to select the one that puts your data in the appropriate context to be clearly understood. Pie charts show how the parts relate to the whole and are suitable for up to eight segments, as long as they remain visually distinct. Start your first slice of the pie at 12:00 with your smallest portion and continue around the circle clockwise as the sections increase in size. Use a line graph to show trends over time or how data relates or interacts. Bar charts are good for showing comparisons of size or magnitude and for showing precise comparisons. There are other types of charts and graphs available, but these are the most common.

When designing charts, one should use easily distinguishable colors with clear labels. Be consistent with your colors and data groupings. For clarity, avoid using 3-D graphs and charts, and remove as much of the background noise (lines, shading, etc.) as possible. All components of your graph, once the clutter is removed, should be distinct from any background color. Finally, don’t get too complex in any one graph, make sure your message is as clear as possible, and make sure to visually highlight the conclusion you want the audience to draw.

A chart is commonly defined as a graphical representation of data (often numerical) or a sketch representing an ordered process. A chart can take the form of a diagram or a picture or a graph.

A decision tree is one example of a chart. Decision trees are useful for showing the relationships between ideas. The below example shows how a decision tree could be used to determine the appropriate weather for playing baseball. As with the other types of charts, you want to be sure that the information in the chart is relevant to the purpose of your speech and that each question and decision is clearly labeled.

Wikimedia Commons  – public domain.

A graph is considered a type of chart illustrating a pictorial representation of the relationships of quantitative data using dots, lines, bars, pie slices, and the like. Graphs show the variation in one variable in comparison with that of one or more other variables. Where a statistical chart may report the mean ages of individuals entering college, a graph would show how the mean age changes over time. A statistical chart may report the number of computers sold in the United States, while a graph will show the breakdown of those computers by operating systems such as Windows, Macintosh, and Linux. Public speakers can show graphs using a range of different formats. Some of those formats are specialized for various professional fields. Very complex graphs often contain too much information that is not related to the purpose of a student’s speech. If the graph is cluttered, it becomes difficult to comprehend.

In this section, we’re going to analyze the common graphs speakers utilize in their speeches: line graphs, bar graphs, and pie graphs.

A line graph is designed to show trends over time. The example to the left depicts the fall of Enron’s stock price from August 2000 to January 2002. Notice that although it has some steep rises, the line has an overall downward trend clearly depicting the plummeting of Enron’s stock price. Showing such a line graph helps the audience see the relationships between the numbers, and audiences can understand the information by seeing the graph much more easily than they could if the speaker just read the numbers aloud.

Bar graphs are useful for showing the differences between quantities. They can be used for population demographics, fuel costs, math ability in different grades, and many other kinds of data.

The graph to the right is well designed. It is relatively simple and is carefully labeled, making it easy for you to guide your audience through the quantities of each type of death. The bar graph is designed to show the difference between natural deaths and homicides across various age groups. When you look at the data, the first grouping clearly shows that eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds are more likely to die because of homicide than any of the other age groups.

Pie graphs should be simplified as much as possible without eliminating important information. As with other graphs, the sections of the pie need to be plotted proportionally. In the pie graph shown, we see a clear and proportional chart that has been color-coded. Color-coding is useful when it’s difficult to fit the explanations in the actual sections of the graph; in that case, you need to include a legend, or key, to indicate what the colors in the graph mean. In this graph, audience members can see very quickly that falls are the primary reason children receive concussions.

In the world of presentation aids, representations are designed to represent real processes or objects. Often, speakers want to visually demonstrate something that they cannot physically bring with them to the speech. Maybe you’re giving a speech on the human brain, and you just don’t have access to a cadaver’s brain. Instead of bringing in a real brain, you could use a picture of a brain or an image that represents the human brain. In this section, we’re going to explore four common representations: diagrams, maps, photographs, and video or recordings.

Diagrams are drawings or sketches that outline and explain the parts of an object, process, or phenomenon that cannot be readily seen. When you use a diagram, be sure to explain each part of the phenomenon, paying special attention to elements that are complicated or prone to misunderstanding. In the example shown, you might wish to highlight that the light stimulus is reversed when it is processed through the brain or that the optic nerve is not a single stalk as many people think.

Maps are extremely useful if the information is clear and limited. There are all kinds of maps, including population, weather, ocean current, political, and economic maps, but you should be able to find the right kind for the purpose of your speech. Choose a map that emphasizes the information you need to deliver.

The African Map with Nigerian Emphasis is simple, showing clearly the geographic location of Nigeria. This can be extremely valuable for some audiences who might not be able to name and locate countries on the continent of Africa. The Road Island map emphasizes the complicated configuration of islands and waterways that characterize this state’s geography. Although the map does not list the names of the islands, it is helpful in orienting the audience to the direction and distance of the islands to other geographic features, such as the city of Providence and the Atlantic Ocean.

Photographs and Drawings

Sometimes a photograph or a drawing is the best way to show an unfamiliar but important detail. The first photograph is of a wigwam – a living dwelling used by Native Americans in the North East. In this photograph you can see the curved birchbark exterior, which makes this dwelling ideal for a variety of weather conditions. The photograph of the tall ship emphasizes the sheer amount and complexity of the ship’s rigging.

Video or Audio Recordings

Another very useful type of presentation aid is a video or audio recording. Whether it is a short video from a website such as YouTube or Vimeo, a segment from a song, or a piece of a podcast, a well-chosen video or audio recording may be a good choice to enhance your speech.

Imagine, for example, that you’re giving a speech on how “Lap-Band” surgeries help people lose weight. One of the sections of your speech could explain how the Lap-Band works, so you could easily show the following forty-three-second video to demonstrate the medical part of the surgery.

Or maybe you are talking about Midevil Folkrock Songs and want to play a short clip for the audience so they have an idea of what the music sounds like.

There is one major caveat to using audio and video clips during a speech: do not forget that they are supposed to be aids to your speech, not the speech itself! In addition, be sure to avoid these three mistakes that speakers often make when using audio and video clips:

• Avoid choosing clips that are too long for the overall length of the speech. If you are giving a five-minute speech, then any audio or video clip you use should be thirty seconds or under in length.
• Don’t fail to practice with the audio or video equipment prior to speaking. If you are unfamiliar with the equipment, you’ll look foolish trying to figure out how it works. This fiddling around will not only take your audience out of your speech but also have a negative impact on your credibility.
• Don’t fail to cue the clip to the appropriate place prior to beginning your speech. You will need to forward through any advertisements and/or previous parts of the video so that when you press play you begin exactly where you want your audience to start watching.

Objects or Models

Objects and models are other forms of presentation aid that can be very helpful in getting your audience to understand your message. Objects are anything you could hold up and talk about during your speech. If you’re talking about the importance of not using plastic water bottles, you might hold up a plastic water bottle and a stainless steel water bottle as examples. If you’re talking about the percussion family of musical instruments and you own (and can play) several different percussion instruments, you can show your audience in person what they look like and how they sound.

Models are re-creations of physical objects that you cannot have readily available with you during a speech. If you’re giving a speech on heart murmurs, you may be able to show how heart murmurs work by holding up a model of the human heart.

When giving a speech on a topic relating to animals, it is often tempting to bring an animal to serve as your presentation aid. While this can sometimes add a very engaging dimension to the speech, it carries some serious risks that you need to consider.

Unpredictable behavior: You may think this won’t be a problem if your presentation aid animal is small enough to be kept confined throughout your speech—for example, a goldfish in a bowl or a lizard or bird in a cage. However, even caged animals can be very distracting to your audience if they run about, chirp, or exhibit other agitated behavior. The chances are great that an animal will react to the stress of an unfamiliar situation by displaying behavior that does not contribute positively to your speech.

Negative response:  In addition to common fears and aversions to animals like snakes, spiders, and mice, many people have allergies to various animals.

Restrictions: Some locations may have regulations about bringing animals onto the premises. If animals are allowed, the person bringing the animal may be required to bring a veterinary certificate or may be legally responsible for any damage caused by the animal.

Before you decide to use an animal, ask yourself if you could make your point equally well with a picture, model, diagram, or other representation of the animal in question.

People can be helpful to demonstrate things such as dance or yoga moves or procedures such as first aid. A few considerations if you decide this is your best option: 

• You should arrange ahead of time for a person (or persons) to be an effective aid—do not assume that an audience member will volunteer on the spot. If you plan to demonstrate how to immobilize a broken bone, your volunteer must know ahead of time that you will touch him or her as much as necessary to splint their foot.
• Discuss how they should dress. You want them to arrive dressed presentably and ensure they will not draw attention away from your message through their appearance or behavior. 
• The transaction between you and your human presentation aid must be appropriate, especially if you are going to demonstrate something like a dance step. Use your absolute best judgment about behavior, and make sure that your human presentation aid understands this dimension of the task.

Dry-Erase Board

Typically, these speakers use the chalk or dry-erase board for interactive components of a speech. For example, maybe you’re giving a speech in front of a group of executives. You may have a PowerPoint all prepared, but at various points in your speech, you want to get your audience’s responses. Chalk or dry-erase boards are very useful when you want to visually show information that you are receiving from your audience. If you use a dry-erase board, follow these three simple rules:

• Write large enough so that everyone in the room can see.
• Print legibly; don’t write in cursive script.
• Write short phrases; don’t take time to write complete sentences.

A flipchart is useful when you’re trying to convey change over a number of steps. For instance, you could use a prepared flipchart to show dramatic population shifts on maps. In such a case, you should prepare highly visible, identical maps on three of the pages so that only the data will change from page to page. Each page should be neatly titled, and you should actively point out the areas of change on each page. You could also use a flip chart to show stages in the growth and development of the malaria-bearing mosquito. Again, you should label each page, making an effort to give the pages a consistent look.

Organize your flip chart in such a way that you flip pages in one direction only, front to back. It will be difficult to flip large pages without damaging them, and if you also have to “back up” and “skip forward,” your presentation will look awkward and disorganized. Pages will get damaged, and your audience will be able to hear each rip.

In addition, most flip charts need to be propped up on an easel of some sort. If you arrive for your speech only to find that the easel in the classroom has disappeared, you will need to rig up another system that allows you to flip the pages.

Poster or Foam Board

Foam board consists of a thin sheet of Styrofoam with heavy paper bonded to both surfaces. It is a lightweight, inexpensive foundation for information, and it will stand on its own when placed in an easel without curling under the bottom edge. Poster board tends to be cheaper than foam board, but it is flimsier, more vulnerable to damage, and can’t stand on its own.

If you plan to paste labels or paragraphs of text to foam or poster board, for a professional look you should make sure the color of the poster board matches the color of the paper you will paste on. You will also want to choose a color that allows for easy visual contrast so your audience can see it, and it must be a color that’s appropriate for the topic. For instance, hot pink would be the wrong color on a poster for a speech about the Protestant Reformation.

Avoid producing a presentation aid that looks like you simply cut pictures out of magazines and pasted them on. Slapping some text and images on a board looks unprofessional and will not be viewed as credible or effective. Instead, when creating a poster you need to take the time to think about how you are going to lay out your aid and make it look professional. You do not have to spend lots of money to make a very sleek and professional-looking poster.

Some schools also have access to expensive, full-color poster printers where you can create a large poster for pasting on a foam board. In the real world of public speaking, most speakers rely on the creation of professional posters using a full-color poster printer. Typically, posters are sketched out and then designed on a computer using a program like Microsoft PowerPoint or Publisher (these both have the option of selecting the size of the printed area).

Handouts are appropriate for delivering information that audience members can take away with them. However, they require a great deal of management if they are to contribute to your credibility as a speaker.

Considerations for handouts:

• Bring enough copies of the handout for each audience member to get one. Having to share or look on with one’s neighbor does not contribute to a professional image. Under no circumstances should you ever provide a single copy of a handout to pass around. There are several reasons this is a bad idea. You will have no control over the speed at which it circulates or the direction it goes. Moreover, only one listener will be holding it while you’re making your point about it and by the time most people see it, they will have forgotten why they need to see it. In some cases, it might not even reach everybody by the end of your speech. Finally, listeners could still be passing your handout around during the next speaker’s speech.
• There are three possible times to distribute handouts: before you begin your speech, during the speech, and after your speech is over. Naturally, if you need your listeners to follow along with a handout, you will need to distribute it before your speech begins. If you have access to the room ahead of time, place a copy of the handout on each seat in the audience. If not, ask a volunteer to distribute them as quickly as possible while you prepare to begin speaking. If the handout is a “takeaway,” leave it on a table near the door so that those audience members who are interested can take one on their way out; in this case, don’t forget to tell them to do so as you conclude your speech. It is almost never appropriate to distribute handouts during your speech, as it is distracting and interrupts the pace of your presentation.
• Handouts should include only the necessary information to support your points, and that information should be organized in such a way that listeners will be able to understand it. For example, in a speech about how new health care legislation will affect small business owners in your state, a good handout might summarize key effects of the legislation and include the names of state agencies with their web addresses where audience members can request more detailed information.
• If your handout is designed for your audience to follow along, you should tell them so. State that you will be referring to specific information during the speech. Then, as you’re presenting your speech, ask your audience to look, for example, at the second line in the first cluster of information. Read that line out loud and then go on to explain its meaning.
• Handouts are not a substitute for a well-prepared speech. Ask yourself what information your audience really needs to be able to take with them and how it can be presented on the page in the most useful and engaging way possible.

Pro Tips for Preparing and Using Presentation Aids

• Use text only when you must .
• Carefully limit the amount of text on a presentation aid – less is more. Other than direct quotes, you should only have keywords.
• Do not use “fancy” font. Keep it simple and readable.
• The type must be big, simple, and bold with white space around it to separate it from another graphic element or cluster of text that might be on the same presentation aid.
• When you display text, refer to it as you are speaking.
• Under no circumstances should you merely read what’s on your text aids and consider that a speech.
• Graphic elements in your presentation aids must be large enough to be seen by the entire audience.
• You should cite your source with an added caption.
• On a poster or a slide, a graphic element should take up about a third of the area. This leaves room for a small amount of text, rendered in a large, simple font. The textual elements should be located closest to the part of your graphic element they refer to.

Additional tips for Slides: 

• Color is very important and can definitely make a strong impact on an audience. However, don’t go overboard or decide to use unappealing combinations of color. For example, you should never use a light font color (like yellow) on a solid white background because it’s hard for the eye to read.
• While colors may be rich and vibrant on your computer screen at home, they may be distorted by a different monitor. Check your presentation out on multiple computers to see if the slide color is being distorted in a way that makes it hard to read.
• Avoid animation – this can be distracting unless it is relevant to the speech content.

In general: 

• It is vital to practice with your presentation aids. 
• Always have a back up plan. The show must go on. Decide in advance what you will do if your visual is not accessible or does not work the way you planned.
• You should always arrive at least fifteen minutes ahead of your scheduled speaking time to test the equipment. As the speaker, you are responsible for arranging the things you need to make your presentation aids work as intended. Good speakers carry a roll of duct tape so they can display your poster even if the easel is gone and always have a back up virtual presentation copy – just in case. The more sophisticated the equipment is, the more you should be prepared with an alternative, even in a “smart classroom.”
• What you choose should be easily seen and heard by your audience.
• You should be able to easily handle your presentation aid.

Key Takeaways

• Presentation aids must be organized and simple.
• Presentation aids are supposed to aid a speech, not become the speech itself.
• When presentation aids look unprofessional, they can decrease a speaker’s credibility.
• Always practice with your presentation aids, and be prepared for unexpected problems.
• Each presentation aid vehicle has advantages and disadvantages. As such, speakers need to think through the use of visual aids and select the most appropriate ones for their individual speeches.
• Every presentation aid should be created with careful attention to content and appearance.

Association for Psychological Science. (2011, May 28). Miracle fruit and flavor: An experiment performed at APS 2010 [Video file]. Retrieved from  http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/observer/obsonline/miracle-fruit-and-flavor-an-experiment-performed-at-aps-2010.html

Lauer, D. A., & Pentak, S. (2000).  Design basics  (5th ed.). Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt College Publishers.

Lockard, J., & Sidowski, J. R. (1961). Learning in fourth and sixth graders as a function of sensory mode of stimulus presentation and overt or covert practice.  Journal of Educational Psychology, 52 (5), 262–265. doi: 10.1037/h0043483

Macworld. (2010, June 7). WWDC: Steve Jobs’ iPhone 4 launch glitches [Video file]. Retrieved from  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoqh27E6OuU

Stoner, M. (2007). Uncovering the powers within PowerPoint.  Communication Currents ,  2 (4). Retrieved from  http://www.natcom.org/CommCurrentsArticle.aspx?id=819

Licenses and Attributions

• Chapter 3 Design Principles. Authored by : Sheila Kasperek, MLIS, MSIT.  Provided by : Mansfield University, Mansfield, PA.  Located at :  http://publicspeakingproject.org/psvirtualtext.html .  Project : The Public Speaking Project.  License :  CC BY-NC-ND: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
• Figures 3.1-3.14 (3.1-3.14). Authored by : Sheila Kasperek and Tom Oswald .  Located at :  http://publicspeakingproject.org/psvirtualtext.html .  Project : The Public Speaking Project.  License :  CC BY-NC-ND: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives

Public Speaking Copyright © by Dr. Layne Goodman; Amber Green, M.A.; and Various is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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36 Types of Presentation Aids

Now that we’ve explored some basic hints for preparing visual aids, let’s look at the most common types of visual aids: charts, graphs, representations, objects/models, and people.

A chart is commonly defined as a graphical representation of data (often numerical) or a sketch representing an ordered process. Whether you create your charts or do research to find charts that already exist, it is import- ant for them to exactly match the specific purpose in your speech. Figure 9.6 (“Acupuncture Charts”) shows two charts related to acupuncture. Although both charts are good, they are not equal. One chart might be useful in a speech about the history and development of acupuncture while the other chart would be more useful for showing the locations of meridians (the lines along which energy flows) and the acupuncture points.  The rest of this section will explore three common types of charts: statistical charts, sequence-of-steps chart, and decision trees.

Statistical Charts

For most audiences, statistical presentations must be kept as simple as possible, and they must be explained. The statistical chart shown in Figure 9.7 (“Birth Weight Chi-Square”) is from a study examining the effects of maternal smoking on a range of congenital birth defects. Unless you are familiar with statistics, this chart may be very confusing. When visually displaying information from a quantitative study, you need to make sure that you understand the material and can successfully and simply ex- plain how one should interpret the data. If you are unsure about the data yourself, then you should probably not use this type of information. This is definitely an example of a visual aid that, although it delivers a limited  kind of information, does not speak for itself. On the other hand, if you are presenting to an upper level or graduate class in health sciences or to professionals in health occupations, this chart would be appropriate. As with all other principles of public speaking, KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE.

Sequence-of-Steps Charts

Charts are also useful when you are trying to explain a process that involves several steps. The two visual aids in Figure 9.8 (“Steps in Cell Reproduction”) both depict the process of cell division called mitosis using a sequence-of-steps chart, but they each deliver different information. The first chart lacks labels to indicate the different phases of cell division. Although the first chart has more visual detail and may look more scientific, the missing information may confuse your audience. In the second chart, each phase is labeled with a brief explanation of what is happening, which can help your audience understand the process.

Decision Trees

Decision trees are useful for showing the relationships between ideas. The example in Figure 9.9 (“Open Educational Resource Decision Tree”) shows how a decision tree could be used to determine whether to use open-source textbook material. As with the other types of charts, you want to be sure that the information in the chart is relevant to the purpose of your speech and that each question and decision is clearly labeled. This particular tree is pertinent to this textbook, which is an open educational resource drawing from other open educational resources, and the decision tree shows some of the processes the authors went through to decide on the content of this text.

Strictly speaking, a graph may be considered a type of chart, but graphs are so widely used that we will discuss them separately. A graph is a pictorial representation of the relationships of quantitative data using dots, lines, bars, pie slices, and the like. Graphs show how one factor (such as size, weight, number of items) varies in comparison to other items. Whereas a statistical chart may report the mean ages of individuals entering college, a graph would show how the mean age changes over time. A statistical chart may report the amount of computers sold in the United States, while a graph will use bars or lines to show their breakdown by operating systems such as Windows, Macintosh, and Linux.

Public speakers can show graphs using a range of different formats. Some of those formats are specialized for various professional fields. Very complex graphs often contain too much information that is not related to the purpose of a student’s speech. If the graph is cluttered, it becomes difficult to comprehend. In this section, we’re going to analyze the common graphs speakers utilize in their speeches: line graphs, bar graphs, pie graphs, and pictographs.

A line graph is designed to show trends over time. In Figure 9.10 (“Enron’s Stock Price”), we see a line graph depicting the fall of Enron’s stock price from August 2000 to January 2002. Notice that although it has some steep rises, the line has an overall downward trend clearly depicting the plummeting of Enron’s stock price. This is far more effective in showing the relationship of numbers than a chart (as in Figure 9.7) or reading the numbers aloud.

Bar graphs are useful for showing the differences between quantities. They can be used for population demographics, fuel costs, math ability in different grades, and many other kinds of data. The graph in Figure 9.11 (“Suicide vs. Homicide”) is well designed. It is relatively simple and is carefully labeled, making it easy for the speaker to guide the audience through the recorded numbers of each type of death. The bar graph is designed to show the difference between rates of suicides and homicides across various age groups. When you look at the data, the first grouping clearly shows that eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds are more likely to die because of a homicide than any of the other age groups.

The graph in Figure 9.12 (“Distribution of Income and Wealth in the United States”) is a complicated bar graph depicting the disparity between the so-called “haves” and the “have nots” within the United States. On the left hand side of the graph you can see that the Top 20% of people within the United States account for 84.7% of all of the wealth and 50.1% of all of the income. On the other hand, those in the bottom 40% account for only 0.2% of the wealth and 12.1% of the actual income.

While the graph is very well designed, it presents a great deal of information. For example, it shows “wealth” and “income,” for several groups; however, these are related but different concepts. In a written publication, readers will have time to sit and analyze the graph, but in a speaking situa tion, audience members need to be able to understand the information in a graph very quickly. For that reason, this graph is probably not as effective for speeches as the one in Figure 9.11 (“Suicide vs. Homicide”).

Pie graphs are usually depicted as circles and are designed to show proportional relationships within sets of data; in other words, they show parts of or percentages of a whole. They should be simplified as much as possible without eliminating important information. As with other graphs, the sections of the pie need to be plotted proportionally. In the pie graph shown in Figure 9.13 (“Causes of Concussions in Children”) we see a clear and proportional chart that has been color-coded. Color-coding is useful when it’s difficult to fit the explanations in the actual sections of the graph; in that case, you need to include a legend, or key, to indicate what the colors in the graph mean. In this graph, audience members can see very quickly that falls are the primary reason children receive concussions. However, the pie graph in Figure 9.14 (“World Populations”) is jumbled, illegible, confusing, and overwhelming in every way. The use of color coding doesn’t help. Overall, this graph simply contains too much information and is more likely to confuse an audience than help them understand something.

Similar to bar graphs, pictographs use numbers and/or sizes of icon- ic symbols to dramatize differences in amounts. An example is found in Figure 9.15. Pictographs, although interesting, do not allow for depiction of specific statistical data. If you were trying to show the output of oil from various countries through oil wells, each oil well representing a ten million barrels a day, it might be hard for the audience to see the difference between a third of an oil well and a fourth of one, but that is a significant difference in amounts (3.3 million versus 2.5 million).

Graphs can present challenges in being effective but also in being ethical. To be both ethical and effective, you need a good understanding of what statistics mean, and you need to create or use graphs that show amounts clearly. If you were showing GPAs of freshmen, sophomore, junior, and senior students at your college, and the bottom number on the graph was rather than 0.0, that would result in a visually bigger difference than what really exists (see Figure 9.16).

Diagrams are drawings or sketches that outline and explain the parts of an object, process, or phenomenon that cannot be readily seen. Like graphs, diagrams can be considered a type of chart, as in the case of organizational charts and process-flow charts.

When you use a diagram, be sure to explain each part of the phenomenon, paying special attention to elements that are complicated or prone to misunderstanding. In the example shown in Figure 9.17 (“The Human Eye”), you might wish to highlight that the light stimulus is reversed when it is processed through the brain or that the optic nerve is not a single stalk as many people think.

Maps are extremely useful if the information is clear and limited. There are all kinds of maps, including population, weather, ocean current, political, and economic maps, so you should find the right kind for the purpose of your speech. Choose a map that emphasizes the information you need to deliver. The map shown in Figure 9.18 (“African Map with Nigerian Emphasis”) is simple, showing clearly the geographic location of Nigeria. This can be extremely valuable for some audiences who might not be able to name and locate countries on the continent of Africa. The map also shows the relative size of Nigeria compared to its neighbors. Figure 9.19 (“Rhode Island Map”) is a map of the state of Rhode Island, and it emphasizes the complicated configuration of islands and waterways that characterize this state’s geography.

Photographs and Drawings

Sometimes a photograph or a drawing is the best way to show an unfamiliar but important detail. Figure 9.20 (“Wigwam Photograph”) is a photo- graph of a wigwam, a dwelling used by Native Americans in the North East. Audiences expect high quality in photographs now, and as with all presentation aids they should enhance the speech and not just “be there.” It is common to put stock photographs on PowerPoint slides as “clip art,” but they should be relevant and not detract from the message of the slide.

Video or Audio Recordings

Another very useful type of presentation aid is a video or audio recording. Whether it is a short video from a website such as YouTube or Vimeo, a segment from a song, or a piece of a podcast, a well-chosen video or audio recording may be a good choice to enhance your speech. Imagine, for example, that you’re giving a speech on how Lap-Band surgeries help people lose weight. One of the sections of your speech could explain how the Lap-Band works, so you could easily show a forty-three second video available on YouTube to demonstrate the part of the surgery. Maybe you could include a recording of a real patient explaining why they decided to get the Lap-Band.

There is one major warning to using audio and video clips during a speech: do not forget that they are supposed to be aids to your speech, not the speech itself. In addition, be sure to avoid these five mistakes that speakers often make when using audio and video clips:

• Avoid choosing clips that are too long for the overall length of the speech. Your instructor can give you some guidelines for how long video and audio clips should be for the speeches in your class, if they are allowed (and make sure they are).
• Practice with the audio or video equipment prior to speaking. If you are unfamiliar with the equipment, you’ll look foolish trying to figure out how it works. This fiddling around will not only take your audience out of your speech but also have a negative impact on your credibility. It also wastes valuable time. Finally, be sure that the speakers on the computer are on and at the right volume level.
• Cue the clip to the appropriate place prior to beginning your speech. We cannot tell you the number of times we’ve seen students spend valuable speech time trying to find a clip on YouTube or a DVD. You need to make sure your clip is ready to go before you start speaking. Later in this chapter we will look at using video links in slides.
• In addition to cuing the clip to the appropriate place, the browser window should be open and ready to go. If there are advertisements before the video, be sure to have the video cued to play after the ad. The audience should not have to sit through a commercial. There is a website called TubeChop that can allow you to cut a segment out of a YouTube video, then creating a new link. It has limitations but can be useful.
• The audience must be given context before a video or audio clip is played, specifically what the clip is and why it relates to the speech. At the same time, the video should not repeat what you have already said, but add to it.

Objects or Models

Objects and models are another form of presentation aid that can be very helpful in getting your audience to understand your message. Objects refer to anything you could hold up and talk about during your speech. If you’re talking about the importance of not using plastic water bottles, you might hold up a plastic water bottle and a stainless steel water bottle as examples.

Models, on the other hand, are re-creations of physical objects that you cannot have readily available with you during a speech. If you’re giving a speech on heart murmurs, you may be able to show how heart murmurs work by holding up a model of the human heart. As will be discussed in the section on handouts below, a speaker should not pass an object or model around during a speech. It is highly distracting.

People and Animals

The next category of presentation aids are people and animals. We can often use ourselves or other people to adequately demonstrate an idea during our speeches.

Animals as Presentation Aids

When giving a speech on a topic relating to animals, it is often tempting to bring an animal to serve as your presentation aid. While this can sometimes add a very engaging dimension to the speech, it carries some serious risks that you need to consider.

The first risk is that animal behavior tends to be unpredictable. You may think this won’t be a problem if your presentation aid animal is small enough to be kept confined throughout your speech—for example, a goldfish in a bowl or a lizard or bird in a cage. However, even caged animals can be very distracting to your audience if they run about, chirp, or exhibit other agitated behavior. The chances are great that an animal will react to the stress of an unfamiliar situation by displaying behavior that does not contribute positively to your speech or to the cleanliness of the physical environment. Additionally, the animal’s behavior may not only affect audience attention during your speech, but potentially during your classmates’ speeches as well.

The second risk is that some audience members may respond negatively to a live animal. In addition to common fears and aversions to animals like snakes, spiders, and mice, many people have allergies to various animals. One of the authors had an experience where a student brought his six-foot yellow python to class for a speech. As a result, one of the other students refused to stay in the room because of her snake phobia (the instructor was not too comfortable either).

The third risk is that some locations may have regulations about bringing non-service animals onto the premises. If animals are allowed, the person bringing the animal may be required to bring a veterinary certificate or may be legally responsible for any damage caused by the animal.

For these reasons, before you decide to use an animal as a presentation aid, ask yourself if you could make your point equally well with a picture, model, diagram, or other representation of the animal in question.

Speaker as Presentation Aid

Speakers can often use their own bodies to demonstrate facets of a speech. If your speech is about ballroom dancing or ballet, you might use your body to demonstrate the basic moves in the cha-cha or the five basic ballet positions.

Other People as Presentation Aids

In some cases, such as for a demonstration speech, you might want to ask someone else to serve as your presentation aid. You should arrange ahead of time for a person (or persons) to be an effective aid—do not assume that an audience member will volunteer on the spot. If you plan to demonstrate how to immobilize a broken bone, your volunteer must know ahead of time that you will touch them as much as necessary to splint the break.

You must also make certain that they will arrive dressed presentably and that they will not draw attention away from your message through their appearance or behavior. The transaction between you and your human presentation aid must be appropriate, especially if you are going to demonstrate something like a dance step. In short, make sure your helper will know what is expected of them and consents to it.

graphical representation of data (often numerical) or a sketch representing an ordered process

a pictorial representation of the relationships of quantitative data using dots, lines, bars, pie slices, and the like

a graph designed to show trends over time

a graph designed to show the differences between quantities

a graph designed to show proportional relationships within sets of data

a graph using iconic symbols to dramatize differences in amounts

Exploring Public Speaking Copyright © by Edited by Nicolet College is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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5 Reasons Public Speaking Skills Are Important

• The Speaker Lab
• September 17, 2024

Table of Contents

Public speaking is a vital skill, particularly if you are a CEO, thought leader, author, or someone who wants to level up their leadership skills . When you’re skilled at public speaking , you can articulate ideas clearly, inspire others, and advocate for positive change, playing a critical role in personal and professional success. Whether you’re addressing a large audience or simply conveying your thoughts to a colleague, the ability to speak confidently and persuasively is essential in today’s fast-paced world.

In some cases, people are born with natural speaking abilities. However, for many, public speaking can be an intimidating experience. This fear can stem from a lack of experience, the pressure to perform, or the possibility of being judged. So why is public speaking important if it makes people feel anxious? Because public speaking has the power to unlock a world of opportunities and help you make a lasting impact on the people around you.

The Impact of Public Speaking on Leadership and Career Advancement

Public speaking isn’t just for politicians or CEOs; it’s a valuable skill across various professions. After all, if you’re able to more effectively communicate your thoughts and ideas, it’s much more likely that people will latch onto your ideas. And when that happens, your confidence improves too.

Developing Strong Communication Skills

Public speaking courses don’t just focus on projecting your voice; they also teach crucial communication skills. These skills include crafting compelling narratives, using effective body language , and adapting your message to different audiences. These are all essential elements of personal development that extend beyond the podium, benefiting your personal and professional interactions.

Career Benefits

Strong communication skills are vital in securing many jobs, and they play a crucial role in career growth as well. The ability to clearly communicate ideas is essential for job interviews, presentations, team meetings, networking , and even day-to-day interactions. Strong speaking skills impress potential employers and set you up as a leader within your organization. It’s easy to see how honing these abilities leads to more career opportunities.

Thinking on Your Feet

One significant advantage of regular public speaking is becoming a clearer, more critical thinker. In crafting a speech, particularly a persuasive one, you learn to analyze information quickly and form strong, well-supported arguments. This process hones your critical thinking muscle, making you a stronger, more articulate communicator overall.

Becoming an Influential Figure Who Inspires

Public speaking isn’t merely about conveying information; it’s about influence . Those who master this skill have a powerful platform to share ideas, inspire action, and shape opinions. Think about individuals like Les Brown or Brian Tracy—both built successful careers by motivating and inspiring audiences through speeches. When you master public speaking, you’re able to connect with people authentically, spark conversations, and ultimately drive meaningful change. As a result, it’s one leadership skill you definitely don’t want to do without.

Everyday Public Speaking and Its Benefits

Public speaking isn’t always about grand stages. It shows up in various aspects of our everyday lives. It could be giving a toast at a wedding, presenting at a team meeting, or even sharing your opinion during a community discussion. Even these smaller-scale instances benefit from good public speaking skills. Engaging an audience, big or small, builds connections, encourages understanding, and creates a more significant impact.

Whether it’s a room of ten people or an auditorium of thousands, when you have a command of public speaking, you’ll quickly find yourself standing out from the crowd. You will also be forging stronger personal and professional connections along the way. It is a skill that pays dividends in every area of your life, fostering greater confidence, influence, and success.

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FAQs About the Importance of Public Speaking

Why is public speaking important.

Mastering this form of communication strengthens confidence, promotes clear thinking, and even improves personal and professional relationships, impacting your life positively. It helps refine verbal and nonverbal communication skills, which in turn boost your ability to articulate thoughts effectively and build meaningful connections. Moreover, it fosters empathy as you learn to adapt your message to resonate with diverse audiences.

What are the 5 benefits of public speaking?

Public speaking provides various benefits. Five key advantages include:

• Enhanced Communication Skills: It helps refine your verbal and nonverbal communication, allowing for clearer, more impactful messaging.
• Increased Confidence: Regularly addressing an audience helps conquer stage fright , building your confidence both on and off stage.
• Improved Critical Thinking: Crafting well-structured speeches strengthens analytical thinking, helping you formulate persuasive arguments.
• Career Advancement Opportunities: Strong speaking abilities stand out in professional settings, making you a sought-after candidate.
• Greater Influence: Masterful public speakers can impact decisions, inspire action, and even spark positive social or political change.

Why is public speaking important for students?

Even during your academic journey, the ability to articulate ideas persuasively in front of peers is extremely valuable. Beyond acing presentations and improving grades, it also equips students with life skills crucial for navigating job interviews, participating actively in team projects, and conveying complex ideas confidently.

So, why is public speaking important in today’s world? As you’ve seen, public speaking isn’t just about commanding a stage; it is about clear thinking, compelling storytelling, and making meaningful connections. Honing your communication skills opens doors to leadership, fosters meaningful connections, and empowers you to advocate for ideas that matter. This ripple effect impacts your confidence, professional growth, and ultimately, your ability to create positive change.

• Last Updated: September 12, 2024

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15.2 Types of Presentation Aids

Learning objectives.

• Understand how charts can be used to present information.
• Explain the importance of using graphs while speaking.
• Describe four common types of representations.
• Differentiate between objects and models.
• Identify why speakers may use people as presentation aids.

As we saw in the case of the orientation presentation at the organic farming conference, using presentation aids can be risky. However, with a little forethought and adequate practice, you can choose presentation aids that enhance your message and boost your professional appearance in front of an audience.

One principle to keep in mind is to use only as many presentation aids as necessary to present your message or to fulfill your classroom assignment. Although the maxim “less is more” may sound like a cliché, it really does apply in this instance. The number and the technical sophistication of your presentation aids should never overshadow your speech.

Another important consideration is technology. Keep your presentation aids within the limits of the working technology available to you. Whether or not your classroom technology works on the day of your speech, you will still have to present. What will you do if the computer file containing your slides is corrupted? What will you do if the easel is broken? What if you had counted on stacking your visuals on a table that disappears right when you need it? You must be prepared to adapt to an uncomfortable and scary situation. This is why we urge students to go to the classroom at least fifteen minutes ahead of time to test the equipment and ascertain the condition of things they’re planning to use. As the speaker, you are responsible for arranging the things you need to make your presentation aids work as intended. Carry a roll of duct tape so you can display your poster even if the easel is gone. Find an extra chair if your table has disappeared. Test the computer setup, and have an alternative plan prepared in case there is some glitch that prevents your computer-based presentation aids from being usable. The more sophisticated the equipment is, the more you should be prepared with an alternative, even in a “smart classroom.”

More important than the method of delivery is the audience’s ability to see and understand the presentation aid. It must deliver clear information, and it must not distract from the message. Avoid overly elaborate presentation aids because they can distract the audience’s attention from your message. Instead, simplify as much as possible, emphasizing the information you want your audience to understand.

Another thing to remember is that presentation aids do not “speak for themselves.” When you display a visual aid, you should explain what it shows, pointing out and naming the most important features. If you use an audio aid such as a musical excerpt, you need to tell your audience what to listen for. Similarly, if you use a video clip, it is up to you as the speaker to point out the characteristics in the video that support the point you are making.

Although there are many useful presentation tools, you should not attempt to use every one of these tools in a single speech. Your presentation aids should be designed to look like a coherent set. For instance, if you decide to use three slides and a poster, all four of these visual aids should make use of the same type font and basic design.

Now that we’ve explored some basic hints for preparing visual aids, let’s look at the most common types of visual aids: charts, graphs, representations, objects/models, and people.

A chart is commonly defined as a graphical representation of data (often numerical) or a sketch representing an ordered process. Whether you create your charts or do research to find charts that already exist, it is important for them to exactly match the specific purpose in your speech. Figure 15.6 “Acupuncture Charts” shows two charts related to acupuncture. Although both charts are good, they are not equal. One chart might be useful in a speech about the history and development of acupuncture, while the other chart would be more useful for showing the locations of meridians, or the lines along which energy is thought to flow, and the acupuncture points.

Figure 15.6 Acupuncture Charts

Wikimedia Commons – public domains.

In the rest of this section, we’re going to explore three common types of charts: statistical charts, sequence-of-steps chart, and decision trees.

Statistical Charts

Figure 15.7 Birth Weight Chi-Square

Source: Woods, S. E., & Raju, U. (2001). Maternal smoking and the risk of congenital birth defects: A cohort study. Journal of the American Board of Family Practitioners, 14 , 330–334.

For most audiences, statistical presentations must be kept as simple as possible, and they must be explained. The statistical chart shown in Figure 15.7 “Birth Weight Chi-Square” is from a study examining the effects of maternal smoking on a range of congenital birth defects. Unless you are familiar with statistics, this chart may be very confusing. When visually displaying information from a quantitative study, you need to make sure that you understand the material and can successfully and simply explain how one should interpret the data. If you are unsure about the data yourself, then you should probably not use this type of information. This is surely an example of a visual aid that, although it delivers a limited kind of information, does not speak for itself.

Sequence-of-Steps Charts

Figure 15.8 Steps in Cell Reproduction

Wikimedia Commons – public domain; and Wikimeida Commons – public domain.

Charts are also useful when you are trying to explain a process that involves several steps. The two visual aids in Figure 15.8 “Steps in Cell Reproduction” both depict the process of cell division called mitosis using a sequence-of-steps chart, but they each deliver different information. The first chart lacks labels to indicate the different phases of cell division. Although the first chart may have more color and look more polished, the missing information may confuse your audience. In the second chart, each phase is labeled with a brief explanation of what is happening, which can help your audience understand the process.

Decision Trees

Figure 15.9 To Play or Not to Play

Wikimedia Commons – public domain.

Decision trees are useful for showing the relationships between ideas. The example in Figure 15.9 “To Play or Not to Play” shows how a decision tree could be used to determine the appropriate weather for playing baseball. As with the other types of charts, you want to be sure that the information in the chart is relevant to the purpose of your speech and that each question and decision is clearly labeled.

Strictly speaking, a graph may be considered a type of chart, but graphs are so widely used that we will discuss them separately. A graph is a pictorial representation of the relationships of quantitative data using dots, lines, bars, pie slices, and the like. Graphs show the variation in one variable in comparison with that of one or more other variables. Where a statistical chart may report the mean ages of individuals entering college, a graph would show how the mean age changes over time. A statistical chart may report the amount of computers sold in the United States, while a graph will show the breakdown of those computers by operating systems such as Windows, Macintosh, and Linux. Public speakers can show graphs using a range of different formats. Some of those formats are specialized for various professional fields. Very complex graphs often contain too much information that is not related to the purpose of a student’s speech. If the graph is cluttered, it becomes difficult to comprehend.

In this section, we’re going to analyze the common graphs speakers utilize in their speeches: line graphs, bar graphs, and pie graphs.

Figure 15.10 Enron’s Stock Price

Wikimedia Common – CC BY-SA 2.0.

A line graph is designed to show trends over time. In Figure 15.10 “Enron’s Stock Price” , we see a line graph depicting the fall of Enron’s stock price from August 2000 to January 2002. Notice that although it has some steep rises, the line has an overall downward trend clearly depicting the plummeting of Enron’s stock price. Showing such a line graph helps the audience see the relationships between the numbers, and audiences can understand the information by seeing the graph much more easily than they could if the speaker just read the numbers aloud.

Bar graphs are useful for showing the differences between quantities. They can be used for population demographics, fuel costs, math ability in different grades, and many other kinds of data.

The graph in Figure 15.11 “Natural Death vs. Homicide” is well designed. It is relatively simple and is carefully labeled, making it easy for you to guide your audience through the quantities of each type of death. The bar graph is designed to show the difference between natural deaths and homicides across various age groups. When you look at the data, the first grouping clearly shows that eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds are more likely to die because of a homicide than any of the other age groups.

Figure 15.11 Natural Death vs. Homicide

The graph in Figure 15.12 “Distribution of Income and Wealth in the United States” is a complicated bar graph depicting the disparity between the haves and the have nots within the United States. On the left hand side of the graph you can see that the Top 20% of people within the United States account for 84.7% of all of the wealth and 50.1% of all of the income. On the other hand, those in the bottom 40% account for only 0.2% of the wealth and 12.1% of the actual income.

Figure 15.12 Distribution of Income and Wealth in the United States

Source: Wolff, E. N. (2007). Recent trends in household wealth in the United States: Rising debt and the middle-class squeeze (Working Paper No. 502). Retrieved from the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College website: http://www.levy.org/pubs/wp_502.pdf

While the graph is very well designed, it presents a great deal of information. In a written publication, readers will have time to sit and analyze the graph, but in a speaking situation, audience members need to be able to understand the information in a graph very quickly. For that reason, this graph is probably not as effective for speeches as the one in Figure 15.11 “Natural Death vs. Homicide” .

Pie graphs should be simplified as much as possible without eliminating important information. As with other graphs, the sections of the pie need to be plotted proportionally. In the pie graph shown in Figure 15.13 “Causes of Concussions in Children” , we see a clear and proportional chart that has been color-coded. Color-coding is useful when it’s difficult to fit the explanations in the actual sections of the graph; in that case, you need to include a legend, or key, to indicate what the colors in the graph mean. In this graph, audience members can see very quickly that falls are the primary reason children receive concussions.

Figure 15.13 Causes of Concussions in Children

Figure 15.14 World Populations

The pie graph in Figure 15.14 “World Populations” is jumbled, illegible, confusing, and overwhelming in every way. The use of color coding doesn’t help. Overall, this graph simply contains too much information and is more likely to confuse an audience than help them understand something.

Representations

In the world of presentation aids, representations is the word used to classify a group of aids designed to represent real processes or objects. Often, speakers want to visually demonstrate something that they cannot physically bring with them to the speech. Maybe you’re giving a speech on the human brain, and you just don’t have access to a cadaver’s brain. Instead of bringing in a real brain, you could use a picture of a brain or an image that represents the human brain. In this section we’re going to explore four common representations: diagrams, maps, photographs, and video or recordings.

Diagrams are drawings or sketches that outline and explain the parts of an object, process, or phenomenon that cannot be readily seen. Like graphs, diagrams can be considered a type of chart, as in the case of organization charts and process flow charts.

Figure 15.15 The Human Eye

When you use a diagram, be sure to explain each part of the phenomenon, paying special attention to elements that are complicated or prone to misunderstanding. In the example shown in Figure 15.15 “The Human Eye” , you might wish to highlight that the light stimulus is reversed when it is processed through the brain or that the optic nerve is not a single stalk as many people think.

Maps are extremely useful if the information is clear and limited. There are all kinds of maps, including population, weather, ocean current, political, and economic maps, but you should be able to find the right kind for the purpose of your speech. Choose a map that emphasizes the information you need to deliver.

The map shown in Figure 15.16 “African Map with Nigerian Emphasis” is simple, showing clearly the geographic location of Nigeria. This can be extremely valuable for some audiences who might not be able to name and locate countries on the continent of Africa.

Figure 15.16 African Map with Nigerian Emphasis

Figure 15.17 Rhode Island Map

Source: Map courtesy of the National Atlas of the United States.

Figure 15.17 “Rhode Island Map” is a map of the state of Rhode Island, and it emphasizes the complicated configuration of islands and waterways that characterize this state’s geography. Although the map does not list the names of the islands, it is helpful in orienting the audience to the direction and distance of the islands to other geographic features, such as the city of Providence and the Atlantic Ocean.

Photographs and Drawings

Figure 15.18 Wigwam Picture

Iheartpandas – Wigwams – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Figure 15.19 Ship’s Rigging

Sometimes a photograph or a drawing is the best way to show an unfamiliar but important detail. Figure 15.18 “Wigwam Picture” is a photograph of a wigwam, a wigwam was a living dwelling used by Native Americans in the North East. In this photograph you can see the curved birchbark exterior, which makes this dwelling ideal for a variety of weather conditions. The photograph of the tall ship in Figure 15.19 “Ship’s Rigging” emphasizes the sheer amount and complexity of the ship’s rigging.

Video or Audio Recordings

Another very useful type of presentation aid is a video or audio recording. Whether it is a short video from a website such as YouTube or Vimeo, a segment from a song, or a piece of a podcast, a well-chosen video or audio recording may be a good choice to enhance your speech.

Imagine, for example, that you’re giving a speech on how “Lap-Band” surgeries help people lose weight. One of the sections of your speech could explain how the Lap-Band works, so you could easily show the following forty-three-second video to demonstrate the medical part of the surgery ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPuThbFMxGg ). Maybe you want to include a recording of a real patient explaining why he or she decided to get the Lap-Band. Then you could include a podcast like this one from the Medical University of South Carolina ( http://medicaluniversc.http.internapcdn.net/medicaluniversc_vitalstream_com/podcasts/2007/1_Treado_June_22_final.mp3 ).

There is one major caveat to using audio and video clips during a speech: do not forget that they are supposed to be aids to your speech, not the speech itself! In addition, be sure to avoid these three mistakes that speakers often make when using audio and video clips:

• Avoid choosing clips that are too long for the overall length of the speech. If you are giving a five-minute speech, then any audio or video clip you use should be under thirty seconds in length.
• Don’t fail to practice with the audio or video equipment prior to speaking. If you are unfamiliar with the equipment, you’ll look foolish trying to figure out how it works. This fiddling around will not only take your audience out of your speech but also have a negative impact on your credibility.
• Don’t fail to cue the clip to the appropriate place prior to beginning your speech. We cannot tell you the number of times we’ve seen students spend valuable speech time trying to find a clip on YouTube or a DVD. You need to make sure your clip is ready to go before you start speaking.

Objects or Models

Objects and models are another form of presentation aid that can be very helpful in getting your audience to understand your message. Objects refer to anything you could hold up and talk about during your speech. If you’re talking about the importance of not using plastic water bottles, you might hold up a plastic water bottle and a stainless steel water bottle as examples. If you’re talking about the percussion family of musical instruments and you own (and can play) several different percussion instruments, you can show your audience in person what they look like and how they sound.

Models , on the other hand, are re-creations of physical objects that you cannot have readily available with you during a speech. If you’re giving a speech on heart murmurs, you may be able to show how heart murmurs work by holding up a model of the human heart.

People and Animals

The next category of presentation aids are people and animals. We can often use ourselves or other people to adequately demonstrate an idea during our speeches.

Animals as Presentation Aids

When giving a speech on a topic relating to animals, it is often tempting to bring an animal to serve as your presentation aid. While this can sometimes add a very engaging dimension to the speech, it carries some serious risks that you need to consider.

The first risk is that animal behavior tends to be unpredictable. You may think this won’t be a problem if your presentation aid animal is a small enough to be kept confined throughout your speech—for example, a goldfish in a bowl or a lizard or bird in a cage. However, even caged animals can be very distracting to your audience if they run about, chirp, or exhibit other agitated behavior. The chances are great that an animal will react to the stress of an unfamiliar situation by displaying behavior that does not contribute positively to your speech.

The second risk is that some audience members may respond negatively to a live animal. In addition to common fears and aversions to animals like snakes, spiders, and mice, many people have allergies to various animals.

The third risk is that some locations may have regulations about bringing animals onto the premises. If animals are allowed, the person bringing the animal may be required to bring a veterinary certificate or may be legally responsible for any damage caused by the animal.

For these reasons, before you decide to use an animal as a presentation aid, ask yourself if you could make your point equally well with a picture, model, diagram, or other representation of the animal in question.

Speaker as Presentation Aid

Speakers can often use their own bodies to demonstrate facets of a speech. If your speech is about ballroom dancing or ballet, you might use your body to demonstrate the basic moves in the cha-cha or the five basic ballet positions.

Other People as Presentation Aids

In many speeches, it can be cumbersome and distracting for the speaker to use her or his own body to illustrate a point. In such cases, the best solution is to ask someone else to serve as your presentation aid.

You should arrange ahead of time for a person (or persons) to be an effective aid—do not assume that an audience member will volunteer on the spot. If you plan to demonstrate how to immobilize a broken bone, your volunteer must know ahead of time that you will touch him or her as much as necessary to splint their foot. You must also make certain that they will arrive dressed presentably and that they will not draw attention away from your message through their appearance or behavior.

The transaction between you and your human presentation aid must be appropriate, especially if you are going to demonstrate something like a dance step. Use your absolute best judgment about behavior, and make sure that your human presentation aid understands this dimension of the task.

Key Takeaways

• Various types of charts can aid audience understanding of a speaker’s message. Statistical charts help audiences see and interpret numerical information. Sequence-of-steps charts show how a process occurs. Decision trees help audience members see how a specific decision can be made in a logical fashion.
• Line graphs, bar graphs, and pie graphs are commonly used by speakers to help present numerical information. The information presented on a graph should be clean and easily understandable from a distance.
• Representations are presentation aids designed to represent a real process or object. Commonly used representations in public speaking include diagrams, maps, photographs, and video or audio recordings.
• Objects are physical items that can be held up and used during a speech. Models, on the other hand, refer to tangible items that can be held during a speech, but are not the actual object but rather a facsimile of it.
• Speakers often will use their own bodies or the bodies of other people to help them illustrate a part of a speech. When using another person, it is very important to coach that person prior to the speech to ensure that he or she will not upstage the speaker. Using animals as presentation aids is generally not recommended.
• Watch the video on gshep1’s YouTube channel from Booher Consultants at http://www.youtube.com/user/gshep1 . How many mistakes can you identify that this speaker makes in using presentation aids?
• Find a speech on YouTube and see what types of presentation aids the speaker uses. Does the speaker select appropriate aids? How could you have made them better? Were there any missing presentation aids that should have been in the speech?
• Create a chart representing the speech creation process. Try using either a sequence-of-steps chart or a decision tree.
• Think about your next speech. What presentation aids can you use in your speech to enhance your audience’s understanding?

Stand up, Speak out Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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How Visual Aids Can Help You Stand Out in Public Speaking, But Not in Everyday Conversation

Public speaking is an art that requires skill and finesse, with visual aids often playing a crucial role in keeping the audience engaged and effectively conveying your message.

However, in everyday conversations, these visuals can become hindrances rather than helpful tools. In this blog post, we’ll explore the benefits of using visual aids in public speaking, why they’re not always suitable for casual interactions, and provide tips to make the most out of them when presenting to an audience.

Key Takeaways

• Visual aids can enhance engagement and understanding, increase retention of information, and create a memorable experience for the audience in public speaking.
• However, visual aids may hinder natural communication and limit interaction between individuals in everyday conversation.
• To make the most out of visual aids in public speaking, choose relevant and high-quality materials, keep them simple and clear, integrate them smoothly into your speech delivery through practice. Remember that effective communication involves more than just presentation skills – body language, verbal communication, and audience interaction are equally essential components.

The Role Of Visual Aids In Public Speaking

Enhancing engagement and understanding.

Utilizing visual aids in public speaking is an effective way to enhance audience engagement and improve their understanding of your message. Rather than solely relying on verbal explanations, incorporating images, diagrams, or charts can help illustrate complex ideas in a more digestible format for your listeners.

Another advantage of using visual aids is that they cater to different learning styles. While some individuals may prefer listening intently to grasp new concepts, others might rely more heavily on visual cues for comprehension.

By diversifying the ways you present information through both verbal and visual means, you increase the likelihood of reaching out to every member of your audience.

Increasing Retention Of Information

Another important role that visual aids play in public speaking is increasing the  retention of information  among your audience. Studies have shown that people tend to remember more when information is presented visually as opposed to only verbally.

For example, if you’re giving a talk on the benefits of a new product or service, creating a simple infographic with statistics and key talking points can make it easier for your audience to understand and retain the message.

Creating A Memorable Experience

Visual aids can be a powerful tool to help create a memorable experience for your audience. Incorporating unique and attention-grabbing visual aids such as props, videos, or interactive elements can keep your audience engaged and interested throughout your presentation.

For example, if you are giving a speech about the importance of environmental conservation, incorporating images or video clips of animals impacted by pollution or deforestation can evoke an emotional response from the audience and make them more invested in the message you are conveying.

However, it’s crucial to remember that using too many visual aids can distract from your message rather than enhance it. Choose relevant visuals wisely and use them intentionally to support key points in your speech without overwhelming the audience with unnecessary information.

The Importance Of Effective Communication In Everyday Conversation

Visual aids may not always be effective in informal settings, as they can hinder natural communication and limit interaction between individuals.

The Limitations Of Visual Aids In Informal Settings

While visual aids can be immensely helpful during public speaking engagements, their effectiveness is limited in informal settings. When it comes to everyday conversations, visuals can actually hinder natural communication by distracting from the interaction and creating a more formal tone than necessary.

That’s not to say that there isn’t value in presenting information visually outside of public speaking events. For example, diagrams or illustrations may be useful when explaining complex ideas or processes.

However, it’s important to use these aids judiciously and only when they truly enhance understanding rather than detract from the conversation at hand.

How They Can Hinder Natural Communication

While visual aids are essential in public speaking, they can have a negative impact on natural communication. In informal settings, such as everyday conversation, the use of presentation aids can hinder natural communication by creating a barrier between people.

Moreover, relying too much on visual aids during an impromptu discussion may make one appear less confident in their knowledge about the topic at hand. It’s important to keep in mind that  effective verbal communication skills  are crucial for building rapport and establishing trust with the audience or conversational partner.

Tips For Using Visual Aids In Public Speaking

To ensure a smooth delivery, choose relevant and high-quality visual aids while keeping them simple and clear; practice integrating them into your speech.

Choosing Relevant And High-Quality Visual Aids

In public speaking, choosing relevant and high-quality visual aids is crucial to the success of a presentation. The use of clear and concise visuals can help the audience understand complex ideas or processes, making it easier for them to retain information.

For example, if a presenter is discussing market trends over time, using charts or graphs could be helpful in presenting data clearly and concisely. Additionally, selecting high-quality visuals will ensure that they are easily visible from any part of the room and should not distract from the speaker’s message.

Keeping Them Simple And Clear

When it comes to visual aids in public speaking, less is often more. Keeping your aids simple and clear can help ensure that the message you are trying to convey remains the focus of the presentation.

For example, if you are discussing a new product launch, including an image of the product itself or a simple graphic showing its key features can be highly effective in helping your audience understand what you are offering.

By keeping visual aids simple and easy to understand, you can enhance engagement with your audience while ensuring they retain crucial information long after the presentation has ended.

Practicing Integration For Smooth Delivery

To ensure a smooth delivery of your presentation, it is essential to integrate visual aids seamlessly into your speech. This means making sure that the timing and relevance of each aid flow naturally with your talking points.

For example, if you plan to show a chart or graph during a certain point in your speech, practice transitioning smoothly into it without losing momentum or leaving any awkward pauses.

The goal is for the audience to focus on what you’re saying rather than being distracted by fumbled technology or poorly-timed visuals.

Types Of Visual Aids For Public Speaking And Their Proper Use

Slideshows for organization and visualization.

Slideshows are a popular visual aid that can help public speakers organize their talking points and visually enhance their message. They allow you to outline complex ideas, processes, or data in a clear and concise manner.

You can use them as an organizational tool by breaking down your speech into bullet points or sections.

However, it is important not to overdo it with too much information on each slide as this may lead to confusion among the audience. It is essential to keep things simple by using minimal text with high-quality visuals that support your speech’s main points.

Remember also to practice integrating these slides smoothly into your speech delivery for maximum impact on your audience.

Videos For Engagement And Storytelling

Videos are increasingly used as visual aids in public speaking to add engagement and storytelling elements. They can help illustrate complex topics, enhance emotional appeal, and leave a lasting impression on the audience.

For example, if your presentation is about climate change, you could show a short video clip of melting glaciers or rising sea levels to demonstrate the severity of the problem.

This would create an emotional connection with your audience and increase their understanding of the issue at hand. However, it’s important not to rely too heavily on videos in order to avoid overshadowing key points you want to communicate verbally.

Overall, when used appropriately, videos can be powerful tools that help public speakers deliver memorable presentations with maximum impact and engagement.

Props To Enhance Understanding And Create A Memorable Experience

Using props in a presentation can be an effective way to engage your audience and help them better understand complex ideas. Props such as models, physical objects, or even costumes can enhance your message and make it more memorable.

For example, if you are discussing the process of a particular product or service, having a physical representation of that product or related components can be useful.

However, it is important to choose relevant props that support your key talking points without distracting from them. Too many props or ones that do not relate directly to the topic can hinder communication rather than enhancing it.

Additionally, practice integrating these props into your speech for smooth delivery so they don’t detract from your overall impact and message.

Conclusion: Visual Aids in Public Speaking vs Conversations

In conclusion, visual aids can be a powerful tool to make your public speaking stand out and deliver an impactful message. They have the potential to enhance audience engagement, increase retention of information, and create a memorable experience.

However, when it comes to everyday conversation, the use of visual aids may not always be appropriate or effective. It is important to consider the limitations and potential hindrance they may pose on natural communication and interaction.

To make the most out of visual aids in public speaking, choose relevant and high-quality materials, keep them simple and clear, integrate them smoothly into your speech delivery through practice.

Remember that effective communication involves more than just presentation skills; body language, verbal communication, and audience interaction are equally essential components.