Graphics Synchronization I:

The Missing Link

April 27, 2009 by Jerry 

graphsync_1Mark Twain’s 19th Century adage, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it,” is applicable to 21st Century business presentations. What everybody talks about in business today is Microsoft PowerPoint, the medium of choice for presentations, and how to avoid making a visual hindrance of what is supposed to be a visual aid; how to avoid being guilty of the all-too-common opprobrium: Death by PowerPoint. Multiple Amazon listings, abundant bookstore shelves, countless web sites, and numerous state-of-the-art graphics studios, are all bursting at the seams with advice about how to design slides for presentations.

Yet nobody is doing anything about the other vital element that is meant to complement graphics: the presenter. Oh yes, advice about body language abounds, but nothing about how to integrate body language with the slides and the narrative.

This missing link creates a distraction during presentations as disconcerting as watching a film with an out-of-sync soundtrack. The movie audience, irritated by even the slightest mismatch of picture and sound, is likely to call out to the projectionist or even to ask for a refund; the business audience, struggling to relate what they are seeing with what the presenter is saying, is likely to interrupt or simply to tune out, rejecting both the presenter and the message.

Such negative reactions occur because asynchronous sights and sounds are a challenge the sensitive neurology of the human perception system. Audiences find it difficult to process multiple sensory inputs; a difficulty compounded when the images are in motion. Thus the irritation caused by the slipped soundtrack.

The equivalent of motion in presentations is the animation feature in PowerPoint. We’ve all been victimized by the flying bullets and spinning pie charts that tumble helter-skelter onto the projection screen like circus acrobats. Presenters must exercise restraint in computer animation, but that is a subject I have written about earlier. For now, let us accept that well-designed animation can help tell and propel a story, and turn our attention to how the presenter can incorporate animation into a presentation effectively.

The instant the animation begins, the audience suddenly shifts their attention to the screen and away from the presenter, and they do so involuntarily—that sensitive neurology at work. So focused is the audience on the animation, they do not hear the presenter’s words, nor do they see what the presenter is doing. Moreover, anything that the presenter does or says creates additional sensory data that conflicts with the projected activity on the screen.

There is a simple solution to all of this: pause; a seemingly simple solution that I introduced in last week’s post in this series. The pause is centerpiece of Graphics Synchronization, a unique skill set that integrates the presenter’s delivery with the design and animation of the graphics. This skill occupies two full chapters in The Power Presenter but, for the purposes of this blog, we’ll focus only on the value of the pause.

However, as you will quickly come to discover, pausing will be very difficult for you—or anyone—to do. Because of the high stakes involved in any presentation, your adrenaline will start flowing the moment you start speaking, throwing you into time warp, and making a pause feel like an eternity. Time moves very differently in front of an audience.

But there is a way to break the vicious cycle: focus on the many benefits of the pause.

  • You get to look at your slide to make sure that it’s correct
  • You get a prompt about what to say
  • You get to take a breath and keep living

And one more benefit, more important than all the others:

Your audience gets time to absorb your slide and get a visual reinforcement of your message

Think of that: all these benefits for the price of doing nothing.

Therefore, whenever you introduce animation, stop talking, stop moving, turn to the screen and let the animation complete its full course of action. In fact, whenever you introduce any new graphical element, even a static image, pause and look at it. Look at the image as if you have never seen it, and give your audience time to see it. At that moment, you and your audience fall into lock step. Graphics Synchronization.

This seemingly obvious recommendation—to come to a full stop—is as rarely observed in presentations as it is in response to red octagonal signposts at street corners and crossroads. In traffic, the rolling stop has become the norm out of practice; in presentations, machine gun delivery is due to time warp. Every presenter understands this dynamic and feels powerless to the relentless urge to keep jabbering. It is impossible to slow down time, but it is possible to control it by coming to a halt, by pausing.

Tomorrow: An example of the power of the pause: the Dolby Laboratories IPO road show.

A Joint Program of Power Presentations, Ltd. & indezine_footer1

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