One of the things that sets us apart from other presentation design agencies is our commitment to research. We have experts who study presentation design trends, color theory, content strategy, narrative structure, persuasion techniques, and even neuroscience to bring you the best research from the field. Today we’ll show you how our brains use imagery to help things (like an astronaut dog or a tapestry metaphor) stick in our memories. And we’ll show you how to leverage imagery to create memorable presentations.
The Astronaut Dog
My husband was standing in our kitchen polishing off the peanut butter-filled pretzels, when he chuckled. “Did I ever tell you about the time my dog got its head stuck in one of these clear plastic containers?” I told him I couldn’t remember him ever telling me that story. So he recounted the backyard family picnic in which the dog had tried to steal a snack but instead got his head stuck in the container. He laughed, recounting how everyone was chasing the dog trying to help him get free, which they did after a minute or two of pure chaos. “He looked like an astronaut running around dodging everyone.” In an instant, the whole story came flooding back to me. “Wait!” I said, “You did tell me the story. I remember you saying he looked like an astronaut.”
Memory is a weird thing. I’m sure my husband told the story pretty much the same way both times. But it didn’t trigger in my memory until he said the word “astronaut.” That happened for good reason.
The Tapestries in Our Brains
If you want to learn more about how your brain works, I’d suggest Daniel Gilbert’s book Stumbling on Happiness. In it, he uses a tapestry metaphor to help us understand memory. He says:
“The elaborate tapestry of our experience is not stored in memory—at least not in its entirety. Rather, it is compressed for storage by first being reduced to a few critical threads, such as a summary phrase…or a small set of key features…Later, when we want to remember our experience, our brains quickly reweave the tapestry by fabricating—not by actually retrieving—the bulk of the information that we experience as a memory. This fabrication happens so quickly and effortlessly that we have the illusion…that the entire thing was in our heads the entire time.”
So the full story of the astronaut dog was never there for me to retrieve. But the thread—in this case, the word “astronaut” had been preserved so that I could reweave the story once that thread was presented to me. We don’t retrieve. We reweave. Cool, huh?
But what does this have to do with creating memorable presentations?
The bad news is this: Your audience is not going to remember your entire presentation no matter how stunning your slide deck or how captivating your delivery. But they will store threads of it that can trigger a fuller memory in the future. So we need to be designing presentations with strong threads. This is where imagery comes in.
How to Put Imagery to Use
First, when we talk about imagery, we are talking both about things that you can actually see (such as a photograph on a slide) and things that you can imagine with your mind’s eye. For example, if I tell you to picture an elephant in a lawn chair eating popcorn, you can see it. Not literally in front of you, but in your head, right? Those are the kinds of the threads we want to create in our presentations—things the audience can picture. But how do we build them and make them stick?
- Use novelty. Research has proven that our brains are specially attuned to things that are novel. For example, studies by Schomaker and Meeter have proven that novelty enhances our visual perception, improves our focus and motivation, and strengthens our memory. That’s probably why my brain locked onto the astronaut thread of my husband’s story. It was the most novel element in the narrative.
- Use relevance. Our brains are also predisposed to hold on to things that matter to us. So the threads that relate most strongly to us will stick with us longer. Increase the “stickiness” of your threads by relating your images to things the audience knows. Even just asking them to imagine that popcorn-eating elephant in a lawn chair in their own backyards locates the image in a particular space which researchers Zhang and Luck say will help it stick longer.
A year from now you might be sitting in your office working on a PowerPoint slide when you faintly remember reading something about using imagery to help make memorable presentations. And for some weird reason, you might picture an astronaut dog or an elephant in a lawn chair eating popcorn. And you’ll Google those strange search terms and hopefully find this again. Because imagery is memorable.
There’s nothing haphazard about the formula we’ll use to help you elevate your presentation. It’s based on years of research and experience. Ready to get started?
