Sometimes less really is more. Let’s face it. Our multimedia word is noisy. Busy. Interactive. And quite often, exhausting. We might feel the pressure to make sure our presentations match these trends and keep this pace. But some researchers and neuroscientists believe simple presentations might be better.
A few years back, Nicholas Carr wrote a bestselling book called The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. His book helps us to understand how the way we produce and consume information these days has had a profound effect on our brains. And as you may have guessed, it’s not all positive. So let’s explore some of Carr’s research. We’ll find out that our audience might benefit if we just keep our presentations simple.
The Thimble
In a chapter called “The Juggler’s Brain,” Carr uses the metaphor of trying to fill a bathtub with a thimble. That is essentially what it’s like for our working memory to try to convert sensory information into long term memory. Carr says, “By regulating the velocity and intensity of information, media exert a strong influence on this process. When we read a book, the information faucet provides a steady drip, which we can control by the pace of our reading . . . With the Net, we face many information faucets, all going full blast.”
So when we encounter multimedia communication and presentations, our working memory (the thimble) has to switch rapidly between different channels (faucets) like spoken word, printed word, sight, and sound. We are trying to catch a few drops here and there. We are trying to figure out how they connect. And we are tired and overwhelmed. That’s because much of our media today has a higher number of channels and faster flow of information than our brains can process. Carr goes on to say that “when the load exceeds our mind’s ability to store and process the information—when the water overflows the thimble—we’re unable to retain the information or to draw connections with the information already stored in our long-term memory . . . Our ability to learn suffers, and our understanding remains shallow.”
Simple Presentations
I doubt any of us who are presenters want our audience members to come away with shallow understanding. Which means we might need to pay better attention to the number of faucets we are putting in front of our listeners. We might think we have the ability to multitask but that’s simply not true. Stanford research proved that switching between tasks doesn’t make us more efficient, it just makes us more distracted.
You might be tempted to outfit your presentation with motion and sound and visual displays. But sometimes more is just too much. To help your audience pay attention, focus primarily on the information the audience needs to catch from your main faucet—the words coming out of your mouth. Make those meaningful and clear. Only add other faucets when they will truly help your audience understand more deeply. And when you’ve got something else the audience needs to pay attention to, whether it’s a picture on the screen or a handout, remember that they are working with a thimble. If you turn on too many faucets, all the overflow inevitably gets lost. Keep it simple.
Perhaps all of us who speak should place a thimble next to our computers. This small symbol can remind us to be intentional and selective in the words and media we use in our presentations. It can remind us to communicate simply, in clear and refreshing drops of information.
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