Donna Fitzpatrick of Catwalk Solutions addresses the psychology of presentation design with a number of valuable presentation tips, such as sharing stories, using graphics for emphasis, and where possible, breaking down insights into easily digestible “bites.”

1. ©2012 Donna Fitzpatrick, Catwalk Solutions

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This presentation was given at the 2012
NorthWest MRA Spring Educational
Conference. The conference took place in
Portland, Oregon at OMSI (Oregon Museum
of Science and Industry) during its “Wild
Minds: What Animals Really Think” event.
Inspired by the Wild Minds exhibit, I turned
to the workings of the human brain and
posed the question: Is our traditional
method of presenting market research
findings creating a barrier to our clients’
understanding of them and hindering
subsequent actions regarding them?
The title of my talk, “Capturing the Beast,”
refers to the mind of the typical market
research presentation attendee.
The following is approximately what I said
during my presentation.
Donna Fitzpatrick

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How we present market research findings.
Ironically, while we take pride in our research product and resulting insights,
there’s strong evidence that how we report and present can be a barrier to our
clients’ learning and motivation. We often bury the gold in a lot of extraneous detail
and ho-hum delivery. The too-frequent result: a client who either pays insufficient
attention to the findings or fails to act on them.
We can take inspiration from the OMSI Wild Minds exhibit. It examines creatures’
brains and how they work, including what is instinctual behavior versus learning
and applied problem-solving. This gave me the idea to look at the brain of the
average research presentation attendee in order to figure out how better to
communicate research findings.
So let’s look at what people really think.
Actually it’s more like HOW people really think.
First, though, I have a story about how I came to
this point. Like many of you, I was introduced to
research through academia. And, as you know,
academia has some pretty rigid ways of doing
things, starting with the default format for reports.
There’s the background, then we add objectives and
research design, followed by a high-level summary and
more details about findings. Next up is our list of
recommendations. Finally, we pack everything else into
the appendix.
The problem is that a reader or audience has to wait until
nearly the end to see what exactly has been found and
discover what should be done about it.

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While I conducted research in grad school, I didn’t actually apply those skills until
years later, after having worked as a packaged goods marketer and as an
advertising account manager.
With those two disciplines plus my grad studies as grounding, I really had
communications theory under my belt. And I had a lot of experience in attracting
and persuading consumers to do stuff or to want stuff. Yet, when I expanded my
responsibilities to include custom market and advertising research, I abandoned my
communications experience. Not once did I stop to think about how to
communicate research persuasively. Instead, I returned to that stale, default
academic format, believing that this was the professional way to go.
Are all those details really necessary?
I was passionate about walking clients through the methodological details so they
could see the care I took in putting together the work and, more importantly, how
the framework affected my interpretation of the findings. Furthermore, I certainly
didn’t want them to miss any of the findings I derived, so there was a huge amount
of detail delivered in thick reports. My verbal presentations of findings and
recommendations took the same format (and almost as much detail) as my written
reports. The result: clients were inundated by a brain dump of information.
Still, clients were complimentary about my work. And, to them, those thick reports
showed “value” for their research investment dollar. Nonetheless, I had a nagging
suspicion clients really didn’t “get” the nuggets I was showing and that those
reports often lay forgotten on some shelf somewhere. Worse yet, I feared my
carefully conceived recommendations were rarely acted upon. That meant the value
of my work was effectively $0.
But it really wasn’t the clients’ fault. In
journalism terms (my undergraduate degree
was in journalism), I was burying my lead in a
lot of extraneous stuff. Even worse, I was
overwhelming my clients in the process.

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Since then, I have experimented with various formats and tools to help me
communicate research findings more memorably and persuasively. Here are some
of the ideas I gathered along the way, starting with the elements most critical to
human learning.
How the human brain works.
Meet Dr. John Medina, Developmental Molecular
Biologist, Affiliate Professor of Bioengineering at the
University of Washington, and Director of the Brain
Center for Applied Learning Research at Seattle
Pacific University.
His book, “Brain Rules,” recapped what scientists
agree about the brain and how people learn things.
Sadly, judging by human learning science, it is no
surprise that the default research report format is
just about the worst way one can deliver findings to
a presentation attendee. And it certainly doesn’t
motivate anyone to act on our recommendations.
Every second the body sends to the brain around 11 million pieces of information.
Yet only 40 to 50 are processed consciously and most of those are about our
surroundings. The brain prioritizes the information to first examine the stimuli
concerning the body (am I too cold, too warm, too hungry), the environment
(where am I, where should I go next, is there danger), and time (is it getting late).
Our ancestors learned to filter stimuli in this order because our very survival
depended on us being able to quickly pick and choose what to pay attention to . . .
lest we be eaten.
We really have 3 brains, working in tandem.
 The first is the lizard brain that helps keep all our automatic bits functioning,
like breathing.
 The second is the mammalian brain which Dr. Medina noted is in control of
the 4 Fs: Fighting, Fleeing, Feeding and . . . . Reproductive Activities.
 The last is the human brain, the cortex.

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The cortex constantly communicates with the other brains, but also tries to make
sense of the world. In fact, it is this brain that led humans to develop symbolic
reasoning and to understand one another’s intentions and motivations.
Yet the brain has a lot on its plate and tends to tune out if
not stimulated. In fact, human learning science found that
people don’t pay attention to boring things.
Initially, one only has seconds to capture a person’s
interest and only 10 minutes to keep it. And then
something must be done to regain the person’s attention.
This is especially important to me today because I started my talk a little before
3pm, the time brain scientists say human brains really want to take a nap. So I
have to work especially hard to keep you alert and interested.
How to appeal to the human brain.
In a presentation or in a meeting, we must re-engage attendees’ attention EVERY
10 MINUTES. Fortunately there are a number of ways to do it.
 The brain likes exercise. Brain scientists found that physical exercise benefits
the parts of the brain most active in memory formation. Dr. Medina wrote
“physical activity is cognitive candy.” While I don’t want you to walk out of
here right now, I CAN and WILL ask you to stand up and stretch. Rotate your
shoulders. Roll your head. Now shake your hands hard.
 The brain likes repetition and hierarchy. The typical human brain can hold 7
new pieces of information for less than 30 seconds. To lengthen that time,
the brain needs to be re-exposed to the information. Ninety percent of what
you hear from me today will be forgotten, starting within minutes of my talk,
unless I provide you with some memory hooks. Therefore I’m going to be
referring back to things from time to time. Also, I arranged my talk in a flow
that should make sense to you. Repetition and hierarchy are important tools
in shifting information from your temporary, working brain into memory.

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 The brain likes elaborate, complex
things. This sounds anti-intuitive, but
when engaged, the brain likes to sift
through a lot of stimuli while it works
to make sense of things.
 The brain likes context and meaning.
That’s why story-telling and
metaphors are powerful tools for
communicators. In fact, stories engage
the brain far better than facts do. And
metaphors help clarify concepts.
 The brain likes emotions. Hopefully you’re having fun listening to my talk.
Ironically, though, if I really scared you, you’d probably be more successful
at remembering what I said, even days later.
 The brain likes having all the senses touched. That’s why I’m talking and
moving around in front of you. That’s why I’m showing you pictures. That’s
why I asked you to stand up and wiggle around a minute ago. If I had
thought of an effective and pertinent way, I would have engaged your senses
of taste and smell as well.
Vision is the critical sense.
The most powerful sense is vision. Between 1/3 and 1/2 of the typical human brain is
involved in vision. Ironically, text isn’t a strong visual tool because brains don’t see
letters as letters. They are seen as little individual pictures. Therefore the brain has
to work to recognize patterns in each letter “picture.” Then the patterns in the
combined pictures that make a word must be found. And finally, the meaning of the
word has to be derived and applied across a combination of words. It takes the
brain a while to go through this process. Consequently, reading is a slow way to put
information into the brain.1
Text is more effective when accompanied by supportive images. Even audio lacks
power unless accompanied by pictures. After 3 days, the typical brain remembers
10% of what it hears. Add pictures, and the brain can remember up to 65%.
1
Note: This has interesting implications both for documents like this one and for PowerPoint bullet points.

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Vision trumps everything. Furthermore, vision with motion is even more engaging.
Most likely this tendency is due to our primitive ancestors’ need to be on constant
lookout for possible attack.
The brain can create new meaning.
Vision can actually change meaning. And it can make up things that really aren’t
there. A cool example of this is the McGurk Effect, first described in a 1976
research paper by Harry McGurk and John MacDonald.
Go to YouTube to see Arnt Maasø’s demonstration of the
effect.2 It’s a very short clip. Listen to it the first time
with your eyes closed. Then listen again, but this time
watch the video too.
Most people hear the repeated phoneme “ba” when their
eyes are closed. With open eyes, most think the phoneme
being said is “da.” But actually the mouth is forming another phoneme altogether,
“ga.” The combination of the real sound (“ba”) with a visual mouthing of another
sound (“ga”) makes the brain think it hears a sound that’s not even there (“da”).
Stories and cadence are powerful allies.
Through the years, Nancy Duarte’s design firm (Duarte Design, located in Silicon
Valley) has created thousands of presentations for major companies. I recently saw
a video of Duarte delivering a presentation of her own. It was fascinating. The
topic: The Secret Structure of Great Talks.3
The best presentations use storytelling. The classic
format for stories was uncovered by Joseph Campbell
in his life-long study of comparative mythology. It’s
called The Hero’s Journey. The ancient myths follow
that form, as do movies, books and many stories. The
basic elements are these:
2
McGurk Effect (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFPtc8BVdJk)
3
Duarte’s Talk (http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/nancy_duarte_the_secret_structure_of_great_talks.html)

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 A hero is contentedly pursuing his (or her) everyday life.
 He is enjoined to carry out a specific challenge or adventure. In myths, the
one establishing the challenge is usually a god. In modern books or movies,
it could be anyone or even an imminent situation.
 But the hero is loath to make the extra, usually scary, effort.
 A while later, however, he meets up with someone who helps him. This is the
mentor. In myth that mentor is often a goddess or sorceress.
 As a result, our hero steps out to take on the challenge.
In a presentation, Duarte posited, the hero is the audience and the mentor is the
presenter.4 Duarte added: a presenter isn’t Luke Skywalker. A presenter is Yoda.
Powerful communicators also use cadence in their speech. Think Martin Luther King
here. Duarte felt, if she looked hard enough, she could uncover a classic rhythm
and form to stong speeches. She analyzed a slew of presentations, including Steve
Jobs’ iPhone launch and Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. And she found an
interesting pattern.
Effective presentations swing back and forth
between the pain of a current situation and
the wonder of “what could be.” The trick for
the presenter is to make the status quo
unappealing and to make the future as big
and bright as possible.
Motivate by sharing the vision.
Borrowing from Campbell, Duarte called the world of “what could be” The New
Bliss. She said the continual back and forth between “what is” and “what could be”
provides audiences the chance to be persuaded a bit at a time until everyone is in
agreement about the desirability of the proposed utopian future. That future would
hinge, of course, on something specific being achieved, such owning a brand new
iPhone or demanding equal rights.
4
Note: subsequent to my talk, Amanda Durkee of Zanthus sent me a link to Simon Sinek’s 2009 TED Talk, in which
he pre‐echoed Duarte’s hypothesis about the audience being the hero in a presentation situation. His discussion
of a leader’s calling syncs nicely with brain science too. (http://blog.ted.com/2010/05/04/how_great_leade/)

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Duarte maintained the very movement of going back and forth, back and forth is
far more compelling than just once describing “now” versus “a new, shiny future.”
Brain science agrees. A sequential learning process is engaging to brains. The brain
likes snippets of ideas, repeated in a variety of ways over a period of time.
This has enormous implications for
how we could share research
results and insights. Rather than in
a single brain dump, can we
deliver information in sequential
snippets, via different senses,
maybe via different media?
Hybrid research is all the rage these days. What about hybrid reports and
presentations? What can we do to change how we present based on what we know
about the human brain?
Handy presentation tools are readily available.
A number of years ago, I ran into an interesting article by
Bill Jensen, founder of The Jensen Group. He’s a time
management expert, but I was struck by something he
wrote about efficient and effective communications: Before
every meeting, email, presentation or letter, decide
specifically what you want your communication recipients
to come out KNOWING, what you want them to FEEL about
it, and what exactly you want them to DO as a result.
This process focuses your communications tremendously.
Furthermore, it’s interesting about the FEEL part. While not normally seen as
important in the business world, brain science tells us if an audience really feels an
emotion connected with transferred information, the audience will remember the
information better and be more inclined to act on it. Both Jobs and Dr. King were
experts at stimulating emotions within their audiences. Emotions such as fear,
laughter, happiness, incredulity, and nostalgia are all intriguing to the typical
human brain. Think about how you can trigger emotions during your presentations.

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I came across another useful tool in 2008. Cliff Atkinson’s book “Beyond Bullet
Points” induced me to alter my presentation planning process. He recommended
presentations be story-boarded, just like is done for cartoons, movies and television
ads. Before story-boarding, however, he suggested plotting out the essential
points. To aid that effort, Atkinson provided a handy planning template which I’ve
used (in combination with Jensen’s Know, Feel, Do) ever since.
Atkinson’s template sets up
the story from the audience’s
viewpoint right from the get-
go. It insures the presenter is
very clear about what
challenge the audience faces
(Point A), where it wants or
needs to be (Point B) and how
to get that audience from A to
B (The Call to Action).
Knowing that the brain is
limited regarding the number
of information pieces it can
hold at one time, Atkinson
suggested applying the power
of 3. He maintained that no
one should introduce more
than 3 key points defending
the proposed call to action
during a 5-minute speech.
If the speech is 15 minutes in length, rather than adding points, he advocated
supporting each key point with up to 3 illustrative explanations. If the speech is
longer, say 45 minutes or like my hour-long presentation today, every supportive
explanation can have up to three supportive details.
All this builds in repetition and hierarchy. As we’ve already seen, the brain is more
prone to be engaged and to remember concepts presented this way.

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Learn how to use visuals.
There are a lot of resources that can help, such as:
 Textbooks and other references. Explore
the many good books available on the
subject. To the right are a few well-
thumbed (and heavily book-marked) texts
I have in my office.5
 Ideas borrowed from your colleagues.
Nielsen is thinking a lot about better ways
to present data. The company recently
held a contest for data design and
announced the winner right before the NWMRA conference. Currently Nielsen
is inviting visitors to its site to vote for a Fan Favorite among selected
finalists. Make your choice.6 Tom Peters would be proud.
 Visual thinking and visual meetings. The Grove facilitates meetings and
translates what’s said into a wall-wide (or more) visual recording as the
meeting progresses. The result is a part text/part cartoon recap of
proceedings.7 This process has been shown to be effective in gaining
participants’ engagement and understanding, stimulating their creativity and
providing them an effective means to remember the points discussed.
Furthermore, the resulting work can be transformed into a poster that is
exceedingly helpful in explaining to new audiences the results of that
meeting. The Dachis Group recently merged with Portland’s XPlane and
inherited its once-monthly free-to-the-public Visual Training School.8 This is a
great opportunity for non-artist business people to rub shoulders with arty
sorts and together explore the use of visual thinking and facilitation.
 Mind maps. I use mind maps for just about everything, from planning a
project to brainstorming ideas for a speech. One can simply pick up a pen
and paper or use one of the mind mapping software applications. Mindjet
Mindmanager is the one I use. MindGenius is another good one.
5
Note: After my NWMRA presentation, I discovered one of my favorite presentation writers, Garr Reynolds, had
reviewed Medina’s “Brain Rules” and found, as I did, huge implications for making presentations. Furthermore,
Reynolds took 3 of the 12 Brain Rules and applied them in a stand‐alone slide show.
(http://www.slideshare.net/garr/brain‐rules‐for‐presenters)
6
Nielsen InfoGraphic Contest Results (http://www.nielsen.com/dataviz2012)
7
The Grove Website (http://www.grove.com/)
8
The Dachis Group, Visual Training School (http://www.dachisgroup.com/2011/11/vts/)

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 Storytelling. While not essentially visual, the brain finds storytelling a vivid
way to learn. There are a number of resources for storytelling, including
several here in Portland. One of them, Portland Storytellers Guild, has a two-
day Festival of Stories coming up in June.9
Bigger brains are better.
Exploring tools like these will help us become better
visual thinkers and also better communicators. In
addition, the exploration process will help grow our
brains. Literally.
Our brains are very plastic and every experience
changes them. In fact, Darwin found that creatures
in the wild had 15-30% bigger brains than those in
captivity. The wild brains grew from having more
stimulation. Those creatures who successfully
processed and reacted to the stimuli survived and
even thrived.
Survival isn’t a big issue for market researchers, but thriving brains are important
in our work. As Dr. Medina reminded us, the brain acts as a muscle. The more
active a person is, the larger and more complex the brain can become. Just imagine
what you can do with a bigger, more evolved brain.
Let’s get started.
Individually, we can work on our presentation skills. Collectively, we should share
our discoveries of better ways to communicate insights and motivate clients.
We have an initial challenge though. Improved
communications means extra preparation time.
Extra preparation time means additional cost.
Yet, as we all know, our clients prefer getting
their research done quickly and cheaply.
9
Portland Storyteller’s Guild, Festival of Stories (http://portlandstorytellers.org/FestivalofStories.html)

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Therefore, not only must we create and share presentation best practices. We must
also help one another find effective ways to convince clients of the value of the
added work. After all, a rising tide lifts all boats.
In the meantime, here are seven things you can do
right now to get you ready for your next presentation.
 Think it through. When starting a research
project, plan ahead for the report and the
presentation. What is your audience like? Do
you need to present differently to audience
segments? Where are they located? Is there a
way you can apply brain science to insure the
best learning and memory-inducing situations
for each audience?
 Allocate time. The communications effort will
take a considerable chunk of time to do well. Therefore, plan for it.
 Apply multisensory stimuli. How can you transmit your findings to create an
information-rich experience for your audience? What senses can you touch?
What media mix might you use?
 Consider phased delivery. Maybe you can present findings in a series of short
events or in a 2-day workshop. Perhaps you can engage your client in short
status meetings where the client can be exposed to the process as well as to
your emerging insights in real time, gaining buy-in as you go.
 Recap to support memory. Not only should you recap your main points
during a presentation, but consider developing something additional such as
a pocket-sized summary card or a large poster for the client to refer to.
 Practice practice practice. This is an area that I’m especially bad about since
I’m the kind of person who, after doing something once, is ready to move on
to other, newer things. But I can assure you that I would be a far better
communicator if I practiced more. And I bet you would too.
 Stimulate your brain. Go outside market research to explore how other
industries or groups present complex findings. Can we learn from them?
What can we learn from improvisation, basic design, storytelling, theater,
fine art, or science? Experiment with different presentation tools. Be on the
lookout for new ways to deliver your insights more memorably.

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As market researchers, we advocate
every day the importance of such
research in our clients’ decision-
making and innovation. A different
kind of research, brain science, can be
leveraged in ways that result in our
being more effective and persuasive
communicators of our market research
insights.
Together, we can achieve the new bliss.
I have personally seen Michelangelo’s magnificent fresco, the Creation of Adam, a
couple of times. This work is especially meaningful to me. In fact, I use a detail of it
(the near-touching hands)
as wallpaper on my
computer monitor and even
on my iPhone. To me, this
one portion of the work
captures perfectly the
instant of the creative
spark. Even this funny line
art rendering inspires in me
a feeling of creative promise
and a frisson of joy. I hope you are feeling some of that anticipation and pleasure
too as you ponder the things I’ve shared with you today.
Let’s reach out to one another. We can cross the threshold hand-in-hand toward
the New Presentation Bliss.

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Here’s a little about me.
I have worn a lot of communications-related hats throughout
my career, including marketing executive, advertising
strategist, market and customer researcher, focus group
moderator, brainstorm and workshop facilitator, product
innovation consultant and business strategy coach.
My company is Catwalk Solutions, a customer engagement
consultancy focused on forging stronger connections between organizations and
their internal and external customers.
My motto: Stand out. In a good way.10
I’m currently compiling an annotated bibliography of presentation resources and
tools. If you’d like a copy, please drop me a line or give me a call.
Donna Fitzpatrick
Customer Engagement Strategist
Catwalk Solutions
Tel: 503.219.9350 Cel: 503.780.8839
donna@catwalksolutions.com
10
Photo Credits: To help my NWMRA presentation stand out, I acquired images from one of my favorite
presentation resources, istockphoto.com. The picture of Dr. Medina is from a press kit on his “Brain Rules” site.
The other images are home made.