The Science Behind Presentation Storyboard

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Why do presentation experts insist on having a clear storyline or presentation storyboard? Here is the real reason behind it…

Research findings on storytelling

As human beings, we store a large amount of information in story format. Researchers call these schemas. This information is not in the form of words, but situations.

Roger Schank (one of the top 10 movers and shakers in e-learning) has been involved in story generation research for many years.

He concludes that human memory is story-based.

Let us delve deeper into this with more about…

How the brain stores information

The semantic network model (set of concepts that are related to one another) suggests that the brain stores information as nodes and their related elements. In other words, you store information as concepts and their associations.

For example, here is how the information about animals is stored in your brain…

Source: Source: Wikipedia

Applying this research to presentations…

When you develop a storyboard for your presentation, you create a connected web of ideas that help your audience remember and retain information like this:

  • At the start of your presentation, the agenda slide establishes this connection.
  • During the presentation, the flow structure reinforces the link.
  • At the end of the presentation, the summary seals the connection one last time.

Thus, your presentation becomes memorable.

If you had not planned your presentation with a clear storyline, you don’t create this web of concepts.

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When the link between ideas is weak…

When there is no clear and obvious connection between the ideas, your audience’s mind ignores the individual pieces of information. So, your presentation doesn’t even get registered in your audience’s mind.

When there is no registration, there is no recollection.

So, by not planning a presentation story you end up wasting everyone’s time.

The next step is to create a clear presentation structure.

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