Summaryconclusion. A few slides that summarise your presentation and perhaps

9.3 Poster presentations 235 demonstrate your enthusiasm. If you want to stop yourself from walking around, place a finger on the nearest desk or chair – subconsciously your body will want to remain fixed where you are. n Nerves. Everybody suffers from nerves to some extent or another. While nerves are never totally eliminated, they do ebb as you become more and more used to giving presentations. The ‘secret’ here is to give as many presentations as possible and keep on practicing. The more presentations you do, the easier it becomes. And remember, without a few nerves, you would not have enough adrenalin to deliver an exciting presentation. If you are shaking you could perhaps switch the overhead projector off as you change slides. n Technical failure. Overhead projectors are not infallible the bulbs do blow in them quite frequently and laptops linked to projectors do go wrong from time to time. Quite often, projectors have spare bulbs within them that you can switch to; so learn how to do this. Alternatively, have a contingency plan such as using trans- parencies if you have a computer-based presentation or moving to a white board or referring to handouts of your slides if you are using an overhead projector. Usually, however, if the there is a major technical failure, your session chair will step in to assist you. Above all else, be enthusiastic. Enthusiasm can do a lot to hide nerves and perhaps even some content lacking from your presentation. The audience will be on the edge of their seats when they see how interested you are in your work and will become moti- vated and supportive of you as well. •

9.3 Poster presentations

9.3.1 Introduction

Instead of students doing software demonstrations or oral presentations, some insti- tutions arrange poster sessions as part of the assessment process. At the postgraduate level you may have to produce a poster for other reasons. Your department may hold a poster competition for its postgraduate students – encouraging them to share their work with others. Alternatively, a poster presentation might be a good first step to getting your work published at an international conference – giving you a chance to meet others in your field and discuss your ideas with them. In some ways, poster sessions are better than oral presentations. You can interact more with people who are interested in your work as they discuss the content of your poster with you rather than having to follow a predefined presentation; they are less stressful it is easier to stand by your poster and discuss your work than to present a talk to a roomful of people; you can selectively view the work of others rather than having to sit through many presentations you might not be interested in; and you can focus on aspects of your work that you feel are most important as you discuss your poster face to face with others. Because typically many posters are on display during poster sessions, you need to find a way to make your poster stand out so that people will be attracted to it and take an 236 Chapter 9 n Presentation skills interest in your work. People tend to spend three different phases of time in front of posters – it is important to attract their attention in the first instance and then maintain their attention as they progress through different levels of detail on the poster. A viewer will form an impression of your poster in the first couple of seconds they look at it phase 1. Some questions that instinctively go through a viewer’s mind when looking at your poster are these: n Is it the right subject material for me? n Is it at the right level of detail? n Is it presented in such a way that I can easily understand the main points or principles? n Is it interesting? If your poster passes the phase 1 scrutiny and the viewer decides to read your poster rather than move on, he or she will generally spend another 10 to 15 seconds on the second phase of assessment. If a viewer is still interested after this stage, he or she will tend to be willing to read the whole poster and ask questions of the presenter phase 3. In the following sections we look at some ways you can make your poster look good, keep people interested to phase 3 of viewing and provide some examples of good and bad poster design. The main areas to consider are the poster’s content, size and shape, layout, font size and style and colour scheme.

9.3.2 Content

You need to have some idea of what to cover, what will go into your poster and how large the poster should be before you can start putting it together. The first thing to consider is the audience. Are you producing the poster for an international confer- ence, so the audience will be largely informed researchers in the field who will be interested in the detail of what you have done; or is the poster forming part of your final assessment and will be viewed largely by colleagues and examiners who might be more interested in a general overview of what you have achieved? The type of project you have undertaken will also influence its content. For a research-based project, you might want to focus on information such as research methodology, your findings, results and conclusions. For a software development project, you might want to discuss the requirements, designs, implementation issues, user feed- back and the like. Regardless of your project topic, include these essential sections in your poster. n Title. Normally, this is your project title or title submitted to the conference. The title should be catchy and not overly long. Make sure it is presented in sentence case Like this, Not Like This or LIKE THIS. n Name and affiliationcourse detailscontact details as appropriate. n Introductionoverviewsummary. This shouldn’t be an abstract but an introduction to what your project is about – providing the audience with a general idea of what you have achieved and what the poster is about. n Conclusions. What are the main findings from your work, what is its contribution? 9.3 Poster presentations 237 n Acknowledgements. n References. Include these if appropriate but don’t list so many that they take up a large area of space. The rest of the poster’s content is clearly influenced by the project type, the intended audience and the project’s contribution. It would be usual to include sections such as Results, Further Work, Methodology; but what goes into these sections is clearly dependent on the poster’s purpose. Bear in mind that a poster should have only enough content so that the average reader could read the entire poster in ten minutes maximum.

9.3.3 Size and shape

Make sure you know how large the poster should be when planning what to put in it. Usually posters are printed in at least A1 size 84cm × 54cm but A0 is more usual around 119cm × 84cm. It doesn’t really matter how big you print your poster as long as it is within suggested guidelines as the larger the poster is, the further people stand away from the poster to take it all in anyway. Note that posters are normally produced in landscape rather than portrait format but it doesn’t matter which orientation you use as both forms are usually acceptable. When you come to print out your poster, will you have access to a large printer that can print this size of poster or must you print out a number of smaller sheets and stick them together which will look much less professional?

9.3.4 Layout

Start by drafting your poster on paper – getting an idea of the layout, where each section will be placed and how much space each section will be allocated. What graphs, figures and ta- bles do you plan to include and where will they be placed? Use sticky notes to plan where things will go and move these around as your ideas and the poster evolves. Posters tend to be easier to read when split into three or more columns . Having all the text arranged in one block like a report does not work well. The content should be arranged so that it progresses, firstly down columns and, secondly, from left to right in a logical sequence. Whether you have long columns or smaller sectioned columns depends on how much information is go- ing into each section. A suggested content for posters is that around 25 of the poster should be text, 45 graphics figures, pictures, etc. and 30 should be white space. Figure 9.7 shows some sample layouts for posters. Both have a section at the top where the poster’s title and the author’s name would go. Both are split into a number of columns, the height and size varying according to the content. The poster on the right-hand side has been split so that supplementary information not part of the main content of the poster – such as acknowledgements, logos, email addresses, references, etc. – is presented in a number of boxes at the bottom of the poster. Another way to design your poster is to use a template. If you search for ‘poster template’ on the Internet you will find a number of predefined templates produced for different software packages. These can be tailored to your own needs and provide some interesting ideas on layout, colour schemes and fonts. Another useful resource is 238 Chapter 9 n Presentation skills http:www.ePosters.net the online journal of scientific posters. This site allows you to view other people’s posters and upload your own for comment.

9.3.5 Font

Use a proportional sans serif font for your poster – particularly for the title and headings, which need to be clear. Earlier in this chapter, we mentioned that serifs are the small strokes on the ends of the letters. As its name suggests, a sans-serif font does not have serifs. In a proportional font, the letters take up different widths of space depending on their sizeshape. For example, ‘i’ takes up less space than ‘w’ in a proportional font. Graphic design experts believe proportional fonts are easier to read than non-proportional also called monospaced fonts in which each letter takes up the same amount of space, irrespective of its size for example, Courier is a monospaced font. Try to use the same font throughout your poster although headings and titles could be in a different font to smaller blocks of text – don’t chop and change from one section to another even on figures and charts. This consistency adds a professional touch to your poster. Arial is a good, readable font to choose for posters as it is proportional and sans serif. You may use a serif font for the smaller text on your poster if you believe, as some people do, that such fonts are easier to read than sans-serif fonts when reading large blocks of text – but stick to a sans serif font for headings and titles. In terms of font size, as a general rule of thumb, never use 12-point type or smaller for a poster. The minimum type size for poster text is 14 points, while titles and section headings will obviously need to be much larger.

9.3.6 Colours

The choice of colours can make or break your poster. While you may have got the content, layout and font correct, choosing clashing, garish colours or colours that do not contrast very well can make your poster unreadable. Softer colours tend to work well for backgrounds, while foreground text should be presented in bold colours to make it stand out. Make sure that the colours you choose for backgrounds and foregrounds contrast well – there is no point, for example, in having a Figure 9.7 Sample poster layouts