My lab uses this video as a resource for anyone creating a poster... I'm about to make my very first poster to present and this was SO HELPFUL. THANK YOU!!!
🏆 From a long-time communications designer - well done, sir!! A perfect example of watchable, well-paced storytelling that communicates a sh*t ton of value! Have you discussed your video-making style and process somewhere?
lol. Sorry about that. These #betterposter cartoons are more like short films at this point. And I was trying so hard to address all the feedback over the last year since the first one that I wanted a catchall video I could send to holdouts. I will endeavor to make all videos shorter from now on!
speed 1.5x and skip through it works well especially after looking at the previous one:). Does look useful for our grad students to set expectations and help them, quicker than giving the presentation ourselves.
@@MikeMorrisonPhD DO NOT make this shorter! Your videos are fun, informative, and entertaining. I will be using this in my class this spring to teach senior undergraduates about poster design. I am interested in what they come up with. Thanks for doing this.
It was an eye-opener. No one taught me before how to create more visually appealing and easy-to-grasp posters. We are always running after full of text/pictures posters and those are a bit too overwhelming even for the audience with a scientific background, let alone the general public.
#1 thing I'd say that helps break the mold in a constructive way for conference presentations: Don't be afraid to have some humor in your presentation. It is SO appreciated by the audience. We don't have to pretend to be unsmiling uncaring white labcoats. You'll notice this in people who've done a lot of presentations... Yet.I rarely see it said outloud.
Many thanks, these two videos gave me plenty of input to tackle my first poster. I love graphic design and writing music so I'm happy that your scientific research is proving value in art and how it crosses over into STEM.
Sure! If you study graphic design, then you know how to predict with good accuracy where people will look on your design, and the order that people will look in. In that way, art IS science at some point. Hope this helped! Would love to see what you come up with!
Fantastic! Finally, some great guidance on how people consume information translated into posters! I've shared both videos widely! Now if we can just work on how all this great research and information gets transmitted to those who need it to make better decisions! Thanks Dr. Mike!
I think most poster presenters are students, and they are constantly seeking PIs approval to do something creative. I really appreciate your compelling story, and references I hope this will change the perspectives of many PIs, and will lead to more effective communication of science.
Yeah there are some wonderful and supportive PIs, but also some that are serious roadblocks. What kills me is, a lot of times, their objections aren't scientific or evidence-based. They're just afraid of what their colleagues wold think of them if they break with tradition. It's like they have a grown-up version of the fear and conformity a lot of grad students are stifled by. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Hopefully if those of us with creative freedom can keep pushing envelope hard enough, we'll break that pressure eventually with something better.
Oh my gosh. Loved that. I feel totally inspired! Your video was linked by the Western Institute of Nursing, a regional research organization for nursing and other health care professions. I'm excited to make a better poster for this year's conference :)
I am a doctoral student in Learning, Design, and Technology with a Master's focused on Instructional Design and Online Learning, 20+ year's experience in both adult literacy learning and professional development presentation, and another master's in Education. All 3 of these videos are AWESOME. I have subscribed, already shared #betterposter Part 1 with my ID research group & Professor, and plan to share ALL of your videos with a BUNCH of other conference organizers and Instructional Designers. Thank you for your contribution to Science, academic conferences, and Grad student sanity.
Lmao this was really great and super helpful, and your voice and the way you communicate is really entertaining and informative. Reminds me a little of the guy who voiced the MC from SAO abridged. I'll definitely share this with people I know that would like this
Absolutely engaged in this video from the beginning! I was dreading that my prof posted two 20 minutes videos... however, I loved them! My psychology self loved the behavior psych information in this--and the weirdness!
Wow! This was amazing. I work in learning services and am regularly asked to critique student posters or teach them how to create posters. I will be bringing a new lens to that work. Thank you so much!
Making my first research e-poster for my first research paper for a scientific conference! and you are a saviour!! I guess things will be a bit different with 'e-posters+ video' format now in the pandemic era?
... scientists not thinking about the posters and takking into account new findings about attention and learning is an equivalent of ignoring some key findings in chemistry/physics/math. What I wanted to say, is thanks for a wonderful video.
💯I've tried to make that point for years and never said it as clearly as you just did. EXACTLY. Especially, some people have been like "we can't exploit emotion in design we're scientists. Science is serious!" and I'm like "Um. Emotion is how you get people to actually remember things, according to science. So you're crippling the knowledge transfer of your presentation by ignoring half your audiences' brain just based your feeling of disgust. Sounds kind of unscientific to me?" And don't get me started on professors not allowing their students to experiment with their posters. Isn't experimenting and learning their whole job? Anyway sorry for rant but you made a very good point I've never gotten to talk about!
Great idea. I really want to figure out how to have a middle ground between "ignore the presenter" and "talk for longer than you want". I've had some great conversations at posters, but my favorite was when a guy just walked by, read my betterposter-takeaway, asked me one drive-by question about something I hadn't considered to include in the study, and then walked away. Like a 1 minute interaction and it improved my research.
@@MikeMorrisonPhD Those are the greatest kinds of interactions!! Only if I could do that with most posters instead of accidentally being stuck in the first two...
@@juliexue3792 - Any ideas for encouraging it? It's probably a combination of creating new social norm, but also the design of the poster could facilitate that (by giving people walking by more to respond to without having to stop)?
@@MikeMorrisonPhD Ooh, it really feels like the encouraging need to come from conference organizers (maybe another way in organizing posters/presentations).
@@juliexue3792 - Working on it! Many conferences are open to this and want to help (and many encourage #betterposter already). What do you want to see them do as a presenter? Just push it from the poster guidelines page, or would you like to see something more?
Thanks for watching!! I really did try to listen to everybody's feedback on the first layout and read/do a bunch of additional research before this sequel...so far these new concepts and layouts are fairing even better than the first one!
As a scientist also concerned with how to present science, I would strongly advise to take this video with a grain a salt and refrain from using "betterposter" templates. Removing walls of text and using intelligible titles are indeed two key elements for making a great poster, but that's hardly a new idea. That's basic presentation skills - though I do agree many scientists still lack them. However, this video really confuses scientific presentation and YT/Twitter/etc. science when it comes to "challenge mode" and "next level" techniques. In scientific communication, we should precisely fight against some basic human instincts like oversimplification and cookie-cutter answers. The ideal poster should have a title and a picture that clearly present the context and the problem to anyone from the broad field of the conference, but it should absolutely not try to oversell their science like many "betterposters" I've seen do. The last ideas presented in the video, ie how to encourage people to walk around and get as much as possible of posters in 30s, would be particularly detrimental to science. In a poster session, you should not be "foraging" for new knowledge - if you do you will only get cookie-cutter ideas without scientific content. You should get a grasp of what kind of problems, methods, ideas people are using - which you obtain if people use understandable titles for example - but not necessarily focus on "solutions" or "results" obtained people obtain from them. In a typical poster session, most of the science is still a work in progress so you should absolutely NOT push new PhD students to oversimplify their work with some cute pictures to pretend they have a result. Then you should settle on a couple of posters that you are actually interested into and engage a discussion with the presenter to talk actual science and discuss their result in details. Yes, it's hard to do and talking to strangers is scary. But hey, being a scientist is a job you're paid for, no reason for it to be as nice and cosy as watching cute oversimplified YT videos. Certainly, presenting a select few clear-cut results like the existence of climate change is very easy to do with a single big image. But let's be realistic: with the same method 99% of posters just fall flat and look silly, for example if they simply have no conclusive result yet. Posters should be simple, light in text and readable. Not oversimplified in just one picturesque result.
With both scientific and professional practitioner's approach, I have to disagree with you. We have a terrible problem with people fully grasping various scientific concepts due to the jargon and conservative, more precisely, outdated ways of sharing and understanding knowledge. I am committed to science but when I see overly wordy posters, my human primitive side switches on and I seek colours, simplicity in first impressions and ability to grasp a piece of information fast. This has got nothing to do with oversimplification of the aspects of research. Human psychology dictates that we engage with colours, senses and visual aids more easily. Our primitive behaviours, regardless of how scientific we want to be, are such that we like engaging more simplistically first in something that catches our attention and then progressing to more complex ideas. The barcode is there to direct people to the more elaborated on source if they are interested. If you don't grab their attention initially, it doesn't really matter how sophisticated your poster is, does it? You mention it looks silly when it is simple, I say it is intelligent as it gets people's attention, which you need to discuss your science.
You're letting your idealism get in the way of human nature. What you call "cute oversimplified yt videos" is someone giving you insight into how human psychology works and what generates optimum efficiency. It sounds like maybe you haven't watched the first video in this series. The entire point of the ammo bar and the silent presenter section and the QR code is to give the viewers an option to go deep into the study. It's not about being nice and cosy and lazy. It's about using new scientific findings regarding human psychology to update the awful and ancient format of scientific posters. You're a scientist yes? Okay, the science is telling us that this is a much more effective way to communicate information. Do you want to follow the science or do you want to stick to the way that you personally think it should be?
Great suggestions, will try following them. More portrait ideas and template would be welcomed as in Europe that is much more common (in my experience)
Not a scientist - still thought this was really useful for thinking just about how I communicate at work for presentations, guidance docs, public communications, etc.
I really like your use of user experience as a guiding principle for poster design; I think most posters could definitely be improved through ruthless "Tuftian" editing. But I am left with some questions. I'm curious as to why you seem to insist that many scientists are in "browsing mode" at a poster session. From what I've witnessed, many of them (most?) map out which areas of concentration and posters they'd like to stop at ahead of time; they know that they have limited time and brain power (so...self-aware dummies?). I'm sure some of them would be very disappointed to arrive expecting to see some interesting figures, and instead being greeted by one huge chart, or worse yet, a QR code that just directs them to an online publication. I also wonder what your approach to online posters is. Having a QR code on an online poster is just redundant, and only including a few figures seems a bit spartan (given that most people can read extremely fast, and again have probably pre-scoped the poster offerings). I'm also a little concerned that your advice about aesthetics is pretty much "just make it eye-catching and fun." As a designer, my experience is that "eye-catching and fun" for a lot of people = abuse of fonts, colours, gestalt principles and just generally making something visually cluttered and distracting. I'd like to see scientist take more of an initiative in getting some education in design principles, rather than resorting to the "silver bullet" solution of a template.
I map out which posters I want to visit because poster sessions as they currently stand are worthless for browsing. I know that from years of experience trying to browse. However, I WISH I could browse. It takes way too darn long to figure out ahead of time which posters I need to stop at, so I miss a bunch that are very relevant. Plus, I get great ideas from tangential or unrelated areas of science, so I'd love to be able to glean information by walking through a poster session.
Mike Morrison is simply doing what good web designers have done over the past decade. Simplified user interfaces so that you can more efficiently navigate through the website while still being engaged. In this case, the main key take away is what many are interested in so that attracts them to the poster, where the presenter can blurb or they can get a QR code for in depth analysis later. Walls of text and lots of figures take lots of brain processing power. There's no need to waste it for a timed event where there's tens of posters to pass by. The presenter still has the ability to engage the user by going a bit more in depth with the material which is their main objective. Your criticisms about online posters are totally on point. But this Better Poster is designed specifically to tackle the unique issues that arise from in person conferences. Different approaches are necessary for Online.
@@JulieCrudele Hard agree from someone in health science research. This new format pioneered by Mike Morrison makes for much better science communication AND for a more enjoyable poster session experience for everyone. At no time have I wanted to read an entire manuscript in small font printed in poster format under the close scrutiny of the author. If it's research in my field (or as Julie notes, in another other interesting area) and the main finding presented in the #BetterPoster format is intriguing, I'll stop to ask questions. And in the critique above, Alex says that these design principles might make a poster visually cluttered and distracting...but there is nothing more visually cluttered than the traditional poster template. I'm a #BetterPoster acolyte after seeing it in action! Thank you Mike Morrison!!
I think what Mike would say is that what you're looking for is a paper, not a poster. Posters are designed for poster sessions, not to be the record of your research.
Is there an ETA on the virtual/online poster video? (Like, should I just start working on my poster now, or will there be a video released before my deadline giving me a valid excuse for prolonged procrastination?)
Amazing video! Thank you! It made me wonder about the relationship between marketing and science. As in many other fields in this period of information flood, using marketing in science might be inevitable but it should be carefully and wisely used
In most conferences the posters stay up for some days, so their content needs to work well when you are not there. Hence the content of the left panel needs to be self explanatory and the right panel's detail might easily be too arcane and disconnected for a viewer to interpret. In that case it is wasted space. And, while I can’t fault your logic, if all of most posters at a conference followed your strategy, the poster display would look very boring.
As for the 'boring' point: Which aspect creates that boring feeling for you? Like, all using one layout? Or something else? Otherwise: True. Different user context = different ideal design. Most of my recommendations are designed for when you're standing next to your poster. If it's gonna be left up on its own, it needs more explanatory text --- but not always MUCH more. I think somewhere around 1min of content is still ideal, even left up alone. But allowing data/figures to speak more words implicitly.
@@MikeMorrisonPhD Yes, I think if everyone uses a similar layout the overall effect will be a bit boring. Posters can be a highlight of a conference, and provide an opportunity for scientists to be visually creative.
Yeah this is one of the most important 'criticisms' IMHO. We want posters to be novel and creative to keep attendees engaged, and so the presenters feel free to let their creativity out. A couple things to consider: 0. Layout is just one aspect of a design that you can be creative with. 1. We were essentially mandating a single layout BEFORE #betterposter. (title/authors on top, sections with IMRAD). 2. Below the poster layout, there is a scanning-order layout (Z-pattern, F-pattern) that follows natural eye movements. That's why most websites can be highly creative, but have essentially the same layout. So there's a balance here between using what works layout-wise, giving people reliable options, and allowing for lots of creativity. I'm not sure where that balance is, especially since scientists are generally so untrained at design that their 'default' is to completely clutter all the space if given free reign. So far I try to 50/50 my efforts between teaching people the underlying principles and coming up with 'tested' designs. Open to ideas!
@@MikeMorrisonPhD functional. I hate the little flaps that you have to squeeze harder to get the flow started thereby blasting one end of my hot dog with too much catsup and when you let off to slow down the flow, it stops and then you have to squeeze too hard again blasting the middle of the dog with too much catsup. More importantly, I followed your tips in this vid for a poster session I just did. I won third place. I don't think I would have placed at all had I not used the design elements you cover here. There were ideas there far better than mine, but my content was so easily consumable and my center image was amusing and relevant. Renaming it to "If haters gonna hate, hate effectively" also garnered a good bit of buzz too.
Great #betterposter Generation 2 video and accompanying PPT. Now with many/most conferences being online, do the same principles of User Experience Design still hold? For example, now no time pressure or interaction costs?
I try this and designed a nice poster for a conference, but my supervisors didn't like it, they say that if something has worked for 30 years it means is proof as a method of doing things, I was really sad and I have to redo my poster. I like the idea, but it seems old professors won't let it go through.
Great video but why is it so hard to find anyone explaining how to actually make the poster? (using powerpoint or google slides) I dont know what CRAN is or github so i have no idea how to use those templates? Am i just dumb or missing something?
Good content and suggestions. Ironically, though, it's a video about avoiding loading people with too much information at once, and it's 20 minutes long and loads you with information. Shorter snippets are more digestible by this generation of scientists.
My last several videos have been 1min RUclips shorts! I'm switching to short snippets exclusively for a little while for exactly this reason. But, I'll probably do a few long form videos still, if only to compile the shorts, because sometimes my videos are shown in classrooms or sent to get people (i.e., conferences) up to speed on a given topic. For that, one link is easier than 10.
Fixed! After years of steady, reliable, free hosting...OSF finally had a little quirk but they resolved it super fast. Templates are up again at the usual link! (Also thanks for letting me know!)
With all due respect, I disagree with the extent to which a poster needs to simplify/de-clutter to become "better" at delivering the material. A good title already gives those at the session an idea whether one wants to hear more about the idea or not. Aren't we involuntarily gaining skills to get an idea from small excerpts from an overabundance of information being published? Sifting through e-alerts by journals/bioRxiv bombarding the email every week? anyone?
It’s a poster, not a paper. It’s a calling card for further digging into the research if they want to. Posters should have always been this way…scientists are very, very bad at communication and I think it’s about time poorly devised methodologies like classic posters disappeared.
The part about cognitive load is significant. A poster session isn't a reading room. You shouldn't need to carry a magnifying glass to following the argument in text or through data.
You should be able to make all these layouts in PowerPoint, but these days I design all my posters in Figma. If you're up for doing a tiny bit of learning a new interface to really level-up all your poster and presentation designs, go download Figma and watch a tutorial. Figma is free, very easy to learn, and it'll really help you naturally create better graphics! Figma is what most design professionals start designs in, and you can too! Plus anything you create in Figma can usually be copy-pasted into Powerpoint if you want to. Does that help?
Do you feel there should be two versions of a poster - the one for the conference (created as recommended in the video) and one for the deposit online or in conference proceedings that has more written detail?
Great question! A dedicated video on virtual/online posters is next, but once we get back to physical conferences, I think you're probably right that we'll want multiple formats. And the short answer is that in some fields you already have a conference abstract you can link to for more detail, which helps. Long-term, I think the ideal is to provide a linked chain of increasing detail, so it's easy for people to start with an appetizer, and get more and more detail as soon as they want it (but not be distracted with it when they don't want that yet). This will involve creating deeper formats, but also (more controversially), shallower formats. But keeping them all linked to each other. Sorry I know that's vague. Basically: Yes exactly what you said, and I'm going to try to come up with some illustrations/examples of this in the next video haha.
@@MikeMorrisonPhD Awesome! I look forward to that video. I've been doing that with presentations (having clean, visual designs for the live session and then providing a more wordy detailed version so that people viewing the "slides" later have more context than just a big image on a slide). I'd love to see your take on how to best do this for posters! Thanks!
@@123pow btw you can use the notes section in PowerPoint to put the additional info there and leave the actual slides as they are. And give people a .pdf with the "slides + notes" printout.
15:57 Poster layout: Hero figure
16:07 Poster layout: The presenter
17:27 Real life example 1
17:49 Real life example 2
19:19 Golden rules
Clearly you also understand the value of UX Design haha. Pinned and thank you!
My lab uses this video as a resource for anyone creating a poster... I'm about to make my very first poster to present and this was SO HELPFUL. THANK YOU!!!
“Daydrinking which some people call networking” truer words have never been spoken
Favorite part of the video
🏆 From a long-time communications designer - well done, sir!! A perfect example of watchable, well-paced storytelling that communicates a sh*t ton of value! Have you discussed your video-making style and process somewhere?
Me at first: Do you expect me to listen to your 20-min rant?
20 mins later: I can't wait for my next poster session!
lol. Sorry about that. These #betterposter cartoons are more like short films at this point. And I was trying so hard to address all the feedback over the last year since the first one that I wanted a catchall video I could send to holdouts. I will endeavor to make all videos shorter from now on!
speed 1.5x and skip through it works well especially after looking at the previous one:).
Does look useful for our grad students to set expectations and help them, quicker than giving the presentation ourselves.
@@MikeMorrisonPhD DO NOT make this shorter! Your videos are fun, informative, and entertaining. I will be using this in my class this spring to teach senior undergraduates about poster design. I am interested in what they come up with. Thanks for doing this.
@@MikeMorrisonPhD we love you, great job, you have changed the world ❤️❤️❤️❤️
I can't believe I just spent 40 minutes watching both better poster video! It's 4:50 am! and I have a poster presentation due in 9 days.
It was an eye-opener. No one taught me before how to create more visually appealing and easy-to-grasp posters. We are always running after full of text/pictures posters and those are a bit too overwhelming even for the audience with a scientific background, let alone the general public.
We really need people like you in the scientific community, I hope you will continue to do the same thing with conference presentations. Thank you!
#1 thing I'd say that helps break the mold in a constructive way for conference presentations: Don't be afraid to have some humor in your presentation. It is SO appreciated by the audience. We don't have to pretend to be unsmiling uncaring white labcoats. You'll notice this in people who've done a lot of presentations... Yet.I rarely see it said outloud.
Many thanks, these two videos gave me plenty of input to tackle my first poster. I love graphic design and writing music so I'm happy that your scientific research is proving value in art and how it crosses over into STEM.
Sure! If you study graphic design, then you know how to predict with good accuracy where people will look on your design, and the order that people will look in. In that way, art IS science at some point. Hope this helped! Would love to see what you come up with!
Fantastic! Finally, some great guidance on how people consume information translated into posters! I've shared both videos widely! Now if we can just work on how all this great research and information gets transmitted to those who need it to make better decisions! Thanks Dr. Mike!
I think most poster presenters are students, and they are constantly seeking PIs approval to do something creative. I really appreciate your compelling story, and references I hope this will change the perspectives of many PIs, and will lead to more effective communication of science.
Yeah there are some wonderful and supportive PIs, but also some that are serious roadblocks. What kills me is, a lot of times, their objections aren't scientific or evidence-based. They're just afraid of what their colleagues wold think of them if they break with tradition. It's like they have a grown-up version of the fear and conformity a lot of grad students are stifled by. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Hopefully if those of us with creative freedom can keep pushing envelope hard enough, we'll break that pressure eventually with something better.
@@MikeMorrisonPhD may I have your email please?
Oh my gosh. Loved that. I feel totally inspired! Your video was linked by the Western Institute of Nursing, a regional research organization for nursing and other health care professions. I'm excited to make a better poster for this year's conference :)
I am a doctoral student in Learning, Design, and Technology with a Master's focused on Instructional Design and Online Learning, 20+ year's experience in both adult literacy learning and professional development presentation, and another master's in Education. All 3 of these videos are AWESOME. I have subscribed, already shared #betterposter Part 1 with my ID research group & Professor, and plan to share ALL of your videos with a BUNCH of other conference organizers and Instructional Designers. Thank you for your contribution to Science, academic conferences, and Grad student sanity.
Absolutely mind-blowing content! Both the videos are truly on the Next Level.
Haha thank you! Have fun with your poster!!
Lmao this was really great and super helpful, and your voice and the way you communicate is really entertaining and informative. Reminds me a little of the guy who voiced the MC from SAO abridged. I'll definitely share this with people I know that would like this
Ngl this is not where I thought i would see my first SAOa reference but still a very welcome and funny comment 😂😅
"Which dummy calls 'networking.'" LOL. Way to call me out.
not me watching this the night before a poster session 🙃 from a fellow spartan, thank you for the insights!
Go green! And snap a photo of the poster that moves your emotions the most!
Absolutely engaged in this video from the beginning! I was dreading that my prof posted two 20 minutes videos... however, I loved them! My psychology self loved the behavior psych information in this--and the weirdness!
This is super helpful and fun to watch. I was feeling uneasy about which way to go but ready to surprise and delight! Thanks Mike!
Wow! This was amazing. I work in learning services and am regularly asked to critique student posters or teach them how to create posters. I will be bringing a new lens to that work. Thank you so much!
Flawless, and a true joy to watch!!! THANK YOU
Thanks for watching! Have fun with your poster!
Making my first research e-poster for my first research paper for a scientific conference! and you are a saviour!! I guess things will be a bit different with 'e-posters+ video' format now in the pandemic era?
By the way… we got in the ‘best 50!’ Thanks to you…
Mike could talk about grass growing and I would watch. SO entertaining! (And informative.)
Haha thanks Joel! The foraging theory video talks about bushes if you want to test your limit!
Wish I had more poster videos to watch. The others aren't as persuasive as you. Hope to see more, subbed!
OMG this is the video I needed, working on my first academic poster. Thank you.
Have fun! One final tip: Attention follows contrast. If you want people to look at your poster, make it look different from the other posters.
Your site was recommended by the IHI Forum. I will make my poster using one of your templates. See you in December in Florida.
Using this video to teach students in my undergraduate technical writing course! Thank you!
... scientists not thinking about the posters and takking into account new findings about attention and learning is an equivalent of ignoring some key findings in chemistry/physics/math.
What I wanted to say, is thanks for a wonderful video.
💯I've tried to make that point for years and never said it as clearly as you just did. EXACTLY.
Especially, some people have been like "we can't exploit emotion in design we're scientists. Science is serious!" and I'm like "Um. Emotion is how you get people to actually remember things, according to science. So you're crippling the knowledge transfer of your presentation by ignoring half your audiences' brain just based your feeling of disgust. Sounds kind of unscientific to me?"
And don't get me started on professors not allowing their students to experiment with their posters. Isn't experimenting and learning their whole job?
Anyway sorry for rant but you made a very good point I've never gotten to talk about!
Brilliant! Using "Next Level" for a Dissertation of Distinction poster. Thanks!
One of the rare occasions where I spent 20 minut watch a video on RUclips
Well Done!! I laughed a lot with the first video and this one =) more importantly I hope my posters are BETTER this year!!
simply amazed and will use in an upcoming poster in April. Thank you.
This is incredible! It took guts to challenge the status quo; thank you! This is exactly what the scientific community needs.
This video helped me make a great poster for my school, Thank you!
Organising a virtual conference and will definitely be recommending this video (and referencing Mike) in the guidelines!
Ur presentation is extraordinary
thanks!
it really catches your eyes. I like the new design.
This is phenomenal!!!!!!🤯
I wish if there's a similar video teaching us how to more efficiently interact with posters/presenters in a poster session!
Great idea. I really want to figure out how to have a middle ground between "ignore the presenter" and "talk for longer than you want". I've had some great conversations at posters, but my favorite was when a guy just walked by, read my betterposter-takeaway, asked me one drive-by question about something I hadn't considered to include in the study, and then walked away. Like a 1 minute interaction and it improved my research.
@@MikeMorrisonPhD Those are the greatest kinds of interactions!! Only if I could do that with most posters instead of accidentally being stuck in the first two...
@@juliexue3792 - Any ideas for encouraging it? It's probably a combination of creating new social norm, but also the design of the poster could facilitate that (by giving people walking by more to respond to without having to stop)?
@@MikeMorrisonPhD Ooh, it really feels like the encouraging need to come from conference organizers (maybe another way in organizing posters/presentations).
@@juliexue3792 - Working on it! Many conferences are open to this and want to help (and many encourage #betterposter already). What do you want to see them do as a presenter? Just push it from the poster guidelines page, or would you like to see something more?
great Job!! thanks for sharing !!!!
Thanks for watching!! I really did try to listen to everybody's feedback on the first layout and read/do a bunch of additional research before this sequel...so far these new concepts and layouts are fairing even better than the first one!
I giggled so hard at the "citation".
As a scientist also concerned with how to present science, I would strongly advise to take this video with a grain a salt and refrain from using "betterposter" templates.
Removing walls of text and using intelligible titles are indeed two key elements for making a great poster, but that's hardly a new idea. That's basic presentation skills - though I do agree many scientists still lack them.
However, this video really confuses scientific presentation and YT/Twitter/etc. science when it comes to "challenge mode" and "next level" techniques. In scientific communication, we should precisely fight against some basic human instincts like oversimplification and cookie-cutter answers. The ideal poster should have a title and a picture that clearly present the context and the problem to anyone from the broad field of the conference, but it should absolutely not try to oversell their science like many "betterposters" I've seen do.
The last ideas presented in the video, ie how to encourage people to walk around and get as much as possible of posters in 30s, would be particularly detrimental to science. In a poster session, you should not be "foraging" for new knowledge - if you do you will only get cookie-cutter ideas without scientific content. You should get a grasp of what kind of problems, methods, ideas people are using - which you obtain if people use understandable titles for example - but not necessarily focus on "solutions" or "results" obtained people obtain from them. In a typical poster session, most of the science is still a work in progress so you should absolutely NOT push new PhD students to oversimplify their work with some cute pictures to pretend they have a result.
Then you should settle on a couple of posters that you are actually interested into and engage a discussion with the presenter to talk actual science and discuss their result in details. Yes, it's hard to do and talking to strangers is scary. But hey, being a scientist is a job you're paid for, no reason for it to be as nice and cosy as watching cute oversimplified YT videos.
Certainly, presenting a select few clear-cut results like the existence of climate change is very easy to do with a single big image. But let's be realistic: with the same method 99% of posters just fall flat and look silly, for example if they simply have no conclusive result yet. Posters should be simple, light in text and readable. Not oversimplified in just one picturesque result.
With both scientific and professional practitioner's approach, I have to disagree with you. We have a terrible problem with people fully grasping various scientific concepts due to the jargon and conservative, more precisely, outdated ways of sharing and understanding knowledge. I am committed to science but when I see overly wordy posters, my human primitive side switches on and I seek colours, simplicity in first impressions and ability to grasp a piece of information fast. This has got nothing to do with oversimplification of the aspects of research.
Human psychology dictates that we engage with colours, senses and visual aids more easily. Our primitive behaviours, regardless of how scientific we want to be, are such that we like engaging more simplistically first in something that catches our attention and then progressing to more complex ideas. The barcode is there to direct people to the more elaborated on source if they are interested. If you don't grab their attention initially, it doesn't really matter how sophisticated your poster is, does it? You mention it looks silly when it is simple, I say it is intelligent as it gets people's attention, which you need to discuss your science.
You're letting your idealism get in the way of human nature. What you call "cute oversimplified yt videos" is someone giving you insight into how human psychology works and what generates optimum efficiency. It sounds like maybe you haven't watched the first video in this series. The entire point of the ammo bar and the silent presenter section and the QR code is to give the viewers an option to go deep into the study. It's not about being nice and cosy and lazy. It's about using new scientific findings regarding human psychology to update the awful and ancient format of scientific posters. You're a scientist yes? Okay, the science is telling us that this is a much more effective way to communicate information. Do you want to follow the science or do you want to stick to the way that you personally think it should be?
Great suggestions, will try following them. More portrait ideas and template would be welcomed as in Europe that is much more common (in my experience)
Great material, I really hope that one day people in academia will be open to these new type of designs.
Applicable across topics. Like!!
Not a scientist - still thought this was really useful for thinking just about how I communicate at work for presentations, guidance docs, public communications, etc.
This video/content was helpful.
I really like your use of user experience as a guiding principle for poster design; I think most posters could definitely be improved through ruthless "Tuftian" editing. But I am left with some questions. I'm curious as to why you seem to insist that many scientists are in "browsing mode" at a poster session. From what I've witnessed, many of them (most?) map out which areas of concentration and posters they'd like to stop at ahead of time; they know that they have limited time and brain power (so...self-aware dummies?). I'm sure some of them would be very disappointed to arrive expecting to see some interesting figures, and instead being greeted by one huge chart, or worse yet, a QR code that just directs them to an online publication. I also wonder what your approach to online posters is. Having a QR code on an online poster is just redundant, and only including a few figures seems a bit spartan (given that most people can read extremely fast, and again have probably pre-scoped the poster offerings). I'm also a little concerned that your advice about aesthetics is pretty much "just make it eye-catching and fun." As a designer, my experience is that "eye-catching and fun" for a lot of people = abuse of fonts, colours, gestalt principles and just generally making something visually cluttered and distracting. I'd like to see scientist take more of an initiative in getting some education in design principles, rather than resorting to the "silver bullet" solution of a template.
Agree. Proposed posters of Mike Morrison, are not a better RESEARCH posters. It is like a "Twitter science".
I map out which posters I want to visit because poster sessions as they currently stand are worthless for browsing. I know that from years of experience trying to browse. However, I WISH I could browse. It takes way too darn long to figure out ahead of time which posters I need to stop at, so I miss a bunch that are very relevant. Plus, I get great ideas from tangential or unrelated areas of science, so I'd love to be able to glean information by walking through a poster session.
Mike Morrison is simply doing what good web designers have done over the past decade. Simplified user interfaces so that you can more efficiently navigate through the website while still being engaged. In this case, the main key take away is what many are interested in so that attracts them to the poster, where the presenter can blurb or they can get a QR code for in depth analysis later.
Walls of text and lots of figures take lots of brain processing power. There's no need to waste it for a timed event where there's tens of posters to pass by. The presenter still has the ability to engage the user by going a bit more in depth with the material which is their main objective.
Your criticisms about online posters are totally on point. But this Better Poster is designed specifically to tackle the unique issues that arise from in person conferences. Different approaches are necessary for Online.
@@JulieCrudele Hard agree from someone in health science research. This new format pioneered by Mike Morrison makes for much better science communication AND for a more enjoyable poster session experience for everyone. At no time have I wanted to read an entire manuscript in small font printed in poster format under the close scrutiny of the author. If it's research in my field (or as Julie notes, in another other interesting area) and the main finding presented in the #BetterPoster format is intriguing, I'll stop to ask questions. And in the critique above, Alex says that these design principles might make a poster visually cluttered and distracting...but there is nothing more visually cluttered than the traditional poster template. I'm a #BetterPoster acolyte after seeing it in action! Thank you Mike Morrison!!
I think what Mike would say is that what you're looking for is a paper, not a poster. Posters are designed for poster sessions, not to be the record of your research.
Good stuff, Mike. LOL. Are you a fellow Spartan? Go Green, my dude. 💚
Haha yes I am! Go white!
Is there an ETA on the virtual/online poster video? (Like, should I just start working on my poster now, or will there be a video released before my deadline giving me a valid excuse for prolonged procrastination?)
When is the TED talk :D This was great and my posters will change from now on. Thank you so much!
Love this so much! Can't wait to try it out at my next conference!
Amazing video! Thank you! It made me wonder about the relationship between marketing and science. As in many other fields in this period of information flood, using marketing in science might be inevitable but it should be carefully and wisely used
This is real innovation
Brilliant
What are your thoughts on virtual posters where the viewer has more than 10 secs to view? Would you still use the same #betterposter format?
I loved your video!!!
Very interesting to watch, even if you don't make scientific posters.
In most conferences the posters stay up for some days, so their content needs to work well when you are not there. Hence the content of the left panel needs to be self explanatory and the right panel's detail might easily be too arcane and disconnected for a viewer to interpret. In that case it is wasted space. And, while I can’t fault your logic, if all of most posters at a conference followed your strategy, the poster display would look very boring.
As for the 'boring' point: Which aspect creates that boring feeling for you? Like, all using one layout? Or something else?
Otherwise: True. Different user context = different ideal design. Most of my recommendations are designed for when you're standing next to your poster. If it's gonna be left up on its own, it needs more explanatory text --- but not always MUCH more. I think somewhere around 1min of content is still ideal, even left up alone. But allowing data/figures to speak more words implicitly.
@@MikeMorrisonPhD Yes, I think if everyone uses a similar layout the overall effect will be a bit boring. Posters can be a highlight of a conference, and provide an opportunity for scientists to be visually creative.
Yeah this is one of the most important 'criticisms' IMHO. We want posters to be novel and creative to keep attendees engaged, and so the presenters feel free to let their creativity out.
A couple things to consider:
0. Layout is just one aspect of a design that you can be creative with.
1. We were essentially mandating a single layout BEFORE #betterposter. (title/authors on top, sections with IMRAD).
2. Below the poster layout, there is a scanning-order layout (Z-pattern, F-pattern) that follows natural eye movements. That's why most websites can be highly creative, but have essentially the same layout.
So there's a balance here between using what works layout-wise, giving people reliable options, and allowing for lots of creativity.
I'm not sure where that balance is, especially since scientists are generally so untrained at design that their 'default' is to completely clutter all the space if given free reign. So far I try to 50/50 my efforts between teaching people the underlying principles and coming up with 'tested' designs. Open to ideas!
Hi there and thank you. Do you also have ideas for videos in portrait format? Thanks in advance.
okay, was partly / mainly answered in the text.
Check out the Youth Science Canada bifold layout for portrait inspiration too!
ruclips.net/video/MxxDG8OE92g/видео.html
Thank you so much, sir! I hope all goes well for you!
Excellent content, congratulations.
UX is a great way to take this so we are equipped to iterate
Exactly! I was hoping this would help install an upward trajectory to poster design, instead of the flat line it's been for 2 decades.
Very good.
I'm designing my first academic poster. I hope to design sth nice.
I would add a description to the QR code, that people will understand what the code does.
Great suggestion. Gotta create a good Link Promise!
www.nngroup.com/articles/link-promise/
catsup with lids on the bottom absolutely suck, but otherwise everything here is bang on. :)
Haha for functional reasons or are you just a die-hard glassist? 😆 (it does taste better in glass...)
@@MikeMorrisonPhD functional. I hate the little flaps that you have to squeeze harder to get the flow started thereby blasting one end of my hot dog with too much catsup and when you let off to slow down the flow, it stops and then you have to squeeze too hard again blasting the middle of the dog with too much catsup.
More importantly, I followed your tips in this vid for a poster session I just did. I won third place. I don't think I would have placed at all had I not used the design elements you cover here. There were ideas there far better than mine, but my content was so easily consumable and my center image was amusing and relevant. Renaming it to "If haters gonna hate, hate effectively" also garnered a good bit of buzz too.
You are master!
this looks great. question where should the qr code take you.
You're idea is the best thing that has happened to conferences potentially ever.
Great #betterposter Generation 2 video and accompanying PPT. Now with many/most conferences being online, do the same principles of User Experience Design still hold? For example, now no time pressure or interaction costs?
This was phenomenally done.
Waaaw 👏👏👏👏
I try this and designed a nice poster for a conference, but my supervisors didn't like it, they say that if something has worked for 30 years it means is proof as a method of doing things, I was really sad and I have to redo my poster. I like the idea, but it seems old professors won't let it go through.
Great, but it's also important to make sure stuff is spelled right (balloons) and to spell out stuff like BDNF.
Great video but why is it so hard to find anyone explaining how to actually make the poster? (using powerpoint or google slides) I dont know what CRAN is or github so i have no idea how to use those templates? Am i just dumb or missing something?
very good
Very nice!
wow awesome
Dear Mike, the poster templates are unavailable on the link provided. can you please share them again?
Woohoo!! Awesome!! One day I hope to say goodbye to the wall of text forever 😍
Good content and suggestions. Ironically, though, it's a video about avoiding loading people with too much information at once, and it's 20 minutes long and loads you with information. Shorter snippets are more digestible by this generation of scientists.
My last several videos have been 1min RUclips shorts! I'm switching to short snippets exclusively for a little while for exactly this reason.
But, I'll probably do a few long form videos still, if only to compile the shorts, because sometimes my videos are shown in classrooms or sent to get people (i.e., conferences) up to speed on a given topic. For that, one link is easier than 10.
17:06 that’s what they do in Louvre, they just queue to see Mona Lisa once and go home XD
Did you remove the templates? I'm getting a "Page not found" error.
Fixed! After years of steady, reliable, free hosting...OSF finally had a little quirk but they resolved it super fast. Templates are up again at the usual link! (Also thanks for letting me know!)
Only 30 comments!?!?!?! It's like finding an oasis in the desert! Maybe it's the happiest day of your life but there's no one else to share it with.
What software do you need to open the template?
Just powerpoint!
With all due respect, I disagree with the extent to which a poster needs to simplify/de-clutter to become "better" at delivering the material. A good title already gives those at the session an idea whether one wants to hear more about the idea or not. Aren't we involuntarily gaining skills to get an idea from small excerpts from an overabundance of information being published? Sifting through e-alerts by journals/bioRxiv bombarding the email every week? anyone?
It’s a poster, not a paper. It’s a calling card for further digging into the research if they want to. Posters should have always been this way…scientists are very, very bad at communication and I think it’s about time poorly devised methodologies like classic posters disappeared.
The part about cognitive load is significant. A poster session isn't a reading room. You shouldn't need to carry a magnifying glass to following the argument in text or through data.
Ketchup bottles that are designed to be stored upside down can be incredibly frustrating. I detest them!
Honestly still struggling to understand this perspective; have seen it a couple times. What makes them frustrating? I have nothing but love for them.
I will bet that this approach also works for powerpoint teaching slides: less big paragraphs
In terms of PPT teaching slides things like this have been the recommendation since the adoption of PPT by MS.
New poster session = Scrolling Facebook for scientists.
Hi Mike, are any of your studies out yet by any chance? I would love something to nail to the proverbial door on this subject!
Pleaseeee, can you be my teacher at my PhD program???? UwU
Your 2 videos about scientific posters design are revolutionary. Spread the message!
In your super-fast reality, why is the video 20 minutes? Any way to shorten it?
4:52 it was super funny
What do you use to make these posters and poster layouts?
You should be able to make all these layouts in PowerPoint, but these days I design all my posters in Figma. If you're up for doing a tiny bit of learning a new interface to really level-up all your poster and presentation designs, go download Figma and watch a tutorial. Figma is free, very easy to learn, and it'll really help you naturally create better graphics! Figma is what most design professionals start designs in, and you can too! Plus anything you create in Figma can usually be copy-pasted into Powerpoint if you want to. Does that help?
Do you feel there should be two versions of a poster - the one for the conference (created as recommended in the video) and one for the deposit online or in conference proceedings that has more written detail?
Great question! A dedicated video on virtual/online posters is next, but once we get back to physical conferences, I think you're probably right that we'll want multiple formats.
And the short answer is that in some fields you already have a conference abstract you can link to for more detail, which helps.
Long-term, I think the ideal is to provide a linked chain of increasing detail, so it's easy for people to start with an appetizer, and get more and more detail as soon as they want it (but not be distracted with it when they don't want that yet).
This will involve creating deeper formats, but also (more controversially), shallower formats. But keeping them all linked to each other. Sorry I know that's vague. Basically: Yes exactly what you said, and I'm going to try to come up with some illustrations/examples of this in the next video haha.
@@MikeMorrisonPhD Awesome! I look forward to that video. I've been doing that with presentations (having clean, visual designs for the live session and then providing a more wordy detailed version so that people viewing the "slides" later have more context than just a big image on a slide). I'd love to see your take on how to best do this for posters! Thanks!
@@123pow btw you can use the notes section in PowerPoint to put the additional info there and leave the actual slides as they are. And give people a .pdf with the "slides + notes" printout.
What software did you use to create this video?
te amooooooooooooooooooooooooo
How do we download the templets as PowerPoint slides?
I figured it out. The trick is to export them from Keynote.
Right here! Should be in PPT already.
osf.io/6ua4k
Basically asking scientists to be artists lol "Stem" - "Steam"