Aggregating Presentation Design Knowledge to Improve Idea Transfer

We propose an innovative approach that will overcome the primary challenges to the rapid and accurate presentation of ideas, analyses, and plans. At the core of the proposed PresentWell system is an authoring aid designed to address the typical presenter’s lack of competency in communication, information design, visualization, and pedagogy. Through a natural human-system dialog, PresentWell will incrementally elicit the user’s intent as well as important contextual information and use this information to guide the user in the selection and application of presentation design principles and patterns that are founded in cognitive theory and supported by empirical evidence. Our Phase I effort validated (through an experiment involving 144 participants) that presenters employing such an authoring aid can efficiently produce briefing materials that are substantially more effective at transferring knowledge than presentations developed by unaided presenters. The proposed Phase II effort will result in a fully functioning presentation authoring aid that will effectively address the US military’s (and other organization’s) need for rapid and accurate knowledge transfer. In addition, we will establish an evidence-based framework (built on low-cost online mini-experiments) that will supply the empirical foundations for PresentWell’s advice.