What is the best way to present numbers?6 tips for better conference presenting

A couple of weeks ago I was at a conference in Lisbon and spent five days listening to some very smart people share some really valuable information (see my summary of new findings in mobile market research). However, many of the presentations at the conference were rendered less impactful because of the way the presenters showed numbers. There are some easy ways to make numbers more accessible and impactful, and in this post I share a few of them. Note, this post does not focus on data visualisation – that will be another post. This post looks specifically at six easy steps you can take to ensure that the numbers you display can help tell the story, increase engagement, promote understanding, and make action more likely. 1) Use Fewer Numbers The first tip is to simply use fewer numbers. Imagine that you had to pay 5 dollars for every number you included in your presentation; you would soon cut back the quantity of numbers. The key question to ask is whether each specific number says something useful. If it doesn’t, drop it from the presentation (even if it stays in the background data, notes etc.) Instead of showing the top ten, […]

Major update on mobile market research

For a few years there have been relatively few new findings about mobile market research. We have seen the share of online surveys completed via mobile increasing and we have seen the number of mobile only studies (studies that require a smartphone, for example location-based, in-the-moment and smartphone ethnography) increasing. But the overall picture has remained fairly constant in terms of advice and practice. However, the picture has now changed. Last week saw five days of short courses and presentations in Lisbon, Portugal at the ESRA Conference (European Survey Research Association). There were over 700 presentations and most of the leading names in survey, web, and mobile research were present (including: Don Dillman, Mick Couper, Google’s Mario Callegaro, SurveyMonkey’s Sarah Cho, Edith de Leeuw, Roger Tourangeau, GfK’s Randall Thomas & Frances Barlas, and my colleague Sue York). There were more than 20 presentations particularly relevant to mobile market research – making it one of the largest collections of reports and findings from experiments reported anywhere. In this post I set out my key takeaways from the ESRA Conference in terms of mobile market research. But, I may update this post when I get access to all of the presentations and […]