Using Props to Generate Interest in Your Research

I've noticed that when I'm explaining something to my toddler, he's paying attention to me about 60% of the time. If I'm reading him a book or showing him pictures, that may go up to 80%. And, if I have a thing to show him that he can touch, I've got him 100% of the time. Now, not to compare your colleagues or audiences to my three-year old, but I've found the same principle of hear vs. see vs. show works with adults.

Yet, like with anything, using a prop carelessly can be distracting from you and the content of your presentation, so use them wisely. The best use of a prop that I ever heard of was an engineer who had built a mechanism that made telescopes more powerful.  The piece he built was small and relatively inexpensive, and he kept one with him at all times, and whenever he was describing his research, he would retrieve his invention to show people what he did. This was very effective in helping secure funding when those who would fund him could actually see the results of his previous work.

Although most researchers are not able to keep the product of their research in their pocket,  many are still able to use props effectively. Before are some examples.

Using props to grab attention
At TED 2009, Bill Gates released a jar of mosquitoes into the crowd as an attention grabber in his talk on the importance of eliminating malaria in poor countries. This stunt did a couple of things for Gates. First, it got everyone's attention. Folks laughed and leaned in to see if they could make out the mosquitoes. Second, it made Gates' presentation go viral. TED participants were tweeting and it wasn't long before Fox and NBC were broadcasting the news. See the video

Using props as a metaphor
As I've described before, a metaphor can be a fantastic way to get your message across. Using props in that metaphor can make it that much more powerful.  TED Speaker, Amanda Palmer, used metaphorical props in her 2013 talk on the art of asking; Palmer begins her talk standing on a box, holding a flower, demonstrating her previous street performer gig. When someone put money in her hat, she "handed them a flower and some intense eye contact." She described how for many people, it seemed that no one but her had seen them and that it seemed like a fair trade - a dollar for a shared moment of acknowledgement. She then related that to her larger point: that fans shouldn't be made to pay for music and instead they should just be asked to support artists they like financially. Palmer's band demonstrated this principle when they raised 1.2 million in donations after asking on their website. To end her presentation, Palmer returns to her metaphor and props by offering the crowd a flower, saying "why don't we let people pay for music? Thank you," and throwing the flower into the crowd.

Using props to teach
I'm not sure if this is true today, but I remember most of my science classrooms in high school would have model skeletons or molecules sitting in the corner until we got to that unit in Science class. My drama teacher had a model of the Rose Theatre (the first theatre to perform Shakespeare's plays) to give us a sense of the environment in which those plays were performed. The fact that I can still remember the name of that theatre says something about the power of using props to teach.

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, in her well-known talk, "A Stroke of Insight," described her experience as a brain researcher having a stroke. Before walking the audience through that experience, Dr. Jill spent time explaining to the audience how the left and right sides of the brain worked. To aid in this, she brought out a real human brain. Aside from grossing out the audience a bit and grabbing their attention, Dr. Jill taught the audience how the brain was structured and what the different pieces did. See the video.

Resources:
Bill Gates' TED Talk
Amanda Palmer's TED Talk
Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor's TED Talk
Ten Tips for Using Props in a Presentation - blog