Visual Displays

This week, I wanted to offer you some more practical tips and ideas for creating and using visuals in your grant applications. Visual displays can be used to help you analyze your results and clarify your thinking, some may help your reader understand your results, and some can do both. Below I discuss some different visual display options.


Matrices
Matrices can serve as an excellent tool for organizing and cross-analyzing information. I've seen them used in education research proposals where the researcher communicated the tasks, outcomes, and assessment plans by research goal. They're also great for showing time lines in a proposal and outlining due dates for key deliverables. These sort of matrices can help both the PI and the reviewer understand the project and its organization. However, matrices lose their effectiveness when they are too big, and include so much information that the reader can't get a gist of what it means from looking at it briefly. Also, if a matrix gets too complex (e.g., it is trying to cross analyze more than two categories), the reader can get lost in it and at that point a visual display does more harm than good.

Comparative images
I have seen some quite compelling comparative images in proposals. When PIs have lab results that are self-evident and they can show a picture with their test results next to the control, this can be powerful for the reader. Of course, this means that the images must have a clear contrast for them to be striking for the reviewer. Also, consider the knowledge base that interpreting your images will require. If you have mass spectrometer results, but your review panel includes lay people, you may want to reconsider or you may need to include a bit more explanation to allow all of your readers to understand why the images are so remarkable.

Conceptual model
One of the first challenges that confront a grant reviewer when reading a proposal is to get an overall sense of what the PI wants to do. The research project is often complex and can be challenging to understand how it all fits together even for someone in the same field. A conceptual model for the project included early on in a proposal can offer the reader a tool for making sense of your project visually as well as through prose. Basically, a conceptual model is a visual representation of your project and it's goals; think of it as a map of your plan that will give your reader a big picture before they start digging into the nitty gritty. Using a conceptual model, you can show how your research goals, aims, and/or hypotheses fit together and give a sense of the results you expect as well as their impact.

Decision model
I've always been captivated by "choose your own adventure" books. As a kid, I was terrible at them and my character always died right away, but I still loved the idea. Even today, I'm always struck by how many problems or projects can be illustrated using a choose your own adventure style. A decision model is similar to this concept in that it is a flow chart that shows where and how you will choose the path of your research project. When you want to show that even though there are undecideds within your project, you will achieve important results and meet your goals regardless of the path, decision models can help you do that. Of course, a pitfall is that in using a decision model, you are bringing attention to the unknowns in your project, and depending on your plan and how comprehensive your back-up plan is, you could feasibly cast doubt in the minds of your reviewers, so use decision models carefully.

Resources:
Effective Visual Design in Proposal Writing - Allegra Johnston
The Incorporation of Visuals into Grant Proposals - Michigan State University