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Whoa cool! I'm gonna install that extension for Obsidian. May give us some ideas on how the UX should work. How do you find the UX of embedding sections of the PDF via the plugin? Intuitive or clunky?

Well said! That's the dream of all science communicators summarized, I think.

lol I'm happy the thumbnail alone got you then! 😆 Been giving talks on #betterpresentations for years now; finally getting some of the content out as videos!

@MikeMorrisonPhD I'm creating a PowerPoint for my thesis defense so perfect time for me to run into this video!

@@Sonichedgehog2482 - Happy defending! I've found that being careful to bring one point on the slide at a time helps it *feel* logical. But I've also seen people take the strategy of just overwhelming their committee on purpose so they don't ask questions. In which case, you could make it intentionally repetitive and use the same science for evil! YOUR CHOICE haha. Sure you'll do great either way. Defenses are way more fun than proposals.

@@MikeMorrisonPhD 🤣 Thank you so much!

Thank you! Check out the new eye tracking study video too; shows you these recommendations actually working - with data!

Yeah, we teach what we want to learn I guess. Still working on this! Twitterposter is probably the best impact-per-minute.

You can probably leave it off? Or include one sentence about the implication of your study you find most interesting. In person, notice whether anybody reads that far haha.

Only put the question if you answer it immediately in the same area. The idea is to actually teach people one thing as they walk by. If you design a poster that people don't need to stop at to learn from, paradoxically they may actually stop more, because you gave value. Kind of like "Your first hit of knowledge is free" approach to attracting visitors as opposed to the "clickbait question" approach. Does that make sense? Happy to take a look at your poster over on reddit r/scienceUX!

Note that if you didn't find anything yet and it's a research proposal and you only have the questions, that's different!

Been there many times myself! 🤣

I try to get to the point faster in more recent videos. But, we teach what we want to learn I guess. Still think that this wouldn't have had the impact it did WITHOUT all that catharsis upfront (went viral before short form content was more normalized, TBF).

🙏

Thank you! Be sure to check out sequel!

Thanks for caring about your science communication!

Good point. Submission features are on their way! Connect with me on LinkedIn then you should be able to message for free? Or just email me. Mike A Morrison at gmail. Looking forward to it!

Haha because I've been there!

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!

What would you change about this one?

I can do best thumbnail for you ​@@MikeMorrisonPhD

Academic twitter dying basically crippled my ability to get videos out like I used to. 😭 But AcademicSky is looking promising!

lol exactly! Better poster was applying psychology to design. Betterposter v2+ was applying design to psychology. Well put!

Have added links here! scienceux.org/free-resources Sorry, made this video for a conference and they had their own download page.

Really a logical progression for your work :)

Thanks Lana!! Also haha I know right. People were asking for a website to consolidate all the betterposter stuff like 4 years ago. Finally doing it!

Thank you! I think so too.

Thank you!

i gotchu fam

4 years of studying posters, 100+ poster workshops with 1000s of researchers in science and industry, and you are only the SECOND person to ever ask this haha. It's such a fantastic question. The first person, incidentally, was a professor of visualization research. So she imagined of the whole poster session as one giant data visualization. Really inspiring. What's your background? Anyway, I haven't covered this because I've been so stuck just getting conferences/people to adopt better designs, but you're right that there's huge potential in the layout itself. My best idea is to arrange the entire session in some kind of story-order. Not just by topic, but treat it like a Haunted House WITH an overall story plot. Got the inspiration from those memory competitions where people can memorize 5 decks of cards by creating stories on the fly. A story-order could be the best for memory and retention, and maybe for transfer to application? I dunno. I WILL cover this eventually. What are your ideas?! Happy to collaborate on a short paper on this or something!

Haha thank you! Have fun with your poster!!

Haha this stuff is only obvious to design-minded people! I laugh when I show this to designers because they're just like "Yeah. Of course. Why is this new?" It's been agony trying to convince scientists of this stuff, but hopefully if I keep collecting compelling data, I'll win over a few more each study!

lol @ citation padding. EXACTLY. We shouldn't be just citation-dumping/padding anyway, just in terms of clarity! Kind of lowkey hoping that links will encourage better practice there when we start incorporating them.

Yeah I made it to be a classroom resource, but I may have to cut it into smaller bits for TH-cam!

Haha thanks Joel! The foraging theory video talks about bushes if you want to test your limit!

Would LOVE to do it this way, but we'd probably have to limit ourselves to industry poster sessions (like with science-heavy companies who often have internal poster sessions). Companies and government agencies won't hesitate to video crowds for learning. But scientific conferences are squeamish AF about collecting identified data. Even still, I wonder if we could inspire them with a proof of concept? Probably way more software already built for video data, right?

@@MikeMorrisonPhD I resonate with the concerns over personally identifiable information (PII) and privacy. I can think about a number of ways to mitigate the privacy concerns, such as low quality video taken from the ceiling, rather than at eye level, so face recognition would be challenging at such angles. Alternatively, the software can pre-process the footage to blur each person before storing it, or simply storing the position of the "center of mass" of each person at a given time. If cameras are an absolute no-no, There are other types of sensors that cover large (10 by 10 meters or so) areas with enough accuracy for this application, and no possibility of PII, Kinect, or infrared beacons come to mind, and those can be controlled with arduinos!

Same principles of course, but layout-wise I'd try something like this: osf.io/g6xsm

Ideally, conference program would have takeaways (not titles) and authors! That way you can learn as you're skimming the program.

Well said, Erich! First, some updates to this design here: th-cam.com/video/SYk29tnxASs/w-d-xo.htmlsi=mhzCnBFTIreM65sk And more recent (2024), more nerdy updates on the broader challenge of changing posters here: th-cam.com/video/QU8HMU8A3ns/w-d-xo.htmlsi=W4EVbBUzHG3dhflC But I think you're right that researchers need a massive push towards rigorous communication design. I got a little lucky with this video helping to destabilize posters a little when it went viral, but the effect is waning. Any ideas for how we could create that massive push?

@@MikeMorrisonPhD Thanks for the update! I'm using the updated designs for a poster on some asteroid research I've been doing for the past year...can't wait to see how it turns out! For the massive push, I think you'd need to get this in front of as many undergrads and grad students as possible earlier in their careers. To help with that, I'm passing your most recent content along to a student volunteer network I help coordinate...hopefully they take it on and rock their next poster session! (Getting it into student-run, science clubs/networks is probably a lot easier/faster than encouraging a faculty to switch paradigms). A lot of grad students I know mimic their supervisors, which I think is part of what's keeping the wall-of-text design alive (which you actually mentioned in the video haha). To me, it seems easier to simply train the next generation to do better than to convince seasoned supervisors to switch things up. I know some faculty who would love this, but they're the ones already interested in science communication anyways haha I think we'll see rapid progress if today's undergrads/grads are shown more effective, evidence-based communication tactics and begin to model them to their students in the future! 🙂

Clearly you also understand the value of UX Design haha. Pinned and thank you!

Thank you! Be sure to check out the sequel here! th-cam.com/video/SYk29tnxASs/w-d-xo.htmlsi=-jhLuPb9ekSM5BM0

Thanks for watching! Have fun with your poster!

I struggle with the same thing in science. The overloading design that's useless in practice often FEELS the best in the first 2 second impression. Once people try to actually use it, it falls apart. Minimalist instructional design feels incomplete, empty, lazy, unbusy, uninteresting. But works. Research-wise, complexity & liking is curvilinear. So, people don't like things that feel too easy, even if they work best. I've tried to address this problem in posters by adding a little bit more complexity than I think people can actually process, but still much less than the former approach. Seems to get way more approval. Aiming for that midpoint of complexity. How about you? Any tips for me you've had succes swith?

Sure! The hidden twist is that the boring abstract I showed was my own publication haha. Wish my conference supported these!

Haha I suspect that's the reason most early students do the wall of text --- it really is perfect for hiding research. And make sure your title is vague!

You mean the scrolling posters? Yeah it's hard to read at all when walking by! That's in real life too.

@@MikeMorrisonPhD I mean, in real life, people may pause when they want to read. Anyways, I am preparing my first poster heavily inspired by your philosophy, so thanks!

Glad to meet you too, Rodrigo! Come hang out on the r/scienceUX reddit sometime and share what you're working on!

Awesome! Have fun! Be sure to check out the new designs too: th-cam.com/video/SYk29tnxASs/w-d-xo.html

by what measure?

Thanks for watching Jimmy!!

Same. FWIW I’ve seen one professor create ONE computational article and it became like a learning tool used across classrooms in his field. They’re that much more useful, and you can get that much more reputation points for making them. But, journals are still working to catch up on supporting them.