Episode 9.1: Planning Your Presentation: Audience, Message, and Format

Last updated on 2026-10-04 | Edit this page

Overview

Questions

  • Why does sharing research count as part of the research process?
  • How do you determine your audience, and what they actually need?
  • In which formats can research be presented and how do you decide which one fits your goal and audience?
  • How would you boil a whole project down to one clear message, and wrap a story around it?

Objectives

Learners will be able to:

  • Explain why communicating findings is part of the research process.
  • Describe an audience in terms of what they know, what they care about, and what they need to do with your findings.
  • Write a one-sentence headline message and shape it into a short story using the And–But–Therefore (ABT) structure.
  • Match a presentation goal to a suitable format and plan how much content a time slot can really hold.

Think Like a Researcher

Remember Aisha? In Episode 1.2, she spent two weeks visiting 50 homes to find out whether poor sanitation was linked to repeated malaria in children.
At the end of that story, she presented her findings at the monthly community meeting, and the town chief and local health workers agreed to organise a clean-up drive.

We skipped over that scene quickly. Let’s slow it down.

It’s the night before the meeting. Aisha’s table is covered in survey sheets and her laptop is full of charts. She could read out everything: how she chose the homes, how she scored each one, every number in every column. It would be thorough. It would also take two hours, and by minute ten most of the room would be thinking about dinner.

So she pictures the people who will actually be sitting there: the chief, the health workers, mothers who walked over after a long day. Then she imagines that next week she is invited to share the same study with public health students at a university. Same research, same data, same researcher.

Would she give the same talk? Hold on to that question. By the end of this episode, you’ll have a method for answering it.

A Wise Researcher Once Said…

“Science communication is essentially a service to an audience.” — Brittney Borowiec

A presentation is not a stage for showing everything you know. It’s a gift of the part of your work that they can use.

Sharing Is Part of the Research

In Episode 1.2, we said that your research isn’t complete until it’s communicated. In Module 8, you learned to do that on paper. Here, we cover everything else: talking, answering, and listening. It also connects to Module 12: a result nobody can understand is almost as out of reach as one stuck behind a paywall.

Good news: presenting well is a skill that can be learned in steps. The first step happens before you open any slide software.

Step 1: Who Is in the Room?

Start with your audience, and be as specific as you can. “The public” is a fuzzy target, but “mothers of school-aged children in this town” is something you can actually picture and speak to. Researchers who work in science communication recommend this because it’s far easier to find common ground with a small, well-defined group.

Three questions help you picture them:

  1. What do they already know? (Do they know what “incidence” means? What a hypothesis is?)
  2. What do they care about? (A career? A child’s health? A funding decision?)
  3. What do they need to do with what you tell them? (Decide, learn, give feedback, take action, join in?)

Different answers lead to very different talks:

If your audience is… Spend most of your time on… Handle jargon by…
Specialists in your own field What’s new in your findings or methods, and what they change Using shared terms freely; skipping basics they already know
Researchers from other fields The big question, why it matters, and simplified results Defining each key term once, briefly
Fellow students or learners A balance of background and your own contribution Explaining as you go; checking they’re following
Community members or decision-makers The “why”, what it means for them, and what happens next Swapping technical words for everyday ones or analogies

About jargon…

Jargon is shorthand that experts use with each other. Between experts, it saves time. In front of everyone else, it’s a locked door. The fix isn’t to delete every technical word but to know your audience well enough to tell which words are doors and which are keys.

Aisha’s survey sheet says “environmental sanitation score.” At the community meeting, that becomes “a checklist of what we saw around each home: where the rubbish goes and whether water stands nearby.” For a university audience, she might keep the technical term and define it in one sentence.

Who can actually get in the room?

Knowing your audience also means asking who can come. A late-evening event excludes many parents; a video that needs fast internet excludes people with patchy connections; tiny slide text excludes people with low vision. Choosing a time, place, and format people can really reach is part of respecting them.

Step 2: What’s the Point?

Next, decide what you want your presentation to do. Most goals fall into a few families: - informing (“understand what we found”), - persuading (“support this change”), - getting feedback (“help me improve this”), - inviting collaboration, or - teaching (“learn to do this yourself”).

One presentation can mix goals, but one should lead. A talk meant to get feedback on half-finished work is shaped very differently from one meant to convince a chief to support a clean-up.

Topic versus message

Here’s a trick that many researchers find hard at first: separating your topic from your message.

  • Topic: “Sanitation and malaria in our town.”
  • Message: “Children in homes with standing water and uncollected rubbish had malaria more often, so the clean-up should start there.”

A topic tells people what you’ll talk about. A message tells them what to remember. Ask yourself: if my audience forgets everything else, what one sentence should they walk away with? Write it down. That sentence is your headline, and everything in your presentation should either build it, support it, or return to it.

Notice something about Aisha’s headline: it says “more often”, not “because of”. Her study looked at patterns across homes; it didn’t run an experiment. A good headline is short and honest about what the evidence can and cannot say.

Callout

💡 Head and heart

A public-speaking coach once offered a handy pair of checks for any talk.
Relevance asks: is my content accurate, practical, and suited to this audience? (That speaks to the head.)
Resonance asks: does it connect with how they feel? (That speaks to the heart.)

A talk with only relevance can feel like a lecture to be endured while one with only resonance can feel warm but empty. You want both.

You can read more of that coaching story in this blog post on public speaking.

Step 3: Wrap It in a Story

Facts alone are easy to forget. Facts inside a story are much easier to follow and remember, which is why science communicators recommend storytelling, even for audiences of non-experts.

You don’t need to be a novelist. A simple structure called And–But–Therefore (ABT), popularised by scientist-turned-filmmaker Randy Olson, will do:

  • And: set the scene with two things your audience already agrees with.
  • But: introduce the gap, problem, or tension. This is the hook.
  • Therefore: say what you did, what you found, or what should happen next.

Here’s Aisha’s story:

Malaria is a familiar worry in our community, and many children here miss school because of it. But nobody has checked whether the state of the surroundings at home plays a part. Therefore I visited 50 homes, and what I found tells us where to start cleaning up.

In three sentences you capture your audience, giving them a reason to listen, a puzzle, and a promise.

ABT doesn’t replace the usual structure of a research talk (introduction, methods, results, conclusion). It’s the thread running through it, reminding the audience why each part matters. End by telling them what to do with your headline: a decision, a next step, or a question to think about. This is often called a call to action, and it should suit your audience and setting.

Step 4: Choose Your Format

Now that you know who, why, and what, you can choose how. There are dozens of named formats (seminars, lightning talks, posters, webinars, workshops…), but you don’t need to memorise them. Almost every format can be described by answering four questions.

1. What is the mode? Will people be together in a room (live), joining from different places (virtual), a mix of both (hybrid), or watching whenever they like (recorded, sometimes called on-demand)? Mode shapes everything from how you design your visuals to how you handle questions.

2. How much can the audience talk back? One-way formats suit informing. Two-way formats suit discussing, advocating, teaching, and getting feedback, because people can react, ask, and take part.

3. How formal is it? A thesis defence, a conference session, and a chat with neighbours under a tree are all presentations, but each has its own expectations about dress, language, timing, and structure. Informal doesn’t mean unprepared; it means the rules are different, and you need to know what they are.

4. What carries the message: you or the visuals? In a speaker-led format (a talk), you carry the message and the visuals support you. In a self-standing format (a poster, an infographic, a written summary), the visuals must work even when you’re not there.

You can use these four questions to describe Aisha’s two invitations from earlier:

  • The community meeting is live, two-way, informal, and uses self-standing visuals (her posters) alongside her voice.
  • The university seminar is more likely live or hybrid, mostly one-way until questions, formal, and speaker-led, with slides.

Over the next two episodes, we’ll work through the formats in turn. Episode 9.2 covers the visuals: slides, posters, written take-aways, and recorded media. Episode 9.3 covers delivery: live, virtual, hybrid, and recorded talks, interactive formats like workshops and webinars, and what to do when the questions start.

Finally, choose a format you can do with confidence. Someone with a gift for conversation may shine at posters and community talks; someone who loves design may prefer infographics or video. Your strengths are part of your audience’s experience too.

Reflection

Think about the last talk or presentation you sat through. What do you remember from it today? Was it a fact, a story, or a feeling? What does that tell you about what your audience will remember from yours?

Test Your Knowledge!

Challenge

Challenge 1: Topic or message?

Which of these is a headline message rather than just a topic?

  • A. Sanitation and malaria in our town
  • B. Results of a 50-household survey
  • C. Children in homes with standing water and uncollected rubbish had malaria more often, so clean-up should start there
  • D. An overview of methods used in malaria research

C. It states what the audience should remember and what to do about it, and it stays honest (“more often”, not “because of”).
The other three describe what the talk is about, but not what it says.

Challenge

Challenge 2: Open the door

Aisha’s survey notes say: “We found a statistically significant association between household sanitation score and recurrent malaria in school-aged children.”

Rewrite this in one or two sentences for her community meeting.

There are many good answers. One example:

“Homes where rubbish piled up or water stood nearby had children who caught malaria again and again. This pattern is unlikely to be just chance.”

A good rewrite uses everyday words, keeps the meaning, and doesn’t promise more than the study showed (note: “pattern”, not “proof of cause”).

Challenge

Challenge 3: Read the situation

For each situation, say whether the mode is live, virtual, hybrid, or recorded, whether it is one-way or two-way, and whether it is formal or informal.

  1. You have early, unfinished results and want many short, honest conversations over a couple of hours at a conference.
  2. Colleagues in three time zones can’t attend live, but you want them to see your findings.
  3. You want 15 community health volunteers to learn to use your survey checklist themselves.

Answers can vary slightly with context, but sensible readings are:

  1. Live, two-way, semi-formal. A conference poster session fits well, and the conversation is the whole point.
  2. Recorded, one-way, formal or semi-formal. A short video or narrated slides lets each person watch when it suits them. You could add a way to send comments afterwards.
  3. Live (or hybrid), two-way, informal. A workshop where participants practise the checklist themselves.

Put It Into Practice

Challenge

Your Presentation Planning Sheet

Pick a real project of your own (or Aisha’s study, if you don’t have one yet) and fill in this sheet. Keep it! We’ll build on it in Episodes 9.2 and 9.3.

Question Your answer
Audience: Who exactly will be there? What do they know, care about, and need to do?
Goal: What is the leading purpose (inform, persuade, get feedback, collaborate, teach)?
Headline: What one sentence should they remember?
Story (ABT): And… But… Therefore…
Format and time: Which mode (live, virtual, hybrid, recorded)? One-way or two-way? Formal or informal? How long do you have?

A sample for Aisha’s community meeting:

Question Sample answer
Audience Town chief, health workers, parents. Know malaria well; not familiar with research terms. Care about children’s health. Need to decide whether to back a clean-up.
Goal Persuade, and invite people to act
Headline Children in homes with standing water and uncollected rubbish had malaria more often, so clean-up should start there.
Story (ABT) Malaria keeps children out of school, and everyone here knows it. But nobody had checked whether the state of our surroundings plays a part. Therefore I visited 50 homes, and the pattern tells us where to begin.
Format and time Live, two-way, informal community talk with a poster; about 10 minutes plus discussion

What’s Next?

You now have the blueprint: who you’re speaking to, what they should remember, and how you’ll share it. In Episode 9.2, we’ll turn that blueprint into visuals, with slides that help rather than distract, posters that work even when you’ve stepped away, and media made for people watching on their own time.
In Episode 9.3, we’ll step in front of the audience, whether in a room, on a screen, or both, and practise delivering, answering questions, and learning from feedback.

Figures

To-do: Add infographic:…

Key Points
  • Sharing research is part of the research process, and a presentation is “a service to an audience”, not a display of everything you know.
  • Start with a specific audience: what they know, what they care about, and what they need to do with your findings.
  • Separate your topic from your message. Write one honest, memorable headline sentence and build everything around it.
  • The And–But–Therefore structure turns findings into a story: agree, introduce a gap, then resolve it.
  • Describe any format by its mode (live, virtual, hybrid, recorded), how much the audience can talk back, how formal it is, and whether you or the visuals carry the message. Then choose one that fits your goal, your audience, and your strengths.