Scientific Storytelling Expert Blog

VISUALSTORYTELLING

Everyone employed in marketing, medical affairs, learning, and training encounters the challenges of communicating complex, scientific material in a clear and accessible manner. This expert blog contains advice and best practices for presenting scientific information to your target audience, from pedagogy to design, technical specs to usability, timelines to costs and everything in between.

Bringing scientific study data to life with animation

September 3, 2020/in Video and animation /by Stefan Wolf

Academic publications present scientific studies and clinical trials in a text-heavy format. That means several pages of black print on white paper. Read more

Making Scientific 3D Computer Animation that Pays Off

August 31, 2020/in Video and animation /by Colin Korell

The three rules for when to use 3D computer animation in MoA and MoD videos

When it comes to mechanism of action and mechanism of disease videos, 3D computer animation is the gold standard. 3D animation can help an audience fully understand how a drug blocks a receptor or how a virus infects a cell. Read more

How to transform a boring slide deck into an exciting scientific visual story

August 19, 2020/in Slide decks /by Stefan Wolf

It’s true. PowerPoint presentations have a bad reputation in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry. All too often, they’re boring and stuffed full of information that nobody can remember, or else so badly designed that they leave audiences bewildered. And yet every day countless new bad slides are created for yet more yawn-inducing presentations. Read more

How slides can be significantly improved with three simple steps

August 7, 2020/in Slide decks /by Eva Anne Rentzsch

With today’s slides, the “before and after” effect is not immediately obvious, but we still have some tips for their improvement that can be applied to many other cases. Notice that the initial slide uses the same colors for both the left and right infographics. This is misleading for the viewer, because the representations actually have nothing to do with each other.

How to present facts with visual storytelling

August 5, 2020/in Slide decks /by Eva Anne Rentzsch

Today we want to look at an example of how facts can be either lost or presented with impressive visual storytelling. The initial slide lists too many facts as boring bullet points, so the target audience is forced to read text instead of focusing on the presenter.

How simple infographics can add value to your presentation

July 29, 2020/in Slide decks /by Eva Anne Rentzsch

Today’s slide illustrates how simple infographics in combination with precise statements can add value to your presentation. The original slide shows a clear gap between visuals and texts: the visuals fail to support the content, misdirect the viewer’s focus, and are even misleading.

Transforming a boring image with bullet points into a slide reflecting the beauty and complexity of nature

July 23, 2020/in Slide decks /by Stefan Wolf

Today’s slide is meant to introduce a more extensive topic but, with its dense text and unimpressive graphic, it would fail to excite a target group’s curiosity.

How poorly designed slide decks can have devastating consequences in the pharma industry

July 16, 2020/in Slide decks /by Thomas Frei

If you work in pharma, you’ve probably seen cluttered, text-heavy PowerPoint presentations. The kind of decks that make you squint to read the miniscule axis labels and make you strain to follow the logically incoherent structure, only to give up after the third slide.

Understanding the concept of an anti-tumor vaccine

July 6, 2020/in Slide decks /by Anita Kunert

In today’s episode of our series “How to make complex medical science accessible”, we will show how we turned a complex immunological cascade set off by an anti-tumor vaccine into an easily understandable step-by-step sequence in PowerPoint.

How to build better slide decks

June 17, 2020/in Slide decks /by Thomas Frei

Today we explore the simple, practical, concrete steps you can take to develop more effective and engaging slide decks for scientific communication.

Stress response physiology

April 23, 2020/in Slide decks /by Stefan Wolf

In today’s episode of our series “How to make complex medical science accessible,” we would like to use an example to show how to turn a complex slide about physiological processes in the human brain into an easily understandable animation sequence in PowerPoint.

Escape Mechanisms Slide Deck

February 24, 2020/in Slide decks /by Stefan Wolf

Today we will look at how to get the most out of scientific slide decks in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry. Over the past 20 years we have seen scientific slide decks almost every day.

How to effectively retain knowledge

October 9, 2019/in Learning and Training /by Katrin Rudolf, PhD

It happens. Mixing up terms, stumbling over complicated phrases, or forgetting key information. Whether working in sales or medical affairs, it can be tough to remember all the details. The cost of forgetting can mean not being taken seriously by peers or even damaging relationships with KOLs. Read more

Reinforcement training tools: How to develop transferable knowledge

August 7, 2019/in Learning and Training /by Katrin Rudolf, PhD

Learning is not a singular event. It’s a journey. A crucial part of this journey is developing transferable knowledge that lets us apply what we’ve learned in many different contexts.

Learning facts, concepts, and terminology is the first step towards developing transferable knowledge. When taking this first step, learners may face these three challenges: Read more

Engaging eLearning tools with a fresh editorial design

September 28, 2018/in Learning and Training /by Julia Reinhard, PhD

Every day, employees working in medical affairs use high-quality apps and read interactive digital publications with a sleek and clean design. They do all of this after they get home from work. And the next day the same employees go to work and sit in front of boring slides to learn information crucial for their profession. How design can engage or derail an eLearning. Read more