About ShowCase Navigation

Showcase navigation allows a presenter to see thumbnail representations of available slides so that any individual slide can be chosen for display. Clicking a thumbnail opens its associated slide, full screen. This style of navigation works especially well when the content slides contain pictures, but works with text as well—as modeled in this tutorial.

To return to the thumbnails (switchboard), the presenter simply clicks the destination slide (for example, the flower slide above). She can jump back and forth quickly between switchboard and content, all the while showing only the slides needed, in any order. Showcase navigation is a simple yet powerful way of being visually interactive with an audience.

Building The Chicken

In this lesson we will build a fun example of Showcase navigation called The Chicken. Our thumbnail switchboard will look similar to the picture below. NOTE: A finished version of The Chicken is available as part of your course download on Page 3. Or, download The Chicken here. We recommend experimenting with this finished version of the slide show before beginning the lesson. When doing so, be sure to enter Slide Show mode so that the links are active. Click a thumbnail to display the celebrity's quote, and then click anywhere on the quote to return to the thumbnail switchboard.

Back to Top

Each thumbnail links to its own slide that contains a tongue-in-cheek quote from the featured celebrity, expounding upon why the chicken REALLY crossed the road. These quote slides are similar to the flower example above. The presenter clicks the thumbnail to show the desired quote, and then clicks the quote to return to the switchboard. The quote slides look like the examples below. When finished with this lesson, you will have created a slide show containing 22 slides (a switchboard and 21 quote slides).

The Story Behind The Chicken

Sometime ago I received one of those silly e-mails (thanks to whoever wrote it) sporting celebrities who supposedly give their opinion on why the chicken crossed the road. I looked at it and thought it would make a funny relational presentation. So I created The Chicken originally as a joke, never expecting to use it with an audience. Nevertheless, I put it in my network because one never knows what might be useful in a live context.  

A week later I was scheduled to address a group of medical doctors and deans at Touro University in Las Vegas.  As it turned out, four prominent individuals attending were going to be about ten minutes late.  I was sitting there thinking to myself, "Geesh, the worst possible scenario is to keep such high-powered people waiting for 10 minutes with nothing to do."  I wondered what I could do to entertain them.  Then it hit…what the heck…The Chicken.  I opened it on the spot and launched into the delivery without any preparation. To my delight, the audience took to it with such enthusiasm that they were rolling with laughter for the full 15 minutes before the others arrived. Then those individuals joined in the fun as well.

That experience taught me a valuable lesson—for the hundredth time—that we should never underestimate the power of spontaneous visual communication.  The Chicken now is a centerpiece of Aspire workshops and seminars because the same concepts can be applied in many ways, across almost any discipline.  The design empowers and encourages the audience to help drive the presentation, and that participation, in turn, greatly increases attention and interest in the material being covered.

Back to Top

Using The Chicken

While building The Chicken presentation throughout the following pages, you may notice that the content is really nothing more than very long bullet points, spread onto individual slides. In theory a presenter could trudge through the slides in a linear manner (forcing people to read each bullet point).

By contrast, a relational approach sets up an entirely different atmosphere, incorporating several key psychological concepts.  The first action I take when starting the show is to ask the audience which character they want to see first. CHOICE is an important aspect of engagement that grabs people’s attention.  Then as they choose additional characters, we have wonderful INTERACTION that further loosens them up and creates EXPECTANCY (someone always wants to see Colonel Sanders, and I refuse to show him until the end). Finally I only let the interaction go on for about six or seven characters, and then say…sorry, there is no more time. This creates HEIGHTENED DESIRE.  The audience may not have cared so much about seeing those other bullet points before, but now I just told them they can’t see any more even if they want to. Of course, now they really want to! Sometimes I do go back later and show a couple more of the quotes, but rarely more than half altogether.

It's fun to watch what happens in the live workshops when we tell people The Chicken is in their resources folder.  Most of them open the show immediately because they want to see the content they were denied. Interestingly, some companies and organizations even go on to customize the presentation by replacing a few of the existing characters with their own luminaries.  Everyone likes to have fun.

Using Showcase navigation is one of the myriad ways of being visually interactive with an audience of any size.  It totally changes a presenter’s perspective of what “giving a presentation” means.  The Chicken is a light-hearted mixer, whereas other applications of Showcase techniques tend to be more serious. The effects are the same either way—heightened interest, more perception of presenter expertise, and more openness to persuasion.  All are winning aspects for any speaker.

NEXT

Back to Top