WRAPPING YOUR PRESENTATION IN A METAPHOR

How often do you use metaphors when designing presentations? In designing a presentation you put time, energy, spirit, and perhaps even love into building a hand-made and personally designed gift for those who will receive it. I have found that a well-developed metaphor can be like beautifully wrapping that gift before presenting it.

For example I recently designed a presentation on belief change. After putting together the ‘bare bones’ structure of the presentation one of the questions, I asked myself, “If I could wrap this entire presentation in a metaphor, what would it be?” At this point I began to brainstorm a couple of options and make a list of potential metaphors.

Some of the metaphors that arose were that beliefs were like dogs, plants, computer programs, cars, and planets. I then shortened the list to the two that seemed they would best encapsulate the presentation: dogs and plants. At this point I began to ‘massage’ the metaphors a bit to see what would happen.