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Free avatars and people of different abilities, ethnicities and genders to add diversity to your visuals

https://www.openpeeps.com

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Make your own visual stories without having to pick up a pen! Drawify has a library of hand drawn images and scenes that you can combine together to tell stories that resonate.

https://drawify.com

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Loads of styles, loads of file formats, loads of possibilities - Illu station has all the visuals you could ever want!

https://illustation.io

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Illustation - Free vector icons and illustrations

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Beautiful, unique and royalty free illustrations and icons to power up your apps and websites. Easy to customize vectors to power up your next idea!

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Open source and copyright free illustrations across a range of topics with a huge library - loads to love!

https://undraw.co/illustrations

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The design project with open-source illustrations for any idea you can imagine and create. Create beautiful websites, products and applications with your color, for free.

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Want something a little different to share your big idea? Absurd illustrations is the place to go - lots of off the wall visualisations of common concepts and problems

https://absurd.design

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Absurd Design - Free Surrealist Illustrations and Vector Art

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Download surrealist illustrations. Use free vector art for your landing pages, presentations and apps. These artworks combine the absurdity and childishness.

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Need illustrations of people, fast? Humaaans is your friend - pose them, place them, use them!

https://humaaans.com

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Mix-&-match illustrations of people with a design library for InVIsion Studio and Sketch.

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Copyright free photography that is STUNNING!

https://unsplash.com

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More copyright free imagery that is BEAUTIFUL!

https://www.pexels.com

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Copyright free and money FREE images that are SENSATIONAL

https://pixabay.com

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Need photos that are more corporate and business-y?

Check out
https://pikwizard.com/most-popular/business-finance

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Free Busines & Finance Photos & Images - Royalty Free Pictures, Unlimited Downloads | Pikwizard

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Pik Wizard welcomes you to browse our collection of free business / finance photos. Our stock photos are entirely free of charge and can be used for any purpose. So, if you are searching for hi-res business / finance pics to use for designing albums, books, postcards, flyers, invitations, or magazines, look no further.

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A one stop shop for all kinds of ways to visualise qualitative and quantitative data.

Free and paid versions

https://www.visme.co

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Want to make your excel charts look a bit more enticing?

Try
https://rawgraphs.io

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A free and open source tool for data visualization.

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You know Tableau? Well they have a free version to make your data sing.

https://public.tableau.com/s/

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Beautiful charts and handy walkthroughs on how to make them from this journalist run German site.

https://www.datawrapper.de/

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Use one of 19 interactive and responsive chart types ranging from simple bars and lines to arrow, range, and scatter plots.

Learn more about our charts

Three interactive and responsive map types let you create anything from locator maps to thematic choropleth and symbol maps.

Learn more about our maps

Responsive data tables allow for lots of styling options and let you include bar, column & line charts, heatmaps, images, a search bar and pagination.

Learn more about our tables

Serving charts and maps for millions of readers
every day.

Datawrapper helps some of the world's best teams to tell their stories with data.

No code or design skills required.

Our goal is to enable everyone to create beautiful charts, maps, and tables. Including you.

Copy your data from the web, Excel, or Google Sheets. You can also upload CSV/XLS files or link to a URL or Google Sheet for live-updating charts.

Choose from many chart and map types with one click. Then customize and annotate your chart to make it more effective.

Copy the responsive embed code into your CMS or website to show the interactive chart, or export as a PNG, SVG, or PDF for printing.

All the features you need to create visualizations for your articles, reports, or publications.

Missing something? Special wishes? Tell us at hello@datawrapper.de.

Datawrapper is my favorite tool to make charts that work across platforms - it's quick, clean, and elegant.

Datawrapper minimises the need to use alternative, time-consuming visualization methods. It has also enabled the wider team to embellish stories with data graphics - without assistance or additional training.

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Datawrapper: Create charts, maps, and tables

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Create interactive, responsive & beautiful data visualizations with the online tool Datawrapper - no code required. Used by the UN, New York Times, SPIEGEL, and more.

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Free templates and charts that you can customise with your own data stories.

https://informationisbeautiful.net

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Like Google? Like data? You'll like this...

https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/data-studio/

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Need to create a heat map? Check out this handy blog to find the right map for your use

https://vwo.com/blog/free-heatmap-tool/

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Investing in a third-party tool for business activities like gathering data for efficient decision-making is always a daunting task. Investing in a heatmap tool is no different.

Months of research and to-and-fro go into it, and sometimes even this much effort on understanding the options available falls short of giving you full confidence to invest. That is why most third-party tools, whether they are for heatmapping, testing, data tracking, analysis, or transcription, offer free trials before asking you to make a payment and commit. On top of the free trials, the internet is full of information on various 100% free tools that you can use for multiple purposes.

To help you make the right decision and get started with heatmaps, we've curated a list of tools that are either free or offer a free trial. You can shortlist the tools that seem relevant for you and try them out before you zero in on the most promising one.

[ Read this extensive guide on Website Heatmaps]

VWO Insights

VWO Insights offers an all-inclusive free trial and further paid plans that give visitor behavior analytics (including Heatmaps), deeply integrated with experimentation capabilities ( VWO Testing). With VWO Heatmaps, you can visualize how visitors navigate a particular webpage, including how far they scroll and where they click. You get to unlock insights on which elements of your webpage successfully capture visitors' attention, which elements are distracting them, and what is getting completely ignored.

In addition, VWO's free AI-powered heatmap generator allows you to predict how visitors interact with your web page. It enables you to gauge bottlenecks based on user experience for you to take required optimization measures.

You can also slice and dice the data gathered to create predefined or custom segments and analyze them to glean granular insights on visitors' interactions.

Microfocus, an FTSE 250 software group, used VWO Insights' heatmaps, scroll maps, and session recordings, for qualitative analysis of their home page and product pages. They made the below observations that later, upon A/B testing, led to a 12.37% increase in form sign-ups from their website:

Not showing asterisk marks on mandatory fields on the sign-up form was probably a cause for low conversion rates.

The CTA for the Free Trial page was below the fold, probably leading to low conversion rates.

Their marketplace domain did not have product linkage to specific apps and hence was not sending traffic to Micro Focus product pages (revenue pages).

Still not sure if this is the right tool for you? Go ahead and evaluate VWO Heatmaps for free to see if it ticks off the boxes in your checklist using the free trial.

List of free heatmap tools

Free WiFi heatmap tools

WiFi Analyzer

With a 4.7 star rating, WiFi Analyzer is a free application that can be downloaded from your phone's app store. Using this free wifi heatmap tool, you can generate a heatmap of your wifi's signal strength and coverage by merely uploading the floor plan of your home. Its application is not limited to only indoors. When you are outdoors, all you need to do is use GPS and then upload the data on Google Earth for an integrated map of your wifi's speed and coverage.

ManageEngine WiFi Analyzer and Surveyor

WiFi Analyzer and Surveyor is a free app by ManageEngine. It provides efficient monitoring of Wifi signal strength and helps identify slow or dead networks. It has an in-built scanner that detects all the available Wifi networks in the neighborhood. Analyzing the signal strengths is super easy as you merely have to load a floor plan, an automatic heatmap of the Wifi network gets created within minutes. There are filters available to de-clutter your heatmap for better visibility. The app also enables you to keep a check on channel interference from neighboring networks.

SolarWinds

With SolarWinds Wifi heatmaps, you can easily customize and make dynamic Wifi heatmaps that get updated at a regular interval of 5 minutes. These automatic Wifi heatmaps provide enhanced coverage visibility and improved monitoring of connected devices. The easy identification of dead signal zones allows you to troubleshoot, make adjustments, and optimize the Wifi experience for end-users. By polling the actual signal strength of access points and connected clients, SolarWinds heatmaps provide much faster and more accurate wireless coverage. To get you started, they offer a 30-day free trial.

Free geographic heatmap tools

Strava

Strava Global Heatmap is a brilliantly crafted geographical heatmap that has piqued a lot of interest of late.

It isn't just how beautiful the generated heatmap looks that struck a chord. It is the effort that went into building it and the scale at which it shows data with only a few clicks, as can be seen in the picture above. The current version of Strava Global heatmap is powered by 2 years of data collection from athletes around the world, 700 million activities, 5 terabytes of raw input data, a total distance of 10 billion miles, a total recorded activity duration of 100 thousand years, 1.4 trillion latitude/longitude points, and 7.7 trillion pixels rasterized. It is one of a kind example of how geographic heatmaps can simplify the life of users.

In case you want to visualize your own activity, powered by the location history data enabled on your device, then you can also use Google Maps to generate such a heatmap.

Maptive

Maptive's heatmapping tool offers a 10-day free trial before asking for your full commitment to the tool.

One of the best features of this tool is that it allows you to layer multiple geographic heatmaps so you can visualize more than just one data matrix on a single heatmap.

Free stock trends heatmap tool

Stocktwits

Stocktwits is a free heatmap tool that plots a heatmap of the trends in 8 sectors: basic materials, consumer goods, utilities, industrial goods, technology, financials, health care, and services. This is what the heatmap generated looks like this:

This tool is especially useful for stock marketers whose day-to-day work involves mapping trends in these sectors.

A quick look at this generated heatmap dashboard would answer many of their questions.

Free website heatmap tools

Clickheat

Clickheat by Dugwood is an OpenSource heatmapping tool that plots a click map and represents hot and cold click areas of a webpage based on how users interact with homepages, landing pages, product pages, etc. The only thing you require is to clone the code (available on GitHub) or download it from the ZIP archive. It is 100% free for unlimited use.

If you are looking for an effective and robust heatmapping tool, the above list should come in handy to help you narrow down "the one" that matches your needs.

FAQs on heatmap tools

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8 Top Free Heatmap Tools For Your Industry [2022] - VWO

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Investing in a third-party tool for business activities like gathering data for efficient decision-making is always a daunting task. Investing in a heatmap tool is no different. Months of research and to-and-fro go into it, and sometimes even this much effort on understanding the options available falls short of giving you full confidence to invest.

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6 million of free icons - go get it!

https://www.flaticon.com

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Need to make scientific figures fast and for free?

Biorender have got you!

https://biorender.com

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1000s of free icons and a direct plug in for powerpoint

https://thenounproject.com

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Great icons for websites

https://webkul.github.io/vivid/

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Add Icon

An SVG Icon from Vivid.js icons library can be easily included using the syntax <i data-vi="icon-name"></i> , where icon-name is replaced by the unique name of the respective icon.

Check out the icon reference cheatsheet to find and use the needed icons.

View Cheatsheet

Customize Icon

Each Icon can be customized in terms of size and colors.

Add data-vi-size="number" data attribute to i element to customize size of the icon.

Add data-vi-primary="#hexcode" data attribute to i element to customize the primary color of the icon.

Add data-vi-accent="#hexcode" data attribute to i element to customize the accent color of the icon.

Add data-vi-prop="#hexcode" data attribute to i element to customize the prop color of the icon.

The colors and size of the entire Vivid.js Icons library can also be changed globally via src/config.js file and compiling again.

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Free Open Source SVG Icons Set Pack and Library [100+ Icons] - Vivid.js

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Add Icon An SVG Icon from Vivid.js icons library can be easily included using the syntax , where icon-name is replaced by the unique name of the respective icon. Check out the icon reference cheatsheet to find and use the needed icons. View Cheatsheet Customize Icon Each Icon can be customized in terms of size and colors.

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Want to create your own short animations for free?

Use Biteable

https://biteable.com

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Make cute animations for free, directly in the cloud

https://www.animaker.com

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Free 3D animation creator, with paid plans that add more functionality

https://www.renderforest.com/animation-maker

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Personalize the design

Now that you've found the right template, it's time to customize and make it yours. Upload your visuals, pick fonts, select a style, and adjust the colors using the large selection of tools. Use the customization options to match the animation to your brand style, and get ready to conquer the internet.

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Online Animation Maker | Make Animation for Free | Renderforest

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Now that you've found the right template, it's time to customize and make it yours. Upload your visuals, pick fonts, select a style, and adjust the colors using the large selection of tools. Use the customization options to match the animation to your brand style, and get ready to conquer the internet.

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Free Powerpoint and Google Slide templates.
Just remember - less text, more images, and DON'T overload your audience with loads of information in one slide

https://slidesgo.com

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Another free template site for your slides

https://www.slidescarnival.com/category/free-templates

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Browse through to discover stunning presentation templates. ✓ Free for Any Use ✓ No Registration ✓ No Download Limits.

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Free version of Nifty Fox's e-course training in blog post form - learn how to create impactful infographics

https://www.niftyfoxcreative.com/journal/2021/4/13/infotopia-how-to-create-impactful-infographics

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Step 7: Choose icons to make your points visual and make sense. Icons are meaning makers, not decoration: choose them wisely and make sure they're relevant. Just as when you choose a font, they need to be consistent throughout the infographic (so, for example, if you use a handrawn image, make sure they are all hand drawn). We've put together some cracking free image sites for you:
Free visual metaphor templates from Nifty Fox Free hand drawn icon templates from Nifty Fox
Flat Icon - free vector icons

Freepik - free illustrations and images

Unsplash - free professional photography

Step 8: Want to include graphs? They're great when handled with care. If you use them, make sure:

You can grab a great free graph-maker like https://rawgraphs.io/ to make them look smart.

Step 9: Put it all together. Use PowerPoint, Canva or a design software like Adobe Illustrator. (Pssst, we'll be running a e-training course on how to do this, launching in summer - sign up for our mailing list at the bottom of this page to be first to know.) Follow the three golden rules:

1. Clarity - does it have a clear structure so your audience will know how to read it? Does it end with a call to action so your audience will know what to do with it?

2. Content - what are your key messages? What key takeaways do your audience need to remember?

3. Consistency - have you kept to the same fonts and sizes, the same style of imagery, and the same colours throughout? Start with a bold title. End with a footer that states who you are, your institution, and contact information.

Step 10: SHARE IT. Want some tips for how? Take a look at our social media guide.

Nervous about doing this yourself? It can feel like a lot, we know, but it's our bread and butter and we're here to help. Contact us. Or sign up for our mailing list below to be notified of our e-course.

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Infotopia: how to create impactful infographics. - Nifty Fox Creative

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Step 7: Choose icons to make your points visual and make sense. Icons are meaning makers, not decoration: choose them wisely and make sure they're relevant. Just as when you choose a font, they need to be consistent throughout the infographic (so, for example, if you use a handrawn image, make sure they are all hand drawn).

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Adapting Research Comms for Social Media

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Adapting Research Comms for Social Media

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Free training booklet that goes through how to unleash your research story on social media for the most impact. Covers how to distill key messages, find visuals and strategies for posting

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/niihuaqfukcd6kn57ympq/Nifty-Guide-to-Adapting-Research-Comms-for-Social-Media.pdf?rlkey=q936a7cde2jkklqm4t2me2ets&dl=0

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With so many platforms, algorithms and other content to deal with, how do you use social media effectively without swallowing up your time?

The guide goes through six key components to successfully adapt your research communications for lay audiences on social media.

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Adapting Academic Research for Social Media - Nifty Fox Creative

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Social media is a powerful tool to impactfully share your research with lay audiences. But with so many platforms, algorithms and other content to deal with, how do you use social media effectively without swallowing up your time? This guide goes through six key components to successfully adapt your

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How to create a one page research website

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How to create a one page research website

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Create a one page research website in an hour with free tools using Nifty Fox's handy blog

https://www.niftyfoxcreative.com/journal/2021/3/15/how-to-create-a-one-page-research-website

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This week we go into detail about how to create your very own one page research website. How do you get it to be a shining showcase of what makes your research relevant, impactful and worth people's time?

It's terrifying, right? I mean, it's definitely a great way to assert your authority on the debate. It's a phenomenal tool to hook your desired collaborators in with a bang-up to date summary of your research. That means those same collaborators are far more likely to pick you up and connect on a deeper level. But the thought of making one may also trigger all those 'OMG I don't know how to do this' panic feelings.

Fret not! We can absolutely hold your hand through this.

So how do you do it?

If you take a look at the handy Infographic above, you'll see we've shown you exactly what needs to be included, step by step. You can use this format in your one page website, or your profile, or even an Infographic of your own - all snazzy items for your shop window.

Want it summed up? Here we go.

Content:

1. Decide who your desired audience is. You'll want to focus on why they should care about your research. So...

2. Make it relevant to their current problems

3. Be clear on what you need them to do and how they can engage with you to move forward.

Style:

1. Brevity is key. The whole thing should be less than 600 words.

2. Use visuals to make points for you - icons, illustrations, simple graphs, Infographics etc. (Word of warning: don't use these just for fun; everything needs to say something.)

3. White space helps your audience process visually, so keep it simple

4. Assertive, not strident. How do you get that balance? It's hard enough for most of us to promote ourselves at all, let alone knowing when we've gone too far. A rule of thumb is to stick to facts ("here's the evidence, here's the takeaway," rather than "I know this so you should do that"). Let your work do the talking - you know it's good, so let it shine.

Okay, so you've got a great one-pager. It's pithy, it's compelling, it's honest and you love it. Where are you going to put it? What's the best platform for you?

There are options. You just have to decide what works best with your style, the conversations you have, and the way you're connecting with people.

You could, for example, restructure your institutional profile in this format.

Or, you could write a LinkedIn article that showcases your themes.

You could create your own Infographic using PowerPoint to demonstrate your topic and share it as a visual on social media, pushing it out to your Twitter and LinkedIn communities. (We'll follow this up with a blog about how to do exactly that!)

Or you could go fancy and use a free web page service like WIX. They have templates you can customise for your own needs, and easily make it look and feel your own. We do this for our clients at Nifty Fox; you can see some examples of different ways we've used it at Welfare at a Social Distance , or the Sheffield City Partnership website, or Make Them Care .

Remember: there's no guarantee that if you build it, they will automatically come. It's part of a strategy, not the whole thing. It's a useful tool to use and it can definitely light up your communications, as long as you do what's necessary:

You need to be reaching out to key stakeholders in your desired research or policy arenas. You can do this online, via email or phone, or in person. Show them what you're doing. Lead them to your shop window. Get the conversations started.

Messaging needs to be targeted, timely and relevant. For more on how to do this, check out our social media messaging guide as a good starting point.

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How to Create a One Page Research Website - Nifty Fox Creative

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This week we go into detail about how to create your very own one page research website. How do you get it to be a shining showcase of what makes your research relevant, impactful and worth people's time? It's terrifying, right? I mean, it's definitely a great way to assert your authority on the debate.

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Free Prezi Presentation Training from The Prezenter

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Free Prezi Presentation Training from The Prezenter

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Russ at the Prezenter is a total babe and runs tons of free training ton Prezi, and puts it on his YouTube channel. Check it out to up your presentation game.

https://www.youtube.com/c/theprezenter

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Presentation hints and tips from official independent Prezi experts at http://theprezenter.com This channel provides useful insights, best practice tutorials, plus help and advice for presenters of all levels. We help you engage your audiences even more by empowering you to be the best presenter yo…

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Want to up your teaching and slide game. Prezi video is a great tool that feeds direct into video conferencing software so you look amazing AND your audience remains engaged.

https://prezi.com/video/explore/

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Check out Duncan's Youtube channel jam-packed full of tips on how to become a better presenter

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwYgDo5U7ySPwQDLcaROZsg

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Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

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Like Microsoft Publisher on steroids. Free version that will help you build ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING you need to present, share and story tell online.

https://www.canva.com

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Open Broadcast Software is used by video gaming streamers to share their face AND their screen when recording. BUT this is also super handy for presenting and teaching online, as you can create your own scenes with your face, powerpoint slides, screen captures and the works. Takes a little bit of learning to use, but a powerful tool that we use at NFC for ALL of our teaching.

https://obsproject.com

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Stop sending emails, and send video walkthroughs instead! Loom is a screen recording software that also captures your face on video, revolutionising the way we explain and feedback online. Try it for free!

https://www.loom.com

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Free Powerpoint désigned academic poster templates to help you at your next conference. Word of warning though - make sure it isn't just WALLS OF WORDS!

https://www.posterpresentations.com/free-poster-templates.html

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About our free research poster templates

This is a collection of free PowerPoint (.ppt and .pptx native formats) research poster templates made available to PosterPresentations.com clients. By using our research poster templates and poster printing services, your poster presentation will look sharp and professional. Download the appropriate PowerPoint poster template, add your text, images and graphics and send it back to us for premium quality, best priced, same day printing and shipping.

Follow the instructions provided on the templates and you'll be done in half the time it normally takes to complete a poster presentation. The templates are fully customizable so you can have more design flexibility. You can change the poster color schemes and the columns layout with just a couple of clicks. Our Help Desk also provides video tutorials on how to make your scientific poster presentation.

Easy to use and customize

▪ Change colors with one click
▪ Most standard US and international poster sizes.
▪ Support for all PowerPoint versions
▪ Only basic PowerPoint skills required
▪ Fully customizable
▪ Instructions included with the poster templates.
▪ Online video tutorials
▪ Configured to print professionally
▪ Additional layouts included in each template

40 color schemes built-in to every research poster template

Step-by-Step Tutorials

This series of short videos and animated tutorials will walk you through the research poster-making process, answering the most common questions along the way.

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Powerpoint poster templates for research poster presentations

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Professionally designed PowerPoint research and scientific poster templates. Free research poster templates you can download and use for your presentation.

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Animate Your Science based in Austraila have a great blog that gives free tips and resources on how to present science stories more visually and engagingly. Check it out!

https://www.animateyour.science/blog

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Looking for high-quality & free educational content about science communication? You are in the right place. We offer articles, eBooks, infographics and plenty more.

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A Mecca for all things Data Viz created by Tom Watson, including a huge database of data resources, templates, training and software. Majority of which are free!

https://good-data.co.uk/

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A site for hosting Good Data resources free for charities and social purpose

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cool take on emojis - available in back and white and coloured

https://openmoji.org/

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Open source emojis for designers, developers and everyone else!

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Customisable illustrations - you can also animate them

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Storyset: Customize, animate and download illustration for free

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Edit and animate all our customizable illustrations to enhance your projects totally free. Start now to be creative in our online editor ✅

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Here you can find images, PNGs, templates etc. - Free and premium

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Whimsical and unique photos by Ryan McGuire

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Gratisography - Free High-Resolution Photos

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The world's quirkiest collection of free high-resolution pictures you can use on your personal and commercial projects. All completely free of copyright restrictions. New photos added every week!

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Find the right emoji for the right meaning

https://emojipedia.org/

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Great as backgrounds to presentations or your own voiceover animations, check out these free drone videos on Pexels!

https://www.pexels.com/search/videos/drone/

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How to use Canva to create an infographic 

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How to use Canva to create an infographic 

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What it says on the tin - 10min tutorial on how to use Canva to create an impactful infographic!

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How to use PowerPoint to create an infographic 

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How to use PowerPoint to create an infographic 

# data[].attributes.headline
Dos and Don’ts for designing for accessibility 

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Dos and Don’ts for designing for accessibility 

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Handy UK government guidelines on the key things to remember when designing for accessibility, all presented as easy to follow infographics!

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Karwai Pun is an interaction designer currently working on Service Optimisation to make existing and new services better for our users. Karwai is part of an accessibility group at Home Office Digital, leading on autism. Together with the team, she's created these dos and don'ts posters as a way of approaching accessibility from a design perspective.

The posters

The dos and don'ts of designing for accessibility are general guidelines, best design practices for making services accessible in government. Currently, there are six different posters in the series that cater to users from these areas: low vision, D/deaf and hard of hearing, dyslexia, motor disabilities, users on the autistic spectrum and users of screen readers.

The dos, that run across various posters, include using things like good colour contrasts, legible font sizes and linear layouts. So, aren't good design principles applicable to everyone and not just those with access needs?

While this is true, the aim of the posters is to raise awareness of various conditions through good design practice. We need to be mindful of not just designing or building for our own immediate needs. For example, consider designing for keyboard use only. This is particularly helpful for users with motor disabilities where using the mouse can be quite difficult, especially with precise movements, whereas keyboard use is much easier.

Another aim of the posters is that they're meant to be general guidance as opposed to being overly prescriptive. Using bright contrast was advised for some (such as those with low vision) although some users on the autistic spectrum would prefer differently. Where advice seems contradictory, it's always worth testing your designs with users to find the right balance, making compromises that best suit the users' needs.

The team

The content for the posters came from our accessibility team in Home Office Digital. Led by accessibility leads Emily Ball and James Buller, we are a group of twelve, each specialising on these conditions: blind and visual impairment, dyslexia, autism and ADHD, D/deaf and hard of hearing, mental health and motor disabilities. Collectively, we learn as much of the conditions as we can to better increase our knowledge so they can be shared within and outside the team.

One of the challenges we faced with the posters was gathering information from our different specialisms and reducing the vast amount of knowledge to ten principal dos and dont's. There's also challenges surrounding content and graphics. I worked with Nick Cowan, a content designer, who is leading on motor disabilities, to keep the content concise and ensure the graphics visibly represented the advice accurately.

Next steps

We've shared these posters across government for feedback and they can be found on GitHub.

We are constantly improving and adding to them so please let us know what you think. Understanding accessibility through design means we can build better services for everyone, whatever their access need.

Update: We've been asked whether these posters can be reproduced or translated into other languages. In keeping with the the GDS ethos of making things open, we've used a Creative Commons license which allows everyone to share, use and build upon the posters provided they are used non-commercially and keep the appropriate attributions (Home Office, Home Office Digital and the Creative Commons logo). It would be great if people can share photos of them being used on Twitter and can commit translations of the posters to our GitHub repository so they're available for everyone.

What the posters say

Designing for users on the autistic spectrum

Do

Don't
View poster for the autistic spectrum
Designing for users of screen readers

Do

Don't
View poster for screen readers
Designing for users with low vision

Do

Don't
View poster for low vision
Designing for users with physical or motor disabilities

Do

Don't
View poster for physical or motor disabilities
Designing for users who are D/deaf or hard of hearing

Do

Don't
View poster for Deaf or hard of hearing
Designing for users with dyslexia

Do

Don't
View poster for dyslexia
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Dos and don'ts on designing for accessibility

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Karwai Pun is an interaction designer currently working on Service Optimisation to make existing and new services better for our users. Karwai is part of an accessibility group at Home Office Digital, leading on autism. Together with the team, she's created these ...

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Stumped on the best way to visualise your data? Check out the FT chart doctor thread with loads of tips, tricks and design ideas for choosing and creating the best chart.

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News, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication

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Diversity is important - Nappy is a beautiful collection of free photos of people of different ethnicities not found anywhere else on the web

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Nappy | Beautifully Diverse Stock Photos

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Beautiful photos of Black and Brown people, for free. For commercial and personal use.

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The UK’s first stock photography site made by and for LGBTQ+ people

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Free stock photography of trans and non-binary people

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The Gender Spectrum Collection is a stock photo library featuring images of trans and non-binary models that go beyond the clichés. This collection aims to help media better represent members of these communities as people not necessarily defined by their gender identities-people with careers, relationships, talents, passions, and home lives.

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The Gender Spectrum Collection: Stock Photos Beyond the Binary

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The Gender Spectrum Collection is a stock photo library featuring images of trans and non-binary models that go beyond the clichés. This collection aims to help media better represent members of these communities as people not necessarily defined by their gender identities-people with careers, relationships, talents, passions, and home lives.

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17 of the best diverse photography sites 

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17 of the best diverse photography sites 

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Great blog covering stock photo sites from across the diversity spectrum!

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It's important to feature diverse people on your website and in your digital marketing. This post will list different stock photography sites where you can find royalty-free pictures of Black and Brown People.
If you're a blogger, you probably know how difficult it is to find inclusive stock photos featuring people of color in general. As a natural hair blogger, I take most of my own photos. But sometimes, I blog about more general topics and don't want to stage an entire photo shoot just to get a featured image for my post. This is when I turn to stock photos-preferably stock photos featuring black women or men models. However, it's been quite the struggle to find stock photos of black people

The following sites are where you'll be able to find royalty-free stock photos for your content-creating needs. Some photos are created specifically for black people in mind, others offer more diverse selections. Please note, while my personal focus is looking for photos with black models, the sites recommended lean heavily in that direction.

I'll also note what sort of options each site has (whether their photos are free, paid, or subscription-based). Please note, it is important to read the terms of use/what sort of license each company offers photos under, as they may change from what I've mentioned below.

Sites Focused on Stock Photos of Black People:

The below sites are more narrowly focused on content for Black creators or brands looking for Black stock photos for their imagery.

Absolutely stunning, and FREE high-resolution stock photos of black and brown people. These are perfect if you're looking for royalty-free photos that don't really look like stock photos.

They have a search feature, and also divide their categories into Active, Food, People, Places, Things, and Work.

"Free African high quality photos for your projects". Iwaria is something truly unique in the stock-photo industry. Their photos are beautiful, high quality, and focus on African imagery. Their categories are divided into People, Work, Animals, Food, and Landscape.

CreateHer Stock is a personal favourite of mine, and you'll find many of their stock photos across this site. They have a constantly-growing selection of stock photos featuring primarily black women. I personally love their selections because most of their photos feature people with natural hair. They also actively shoot photos with content-creators in mind. You'll find seasonal pictures, flatlays, wellness-related shots, and more!

They have a free gallery, as well as premium subscription options that begin at $10.00/month for access to 2500+ images.

If you join Eye for Ebony's mailing list, you will gain access to a small (but useful) collection of stock photography featuring Black people. They also periodically send out new free photos to their list throughout the year, so you'll want to make sure you don't unsubscribe!

Eye for Ebony also sells very affordable stock photo bundles. They all currently run at $15 per bundle, which is usually about 24-25 pictures! Some of the bundles they currently have include Afro, Quiet Time, City Girl, Work From Home, in LOVE, Maternity, and more!

UK Black Tech was looking to fill a void in representation in the tech sector. They have curated a small, but useful collection of stock photos that includes black children in tech as well! You may copy, distribute, and display the images as long as you attribute UKBlackTech or www.ukblacktech.com

At the time of writing this, their site is under construction with a "Returning Soon." page. Though they give you the option though to input your email to get notified when they return!

Stock Photos Focused on People of Color:

The below sites open it up a bit, and focus on stock images of POC in general, not just photos of Black people.

PicNoi offers a decent collection of images of people of colour. They are trying to fill the void seen in stock photography, and hope to help creators better-reflect the colorful world around us.

They also have the unique option to "Download All". This is incredibly useful if you like to build your content on the go, and want an easily accessible collection of images to choose from.

If you're looking for tech-based stock photos, or anything in a business/office setting, these stock photos are perfect! Curated by Women of Color in Tech, these photos can be copied, distributed, and displayed as long as you attribute #WOCinTech Chat or wocintechchat.com .

Jopwell is a career advancement platform for people of color, and they also happen to have a pretty extensive free stock photo collection. Their collections are diverse and inclusive, and feature people of colour in a variety of business settings. You may copy, distribute, and display the images as long as you attribute Jopwell or Jopwell.com.

The creators of Tonl wanted to challenge the "stale, homogenous look of traditional stock photography by showcasing the many ethnic backgrounds of every day people ", and they are doing an amazing job. They definitely should be a your go-to site if you're looking for diverse and inclusive stock photos.

Tonl does have a sort-of-hidden free section, under the category . I highly recommend scrolling through these, I found some winners that I've stuck in a folder for future blog posts!

However if you want your pick of their incredibly high quality photos, they do come at a price. You can buy single photos a la carte ($25.00) or you can spring for their subscription.

Their subscriptions start at $29.00/per month which gets you 15 photos. If you use the subscription to its fullest, it is definitely worth it, but you want to make sure you're downloading 15 pictures to get your money's worth!

Mocha Stock offer "affordable royalty-free stock media" featuring people of color.

While you do have to pay for their images, their options are incredibly unique and diverse, so if you aren't having any luck on any of the other sites on this list, you may find a winner here, and be willing to shell out some cash for it.

Their prices range from $11.00 - $450.00 depending on size. (The smallest size will probably do for most blog-related purposes).

General Stock Photos Sites with inclusive and diverse images:

Not all general stock photo sites are awful and white-washed. Check out the below, and use the necessary keywords to find what you're looking for! I've had a lot of success with the below by simply typing in "Black Woman", and I was so pleased by the variety in hairstyles: natural hair and protectives styles among weaves and wigs!

Pexels is known for its gorgeous collection of free stock photos and videos. Their gallery is ever-growing, and they have a pretty inclusive selection of images.

Burst is a new one to me, and I am incredibly impressed by their lay out. You can use their search bar feature, or select from one of their seemingly-infinite collections.

Again, a gorgeous collection of inclusive photos, featuring a ton of POC. Just type what you're looking for in the search bar, and you're off!

Similar to the above: beautiful, high-res photos, available to use for free. To make life easier, they also have quick-image packs, where all you need to do is "Tweet to Download". Current packs available are Diversity Matters, Active Lifestyle, Everyday Technology, and Flat Lay.

16. - Free (limited) + Subscription

Raw Pixel also has a stunningly unique collection of diverse images. Their system is a bit different. Once you register with them, you're allowed up to 5 images per day from their free section. Photos outside of that must be obtained from their (very affordable) subscription service.

For personal use (e.g. blogging + social media) you're looking at $5.00/month.

Stocksy images are stunning and unique, and another example of paying for something because you won't find it elsewhere. Prices range from $15.00 - $250.00 depending on size.

If you're a blogger, you probably already have a Canva account. They are a quick and easy alternative to Photoshop for making anything from Pinterest pins to infographs. But did you know that they have a very inclusive selection of stock photos?

Going with the same test as I did above, searching "black woman" in their photos section yields great results. Some photos come at a cost, some are only if you have Canva pro, but a ton are completely free!

Final Thoughts

I'm honestly so excited about the diverse photo options available. When I first started blogging, all black bloggers had the same images on their websites-almost all of them from CreateHer Stock. Which at the time, was the only place you could find stock photos of Black models.

Now bloggers, content-creators, and digital marketers can actually be selective about the photos they're putting on their website. They can use images that really reflect their style and message.

So which of these sites did you know about, and which are new? Do you have any more to recommend? Let's make this the best and ultimate list of diverse stock photos!
Looking for other blogging and social media resources? Check out:
If you enjoyed this post, pin the below to Pinterest:

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17 Diverse Stock Photo Sites You Need to Know About

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It's important to feature diverse people on your website and in your digital marketing. This post will list different stock photography sites where you can find royalty-free pictures of Black and Brown People. If you're a blogger, you probably know how difficult it is to find inclusive stock photos featuring people of color in general.

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Age positive photos for free from Ageing Better

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How to make your visuals more accessible to those not on the internet

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Definition of digital inclusion

Digital inclusion covers:

Digital skills

Being able to use digital devices (such as computers or smart phones and the internet. This is important, but a lack of digital skills is not necessarily the only, or the biggest, barrier people face.

Connectivity

Access to the internet through broadband, wi-fi and mobile. People need the right infrastructure but that is only the start.

Accessibility

Services need to be designed to meet all users' needs, including those dependent on assistive technology to access digital services.

Barriers to digital inclusion

Research for the UK digital strategy suggests that there are a number of important barriers, and more than one may affect individuals at any one time.

They are:

access - not everyone has the ability to connect to the internet and go online

skills - not everyone has the ability to use the internet and online services

confidence - some people fear online crime, lack trust or don't know where to start online

motivation - not everyone sees why using the internet could be relevant and helpful

As access, skills and confidence improve, it is increasingly important to tackle other barriers, including:

design - not all digital services and products are accessible and easy to use

awareness - not everyone is aware of digital services and products available to them

staff capability and capacity - not all health and care staff have the skills and knowledge to recommend digital services and products to patients and service users

Good Things Foundation has produced an informative report on motivations of non-users of the internet.

People likely to be digitally excluded

There has been real progress in internet and online services.

Use Ofcom and Office of National Statistics data to see the latest figures on internet access.

But there are still significant levels of digital exclusion, for example:

The Government Digital Service has developed a digital inclusion scale which maps individuals' digital capability on a scale from 1 to 9, from those who don't use the internet at all to digital experts.

Some sections of the population are more likely to be digitally excluded than others. These are:

older people

people in lower income groups

people without a job

people in social housing

people with disabilities

people with fewer educational qualifications excluded left school before 16

people living in rural areas

homeless people

people whose first language is not English

For more information on digitally excluded populations in the UK see the annual UK Consumer Digital Index from Lloyds Bank. The 2019 Consumer Digital Index shows:

11.9m people (22% of the population) do not have the digital skills needed for everyday life in the UK

by 2030 it is predicted that 4.5m people (8% of the population) will remain digitally disengaged

people with a disability are 35% less likely to have essential digital skills for life

Good Things Foundation publishes an annually updated Digital Nation infographic showing who's digitally excluded in the UK and the reasons why they are not online.

Assisted digital

Digital inclusion initiatives can help users improve their digital skills so that they can use online services. However some people will still need assisted digital support such as:

access through alternative channels (telephone, face to face)

help from others to use online services

Users of digital health services

of people looked up health information online

people visit the NHS.UK website every month

people made a repeat prescription request through the NHS App in one month

Programmes to empower patients

We have a number of programmes designed to help empower patients, and improve digital inclusion

NHS digital health services

Last edited: 5 December 2022 10:56 am

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What we mean by digital inclusion - NHS Digital

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The definition of digital inclusion and an overview of the problems some people have accessing and using online information and services. Also provided are ways local health and care organisations can tackle some of these barriers and details of who the digitally excluded population is.

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Fab tool to ensure your text can be read and understood by anyone

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Our Automatic Readability Checker takes a sample of your writing and calculates the number of sentences, words, syllables, and characters in your sample. Our program takes the output of these numbers and plugs them into seven popular readability formulas. These readability formulas (see below) will let you know the reading level and grade level of your text and help you determine if your audience can read your writing.

( Note: We also have separate readability tools to calculate grade levels using the Fry Graph, Raygor Estimate Graph, Spache Formula, and New Dale-Chall Formula, located here: Free Readability Calculators and Text Tools).

Directions: Paste in a sample of text and click "CHECK TEXT READABILITY." A sufficient sample size consists of 4-5 full sentences; approximately 200 - 600 words total. For larger texts, such as books, manuals, or dissertations, pull 1-2 sample sizes from each chapter. (Note: We limit the sample size to 3000 words. Sample sizes over 3K words are truncated.)

Paste a sample of plain text in the box. Your sample can be between 150-3000 words. We do not store or reuse your text in any way.
Our free readability formula tool will analyze your text and output the results based on these readability formulas. Our tool will also help you determine the grade level for your text.
1. The Flesch Reading Ease formula will output a number from 0 to 100 - a higher score indicates easier reading. An average document has a Flesch Reading Ease score between 6 - 70. As a rule of thumb, scores of 90-100 can be understood by an average 5th grader. 8th and 9th grade students can understand documents with a score of 60-70; and college graduates can understand documents with a score of 0-30.

2. The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level outputs a U.S. school grade level; this indicates the average student in that grade level can read the text. For example, a score of 7.4 indicates that the text is understood by an average student in 7th grade.

3. The Fog Scale (Gunning FOG Formula) is similar to the Flesch scale in that it compares syllables and sentence lengths. A Fog score of 5 is readable, 10 is hard, 15 is difficult, and 20 is very difficult. Based on its name, 'Foggy' words are words that contain 3 or more syllables.

4. The SMOG Index outputs a U.S. school grade level; this indicates the average student in that grade level can read the text. For example, a score of 7.4 indicates that the text is understood by an average student in 7th grade.

5. The Coleman-Liau Index relies on characters instead of syllables per word and sentence length. This formula will output a grade. For example, 10.6 means your text is appropriate for a 10-11th grade high school student.

6. Automated Readability Index outputs a number which approximates the grade level needed to comprehend the text. For example, if the ARI outputs the number 3, it means students in 3rd grade (ages 8-9 yrs. old) should be able to comprehend the text.

7. Linsear Write Formula is a readability formula for English text, originally developed for the United States Air Force to help them calculate the readability of their technical manuals. Linsear Write Formula is specifically designed to calculate the United States grade level of a text sample based on sentence length and the number words used that have three or more syllables.

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AUTOMATIC READABILITY CHECKER, a Free Readability Formula Consensus Calculator

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Automatically grade your text with our free readability test tools! These 7 popular readability formulas will help you find the reading level and grade level of your materials and help you determine if your readers can read your materials.

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Great tool to help your write alternative descriptions for images

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Overview Help improve this page

in Images Tutorial

This decision tree describes how to use the alt attribute of the <img> element in various situations. For some types of images, there are alternative approaches, such as using CSS background images for decorative images or web fonts instead of images of text.

Does the image contain text?

Yes:

... and the text is also present as real text nearby. Use an empty alt attribute. See Decorative Images.

... and the text is only shown for visual effects. Use an empty alt attribute. See Decorative Images.

... and the text has a specific function, for example is an icon. Use the alt attribute to communicate the function of the image. See Functional Images.

... and the text in the image is not present otherwise. Use the alt attribute to include the text of the image. See Images of Text.

No:

Is the image used in a link or a button, and would it be hard or impossible to understand what the link or the button does, if the image wasn't there?

Yes:
Use the alt attribute to communicate the destination of the link or action taken. See Functional Images.

No:

Does the image contribute meaning to the current page or context?

Yes:

... and it's a simple graphic or photograph. Use a brief description of the image in a way that conveys that meaning in the alt attribute. See Informative Images.

... and it's a graph or complex piece of information. Include the information contained in the image elsewhere on the page. See Complex Images.

... and it shows content that is redundant to real text nearby. Use an empty alt attribute. See (redundant) Functional Images.

No:

Is the image purely decorative or not intended for the user?

Is the image's use not listed above or it's unclear what alt text to provide?
This decision tree does not cover all cases. For detailed information on the provision of text alternatives refer to the Image Concepts Page.

Please share your ideas, suggestions, or comments via e-mail to the publicly-archived list wai-eo-editors@w3.org or via GitHub.

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Accessibility resources free online from the international standards organization: W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

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Blog from Animate Your Science covering top 5 scicomm podcasts jam packed with ideas on how to disseminate your research creatively.

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Stock illustrations and photography of people of different abilities, ethnicities and genders

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Affect creates media campaigns and resources that amplify multiply-marginalized folx and embody disability justice.

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From Dr Echo Rivera 👍

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The Presentation Design Masterclass Series! by Dr. Echo Rivera

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The 6 Gears of Creating Engaging Presentations - The Presentation Design Masterclass Series! by Dr. Echo Rivera

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FREE TRAINING Program Details Program Overview Course #1: Fail-Proof Slide Design Course #2: Visual Slide Design Course #3: Presenting Data with Slides Course #4: Captivate Any Audience Member Perk: Add-on Course Packs Member Perk: Feedback Group Options Login

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How to record your presentation for teaching and lectures

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How to record your presentation for teaching and lectures

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Do you need to record a PowerPoint, Google Slides, or Keynote presentation with audio and/or a webcam?
How do I record my PowerPoint, Keynote, or Google Slides presentations? How do I make a video of me narrating my presentation slides? Should I use the built-in recorder that PowerPoint/Keynote has?
I'm asked these questions almost weekly, so I decided to make a blog/video about the basic steps needed to record your presentation slides.

A lot of academics, scientists, or educators need to do this but aren't really sure the best way to go about it.

Or, they think they know the right way, but they don't realize that their process is making their life harder (which no one needs right now!).
For example: If you wanted to know how to add audio to your PowerPoint presentation file, you're already headed in the wrong direction for two reasons:

1. If you're recording presentations the right way, the steps don't change depending on what slide app you're using.

2. You should not use the built-in recording function on your slide software.

That's why I put together this blog post to help you with the 7 basic steps for getting started.

This article will help you record a decent presentation with audio and/or a webcam

After reading this post, you'll know the basic components of what you need to create a decent recording of your presentation.
Emphasis on the word "decent" in that above sentence. To me, a decent video has:

good audio that isn't painful to listen to

little-to-no background noise

no major mistakes that distract the audience (small mistakes are fine!)

That means (in my opinion) you DON'T need to create videos that:

include your face (webcams are optional, in my opinion)

require fancy or costly video editing software

have special effects

have no mistakes at all because 100% have been edited out (lol as if)

sound like they're made by a professional voiceover actor

If you want to make Hollywood-level videos for your online course video or conference presentation, this is not the blog post for you.

If you want to make decent videos, then keep reading for the 7 basic steps to follow if you want to achieve that goal.

Before we get to that, I want to make sure you know I have a FREE training about effective presentations. Because, part of having a decent recording of your presentation does involve having good slides. Be sure to check that out after you read this post.

Step 1. Get your tech equipment to record your presentation

The very first thing that you need to do is get your equipment ready to go.

If you want a final video that sounds good and is smooth and concise, then you cannot just hit record on your computer and start.
Here's what equipment you need:

The first thing you're going to need to record a presentation is a real microphone.

Under no circumstances can you use your built in computer mic, your webcam mic, or the headphones that come with your cell phones (like the Apple headphones).

Those have terrible audio quality and will be irritating for your audience to listen to.

Remember how in the intro we talked about wanting to make a video that isn't painful to listen to? This is how you do that.

It is worth the money because it will be useful for other tasks you do, such as webinars, live course lectures (synchronous teaching), conference presentations, and video calls.

And if you happen to be a guest on a podcast, you definitely want a real mic to increase the likelihood that people will listen to the whole thing.
Don't believe me? Here is my in-depth article about microphones
Hopefully you're convinced, or that video will help convince you. If so, then your next question is going to be: What mic should I get?

The ATR2100x (Audio Technica) is your best option because:

You won't have to worry about background noise as much.

It's the most practical to use.

The accessories you need are affordable.

It's the cheapest mic that also gets you great audio.

It has future-proofing features (worry about that later, though).

That might be surprising because if you go to Amazon and type in "microphone," the Yeti is going to be shoved in your face. It has great reviews and everybody talks about the Yeti.

I don't get it because the Yeti picks up every single background noise that exists.

My video editor hated it. He had to do so much post-production just to get the sound tolerable and to not have all that background noise. It was a pain in the *ss.

I used it for two years and I thought it was fine until I tested other mics and realized that there are way better mics, and for less money.

If you like the idea of spending LESS money to get a BETTER microphone, then get the ATR2100x.

You can spend less money on a mic than that, but in my opinion it's a waste of money because the improvements to your audio won't be that significant. Save up your money until you can get an ATR2100x (though, ideally, your department is the one paying for this!)
No, combined headset/mics don't sound good either. Not even the gaming ones.
Gamer here 👋 and they're not good enough for this purpose.

When I've done calls with people who are wearing headsets, I'm not impressed with the audio.

I would actually prefer you just get a Yeti. Combined headsets are that bad. They have like a.... watery sound. I think it's the noise cancellation. There might be some $500 sets out there that sound great, but I'm assuming you're on a budget.

After 2 years of frustration with my Yeti, I ditched it for the ATR2100x. I then used the ATR2100x for about a year (I've since upgraded to something extra fancy).

I was much happier with the sound and my video editor was much happier with the sound. It took a lot less work to get the audio sounding decent.

In addition to the mic, get a foam cover and/or pop guard.

The mic will probably come with a desk stand, which is okay. I recommend getting a boom arm though, so it's easier to use.

I also recommend you get a second monitor

How do you see your presenter notes when giving your presentation?

You use a second monitor. Or, I guess you could print them out? If you have a printer...

DO NOT record your screen while in editing mode. No one should be seeing your side panel or notes section. It's just ... wrong.

For the love of all things caffeinated, just get a second monitor. It can be the cheapest one possible, the quality doesn't matter at all.

This isn't to make me happy, this is about making your life easier. And that's exactly what a second monitor does-makes your life easier!

Third, have a webcam if you want to show your face

But you already know you need a webcam if you want to show your face :)
What you probably want to know is which webcam to buy.
The answer is: it doesn't really matter.

Get something that's at least 720p, and don't spend too much on it (say, $120 or less). Don't bother getting one with upgraded audio because it won't be worth the extra cost.

Step 2. Write a script

I'm willing to bet you stumbled on this blog post because you're having a hard time recording your presentations right now.

Maybe you were unhappy with how it sounded. Chances are, that's because you didn't have a good mic.

But that's not the only reason academics, scientists, and educators struggle.
The other reason people struggle is because it's super hard and super awkward to make a recording of yourself.
Does any of this this sound familiar?

You've had to restart your recording over and over.

You got frustrated with yourself for making too many mistakes.

You had ALL THE IDEAS in your head, but as soon as you hit record your mind went blank.

You had an organized talk in your head, but as soon as you hit record you went off on all kinds of tangents.

This one surprises a lot of people, but the easiest way to fix that is to write a script.

Recording is a lot harder than you think. Nearly everyone (including me) underestimates what it takes to record videos.

If you're fine presenting in-person, and have no problem just ... talking in front of a group, you'll probably think you won't need a script. You probably think you're just going to be able to hit record and talk.

I mean, maybe. It probably happens like that for some people. But, for most people (and what you should assume when you first start) it doesn't work that way.

It's SUPER WEIRD recording videos.

You aren't talking to anyone, and you have no faces to look at.

You're staring at your webcam and talking to it. With enthusiasm.
You're talking to a webcam like it's your BFF and you're catching up on the latest and greatest in your industry.
That's really hard to do, and takes a lot of practice to do well.

Make this easier for you by having a script.

The entire recording process goes so much smoother and helps you avoid forgetting what you wanted to say.

Having a script prevents you from going on tangents, and that helps keep you focused.

While in a face-to-face presentation, you might have some leeway for going off on tangents or long pauses, etc. But in a recorded video? People have near-zero patience for that. You have to be smooth and keep up the pace if you want people to watch your videos.

I know what you're thinking: "But a script will make me sound like a robot!"

Or, maybe you're thinking: "I already have no time. I can't make time for writing a script!"

Did I get that right? If so, I have good news for ya: you're thinking about scripting all wrong.

When done right, it doesn't really take that much extra time and it's the #1 strategy to prevent you from sounding like a robot 🤯
Learn more about how to script and practice your presentations here
3. Design engaging slide presentations

Okay, this step is probably going to be the hardest.

You really, really, really need to have well-designed, effective, visually engaging presentation slides (effective includes accessible slides) .
Tell me, do you think webinars are boring?
Chances are you said yes.
Ok. Now tell me, why do you think webinars are boring?
If you're like most academics, scientists, or educators then you said something like:

It's hard to engage people when everyone is sitting at a desk

Zoom sucks, everyone has Zoom burnout

There's less energy when doing a webinar

In other words, you probably think that there's something inherently wrong with the webinar format.

That doing an online presentation dooms the presenter into creating a boring presentation.

Not true.

We hate webinars when the presenter does what they always do: a #DeathByPowerpoint presentation with wall of text slides that are just read to the audience.

When it's an in-person presentation, the presenter's presence and energy can often compensate for the boring slides.

We can watch the presenter and pretend their slides don't exist, and it feels kind of okay.

In a webinar (and video) we lose that option.

So do not torture your students with #DeathByPowerpoint lecture slides.

Bad presentations make it really hard on on your audience.
Bad presentations make it more likely your audience won't pay attention, understand, remember, or use the information you share.
What do I mean by #DeathByPowerpoint? Well, I mean slides that look something like this:

If this is how your slides look, it's going to be extremely difficult for your students or audience to pay attention to, understand, and remember what you're sharing with them.
Slides like those are not meeting your audience "half way."
Don't feel bad if your slides are #DeathByPowerpoint. I'm not trying to judge you or shame you, because it's honestly not your fault.
Did your graduate program include comprehensive training on how to communicate effectively using slides?

No, it (probably) didn't. Even though we give presentations all the time, we aren't trained to do it well.

Luckily, though, I have the training you need to get you caught up to speed. You can get started with my FREE video, too!

4. Choose your screencasting app to record a presentation

Now it's time to choose your screencasting application.

Do not use the recording feature built into PowerPoint or Keynote.

That can glitch out.

Sometimes, the audio and video will be out of sync.

Or, worse, there is no audio at all.

If you've ever received that " We're sorry. Some of the narrations weren't exported to the video file " message, you know what I'm talking about.

But even if it worked perfectly every single time, the audio is poor quality and sounds very distorted.
Speaking of distorted audio, don't use Zoom to record your presentation either.
The audio compression in Zoom recordings is awful (Dear Zoom, please fix this!). I only use Zoom to create recordings if I'm doing a live presentation and just want to share the replay.

But if you're just creating a video and there is no live (synchronous) component, then don't use it.

There are a TON of screencasting apps out there, and I've tried a lot of them, so here are my recommendations for FREE screencasting apps.

If you're using a Mac, you are in luck. You have Quicktime.
It's free, and already on your mac.

Quicktime is one of the best screencasting programs out there.

The raw audio sounds really good (assuming you have an external mic, of course!). It sounds better than Screencast-o-matic, even!

It's also really easy to use - just a few clicks and you're on your way!

The downside is that (last I used it), you can't show your camera video at the same time as your screen.
I also love Open Broadcaster Studio (OBS).
I love OBS because:

It's what I'm using for all of my videos now.

It looks super intimidating at first, but it's actually really easy to use and still takes just a couple clicks to get going.

Before I had OBS, I tried using the Xbox game bar thingie for Windows 10 and I didn't like it. It's not meant for presentation slides. It's not a desktop/screen recorder. It's a window recorder, and there is a difference.

5. Hit record

I mean, duh. This is clearly a step :)

Now that you have everything ready to go, it's time to hit record.
Basically you're going to:

1. Open PowerPoint, Google Slides, or Keynote

2. Open your screencasting app

3. Set up your equipment (you choose the devices in your screencasting app)

4. Hit "presenter mode" and record!

5. Stop the recording.

That's how you record your PowerPoint, Google Slides, or Keynote presentation with audio and/or a webcam.
You don't use the slide software to do it. You use a screencasting app to record your desktop.

Make sure you stay hydrated and take breaks. I can usually only do about 1-2 hours of recording at a time, but others can record for longer. Find your ideal length through practice and trial and error.

PRO TIP: You need to AMP UP the excitement and enthusiasm.

If you have an NPR-like voice, your viewers will fall asleep and your videos will be torture to get through (sorry, but I'm not here to lie to you - I'm here to help you make kick ass videos your viewers will enjoy watching!).

Be excessive with your energy, even if it means you can't record for as long as you want.

Plan ahead and give yourself extra time to record. Also, be kind to yourself and trust in yourself. It is weird at first, but you will get better with practice, I promise!

6. Edit your videos after recording a presentation

Once you have your raw video file, then it's time to edit it.
Do not try to avoid editing, it's crucial to an efficient workflow and smooth videos that don't irritate your viewers!
At the very least, you need to edit out that part where you're choosing presenter mode and stopping the recording.

In both Mac and Windows, you can do this using built-in software. In Macs, you do it in the finder. In Windows, you do it in the Photo app.

But...you'll also want to edit out the big mistakes.
Before you rage quit and exit out of this blog post, hear me out...
Remember back in step two I said that having a script is one way to make recording easier?

Guess what.
The other way to make recording easier is to edit them!
It's so much easier just to record a long video, make mistakes along the way, pause, start over and edit those out.

Leave the minor mistakes in there. Focus on removing the ones that are really long or distracting.

Spend the 1-2 hours to learn how to edit and it will pay off in the long run.

Trust me.

Once again, Apple users, you have a huge advantage here because you've got iMovie. It's free and is the easiest video editing software I have ever used in my life.

I literally just figured it out without any training. (But if you struggle, there are plenty of YouTube videos to help you learn it. It is super easy).

Windows users?

This is going to suck.
We can't make up our mind with this.

For years, my editor used Final Cut. We used Apple products for a really long time and Final Cut is one of the best video editing apps ... but it's expensive and involves a steep learning curve, which is why I'm recommending iMovie if you have a mac.

But then we switched to Windows. And THAT was a pain because of video editing apps. He tried DaVinci Resolve, Camtasia, Screencast-O-Matic, Adobe Premiere, Filmora, and more that I'm forgetting.

Screencast-O-Matic, Adobe Premiere, and Filmora just weren't doing it for us for a variety of reasons.

Camtasia is okay, but editing out mistakes is actually not that easy in Camtasia compared to DaVinci Resolve and Final Cut.

Camtasia has easy annotations and zooming ... but I don't do that in my videos during post-editing so we needed to prioritize how the app edits out mistakes.

Plus, Camtasia is super expensive and there's issues with upgrading to new licenses, etc.

So, we (he) tried Davinci Resolve and it was fine. It's free but also hard to use. Sadly, we kept getting random "artifacts" in our videos (weird glitch thingies). It might have been his graphics card. Who knows.

We're back to using Final Cut now, after all that. (long sigh).
In short:

If you have a Mac, use iMovie

If you have a Windows, use whatever you want and good luck

7. Add captions to your videos

You need to add captions to your videos. If you teach at a university, it's probably a requirement of ADA.

Some people say that transcripts can work as an alternative, but I tend to disagree with that. Imagine if TV shows didn't have captions, but instead your only option was to download the script. Yeah. You could see how that would not be very accessible, right?

So, in my opinion you can have captions and a transcript. Sure, why not both? But I would not recommend only a transcript.

We use Rev.com for captions for my YouTube videos and it costs $1.25 per minute of video. You'll need to check with your department or university about options. They are expensive, as they should be, it's an important service.

And, in my opinion, your department/university should be paying for this. They should be covering the cost of this to keep all of their courses accessible. They spend all kinds of money on salaries for administrators and sports coaches. So there should be a budget for ensuring lectures are accessible and ADA compliant.

But you know...that's just me and my opinion.

So ask around and see if there are funds for this.

As a backup option, you can add live subtitles in Powerpoint. I don't know if it's good enough to work as captions. You really should try to get professional captions first, but if you're really in a pinch, maybe these will work better than nothing at all?

You got this 💪 your presentation recording will be great!

These were the seven basic steps to get you started with recording your presentations.

Obviously there's more involved and I know you have lots of questions, as you should, but hopefully this is enough to get you started.

Just in case it's not obvious, this is not something to rush into and do at the last second!

It takes a lot of time, planning, and a lot of effort to do well. It's totally worth it-I love having online videos and online courses-but if you don't do it right the first time having to redo it really sucks.

And I'm speaking from experience here, so do it right the first time. Plan ahead and give it the time it needs.

If you found this post to be helpful, then I think you're going to LOVE my free training.

Don't leave without at least checking it out first ~

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How to Record a Presentation - Echo Rivera

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Do you need to Record a Presentation with Audio and/or a Webcam? Learn the 7 basic steps for creating a presentation recording by presentation expert Dr Echo Rivera. Click here now!

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Learn how to draw better from 15 million other people! A collection of the most common hand drawn icons and how to draw them, based on 50 million entries into Google’s ‘Quick Draw’ game.

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Over 15 million players have contributed millions of drawings playing Quick, Draw! These doodles are a unique data set that can help developers train new neural networks, help researchers see patterns in how people around the world draw, and help artists create things we haven't begun to think of. That's why we're open-sourcing them, for anyone to play with. Select a drawing

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What would you do with 50,000,000 drawings made by real people on the internet?

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How and why we created an illustrated summary of recommendations for disseminating reviews to patients by Sarah Knowles, Joe Langley, and Lynn Laidlaw

In Summer of 2019, funded by the NIHR Centre for Engagement and Dissemination, KMA members Sarah, Joe and Krysia worked with two different groups of experts: public contributors and design specialists. We wanted to evaluate how easy to find and how useful evidence reviews were for patients, carers and members of the public, and identify ways their presentation could be improved.

This meant working with public contributors who understood what patients and carers would be looking for, and had first-hand experience of trying to improve research, and working with design experts who had skills in visual communication design and digital services.

What did we do?

We used two older reviews selected from the NIHR Evidence website. This ensured we were examining reviews that represented typical academic outputs*, being quite long documents in PDF form. We used a method called Think Aloud interviews to understand how the contributors looked for the reviews and how they navigated through the information when they found them. We then held a co-design workshop with contributors who had worked on a lay review, with researchers who produced reviews, and with design experts, so they could learn from each other's perspective and think about how things could be improved.

What did we find?

Drawing across our learning in the project, we produced an illustrated summary of recommendations for improving how review outputs are shared with patients, carers and the public.
Click here to view and download this from our Resources page. View a thread of the images on twitter, including alt text.
There are three broad categories to the recommendations:

Visual: The most direct suggestions about how reviews should look - this includes the need for white space, and thinking about visual cues that help orient people, for example logos that help them quickly assess whether the info is trustworthy.

Content: Better organisation of content is key to helping people navigate reviews and find what they are looking for. Most importantly, outputs for patients shouldn't be presented like a paper! Rather than wanting background, methods, and findings, patients wanted to first know who the info was for, what the key findings were, and then have the option to explore in detail what was done.

Process: Probably the most important recommendation from the study is about the need to work on outputs collaboratively. Working out the value of a review for patients themselves, and thinking through how different groups may want to access that information, is something that researchers need to do in partnership with contributors. Working with experts in information design and visual communication is necessary to support researchers who don't have those skill sets. We also encourage researchers to think about the process that patients go through to engage with a review - how do they find it? What do they want to happen afterwards? We need to think about a user journey of a patient seeking and reacting to a review, not just think about reviews as an isolated object.

Why an illustrated summary?

We wanted to produce a summary that could be shared as an example in action, to try to practice what we preach. So we tried where possible to have the recommendations acted out on the graphic - for example, we talk about white space when we use blank space, about patient stories when we include a patient quote, provide next step links when we talk about forward paths, and so on. We wanted to share something brief and focused (given one of the most common complaints about reviews being the excessive length). However, in order to distil the recommendations into one page we had to keep these succinct, and so they could be criticised as lacking detail. We hope there's enough information to act as a prompt for thinking and conversation. We recognise that anything more substantial would again require us to follow our own advice and co-create a resource or toolkit with the intended users, rather than trying to produce it ourselves in isolation.

We didn't want to imply the recommendations were a template to copy, or a by-the-numbers formula that can be replicated every time. The illustration showing the graphic as being constructed and discussed was a deliberate choice, to try to emphasise that an output has to be actively produced, and that this should be a collaborative effort, bringing in additional and essential expertise (specifically, that of patients themselves, and of designers).

What happens next?

We want to keep trying to practice what we preach, by continuing to get feedback and input, to demonstrate that creating and improving outputs is an ongoing process, and most importantly, an ongoing conversation with the people you share your findings with. For that reason, we'd be really grateful if you would take a few minutes to fill out our survey here, which asks about your opinion of the graphic. We will also be running a tweet chat where we share some individual images, so we can compare two different ways of sharing our results. We look forward to sharing what we find out!

* The more recent products on the site have been much innovated. We did some comparison with newer materials, for example with an easy read review, which the contributors thought was a huge improvement on the older themed review content: https://evidence.nihr.ac.uk/themedreview/https-evidence-nihr-ac-uk-themedreview-better-health-and-care-for-all-easy-read/

You can also check out a brilliant public-facing review produced by KM colleagues in the Impact Accelerator Unit at Keele University and read more here about their journey producing it.

Particular thanks to Laura Swaithes, Andrew Finney and Laura Campbell for their support on the project.
This post presents independent research funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR or the Department of Health

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Illustrated recommendations for sharing health research with patients carers and members of the public

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CleanPNG - HD png images and illustrations. Free unlimited download. - CleanPNG / KissPNG

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Discover transparent background images and illustrations. Best quality, free unlimited download.

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Poster - Checklist for scientists: communicating science to the public

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Poster - Checklist for scientists: communicating science to the public

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Image Bank | World Obesity Federation

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Our Image Bank forms a gallery of free-to-use images to ensure accurate, non-biased, respectful images are widely available.

Select a category to get started

Images used to accompany online or print news stories frequently depict people with obesity from unflattering angles, often inactive or consuming unhealthy food. This portrayal creates an environment where there is a lack of understanding and even a desire to shame individuals who have obesity.  The Image Bank library reflects the global face of obesity that our entire membership can utilise. Please read and agree to the Terms of Use before browsing the library.

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Our Image Bank forms a gallery of free-to-use images to ensure accurate, non-biased, respectful images are widely available.

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Download, Customize, Edit and Personalize.Over 180k+ open source icons

Peoples from these companies liked this project

Framer

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DigitalOcean

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180k+

High quality icons to choose from.

150+

High quality open source icon sets

6

Different formats to get icons in

Diverse formats to choose from

We have a wide range of formats to choose from, so you can download the icons in the format you want. We have SVG, PNG, WEBP, JSX, VUE and BASE64, URLs, CSS background snippers, HTML Image tags. We have it all.

We're shipping things fast af!

We're soon launching a powerful api, sign up to keep updated.

Contact us or follow us on twitter

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Iconbuddy is a powerful icon search engine and manager that allows you to search, download, customize, and edit over 180k+ open source icons. It offers a wide selection of SVG and PNG icons, including royalty-free vector graphics and clipart illustrations. Additionally, Noun Project and Freepik offer free SVG and PNG buddy icons to download.

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Choosing images for sharing evidence: a guide | Cochrane UK

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Recently, Cochrane launched ‘Choosing images for sharing evidence: a guide’. This resource aims to help anyone who needs to choose images for a dissemination product based on any Cochrane Review or anyone choosing images for other materials such as news items, reports, or social media posts.

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communicating research findings with the public illustrations

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communicating research findings with the public illustrations

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Sarah Knowles and Chris Redford illustrations - dropbox link

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Sarah Knowles Chris Redford illustrations

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Dr Micheala-Livingstone-Banks is a leader and experienced practitioner of public engagement and has developed the Oxford Sparks program for over 6 years, producing 42* research animations (with over 1.8 million views); and a suite of accompanying digital engagement activities and resources (*which a…

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Not free - A picture library featuring people with a learning disability as the main characters

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Not free - A picture library featuring people with a learning disability as the main characters

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Hello. We are Photosymbols, based in Bristol, England. We make a picture library featuring people with a learning disability as the main characters. The pictures are used to make information a bit easier to understand - in the UK we call this easy read.

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SMOG Index Readability Test

Introduction

You might have come across the SMOG Index before, and think that it has something to do with weather events. It's actually a test that assesses the reading level of a variety of texts. But what does SMOG stand for?

Before answering that, the SMOG Index was formulated in 1969 by Henry McLaughlin, a psycholinguistic graduate, and psychologist. At that time, there have been many readability tests available. Still, McLaughlin wanted to develop one that is 'laughably simple' and calls attention to polysyllabic words (or words with more than two syllables).

MacLaughlin named this formula the Simple Measure of Gobbledygook. Some would say SMOG is a nod to another readability test called the FOG Index by Robert Gunning. Regardless, the SMOG Index was met with doubt and criticism during its inception due to its simplicity. But further study and use have shown that it is an accurate measure of readability. It is still widely used today.

Description

In a time where computers weren't as regular in day-to-day life, readability tests were bothersome to conduct. That's because you manually have to cover the entire text. With the SMOG Reading Level Formula, all you have to do is get 30 sentences and base your results from there. You will be able to determine the grade level a person must have to understand the text.

When using the SMOG formula, you will have to remember a few things:

One sentence is a group of words ending in a period, exclamation point, or question mark.

Long sentences with a semi-colon are considered two sentences.

Hyphenated words are considered one word.

Polysyllabic proper nouns are counted.

Polysyllabic numbers (regardless of how they are written) are counted.

Abbreviations should be avoided unless necessary. If not, it should be read as unabbreviated and counted.

SMOG Formula

The SMOG readability formula, like MacLaughlin said, is quite simple. You just need to follow a few simple steps:

Step 1: Count 10 sentences in a row at the beginning of your text, another 10 from the middle, and the last 10 from the end to get a total of 30 sentences.

Step 2: Count all the words with three or more syllables.

Step 3: Get the square root of the total number from Step 2 and round to the nearest 10.

Step 4: Add three to the total from Step 3.

The number you get in Step 4 is your SMOG Grade. It's fairly easy to understand the SMOG Index results as they compute for the grade level. So if you get a 4 in the SMOG Index, your text can be understood by 4th graders and above.

As a general guide, it is a good idea to aim for a reading level equivalent to 6th to 8th graders, as this is what the average American can most easily comprehend. Anything higher than that would be somewhat challenging to read.

Grade Conversion

This is only a quick overview of the conversion table of the SMOG Index. But it will help clarify your results.

Total Number of Polysyllabic Words

School Level

Comprehension

Uses

The SMOG Index is widely used today due to its simplistic approach. But it is most notably preferred by the healthcare sector. Doctors and medical practitioners are notorious for using highly-specialized jargon that non-specialists cannot understand.

With the SMOG Index, medical literature can be assessed so that healthcare professionals are ensured that the typical person can comprehend their message. As such, more people can access the internet to search for consumer-related healthcare information and not be confused by it.

How to Improve Score

Improving your score in the SMOG Index is relatively simple. Lessen the big words you write and stick to the jargon that your target audience uses on the daily. Remember to write for your audience first. If you are writing for the everyday person, use a common language. If you are writing for a specialized audience, that's the time you can use the terms that all of you understand.

If all else fails, you can easily use a modern SMOG Index calculator to assess your text and then edit according to the result.

Further Readings

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SMOG Index Readability Calculator Online

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Find SMOG Index score of your text. Enter text or upload text file and click on check button to get readability score of your text

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PEP Network event: Producing Video Assets

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Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

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Numbers, measurements, dates and time - NHS digital service manual

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Content styles, including numerals, ordinals, dosage, temperature, fractions and percentages

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Free, public domain resources for scientific visualization

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Free, public domain resources for scientific visualization

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The library is a collection of free, public domain resources for scientific visualization. It is designed to be used with Blender’s asset browser

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*If you would like to support the library by purchasing it you can find it on gumroad for 10 USD. Both the free and paid versions are identical. The free version exists as part of CGFigures' commitment to making research accessible to everyone.

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If you would like to support the library by purchasing it you can find it on gumroad for 10 USD. Both the free and paid versions are identical. The free version exists as part of CGFigures' commitment to making research accessible to everyone.

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Videos about Academic poster templates from Mike Morrison 

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Videos about Academic poster templates from Mike Morrison 

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Better design for scientists, better science for designers.

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Download free photos about reseacher on Burst

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https://www.popai.pro/ai-presentation/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=search&utm_campaign=gb&utm_id=ym&utm_term=tome&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiA3sq6BhD2ARIsAJ8MRwVlLfUcl6hoZ3_ZeXj9R_2Cvj2zzSZj5UnyrSsN2Nd-L6SQaaRAoFIaAkvwEALw_wcB

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PopAi: is a powerful AI tool that allows you to chat with any document or pdf（GPT-4 & GPT-4o） in one click, create ai powerpoint and slides with kinds of free templates and generate any AI images fast.

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AI-Powered Visualization for Any Topic

Navigating design elements and finding the right visual style can be daunting. With Piktochart AI, it's easy to transform data into visually appealing infographics . Excellence made simple, just for you.

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Stand out for all the right reasons. Piktochart AI transform dense details into clear and engaging visual stories that resonate and spread. Ensure your news isn't just read, but remembered and shared.

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Adaptable designs that are on-brand, every time. With Piktochart AI, transform your insights into compelling visuals in a heartbeat.

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Craft bite-sized visuals that pack a punch. With our AI infographic maker, transform your data into designs that are as captivating as they are accurate.

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Piktochart AI's free infographic maker crafts custom infographics from any topic in seconds. Vivid visuals and swift creation- try it now for free.

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Our cutting-edge technology, powered by AI-generated voices, will take your audio to new heights.

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Access our FREE ReStory Rocket framework to help you craft stories about your research in minutes to drive change fast

https://niftyfox.notion.site/ReStory-Rocket-Framework-154de7a7680c80e89e51ef2adec73078?pvs=4

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Notion – The all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases.

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A new tool that blends your everyday work apps into one. It’s the all-in-one workspace for you and your team

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Visual Approaches to Research Translation

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Visual Approaches to Research Translation

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This article suggests two approaches for sharing education research based on a model of research dissemination for Twitter pioneered by the medical community.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/0013189X211035351

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Nifty Fox worked with Prof Laura Gray at the University of Leicester to conduct an evaluation on the use of animation in explaining statistical methodology to PPIE groups.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10631193/

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Incorporation of patient and public involvement in statistical methodology research: development of an animation

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Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) is important to all aspects of health research. However, there are few examples of successful PPIE in statistical methodology research. One of the reasons for this relates to challenges in the…

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Using illustrations for qualitative research

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Using illustrations for qualitative research

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Industry 4.0 is viewed as a complex scenario. This complex scenario could be interpreted using illustrations such as sketches or drawings. Ideally, sketches and drawings are useful in illustrating complexity and multiple abstracts from observed social reality. The use of illustrations allows novice qualitative researchers to explore observed social reality in depth with less linear insight. However, few scholars mention the use of illustrations at the research planning stage because most sketches and drawings have been used as tools during data collection merely to understand an interviewee’s perspective.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1609406920907247

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Blog on how creative methods can bring research to a wider audience

https://evidence.nihr.ac.uk/alert/creative-communication-tools-can-bring-research-findings-to-a-wider-audience/

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Creative communications can bring research to more people - NIHR Evidence

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“The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” George Bernard Shaw Once upon a time, a conference presentation and publication in an academic journal were the extents of a researcher’s responsibility to share the results of their research. People assumed that those who could use the findings to make…

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Creative techniques for systematic reviews

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Creative techniques for systematic reviews

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Abstract

Background

Increasing pressure to publicise research findings and generate impact, alongside an expectation from funding bodies to go beyond publication within academic journals, has generated interest in alternative methods of science communication.

Our aim is to describe our experience of using a variety of creative communication tools, reflect on their use in different situations, enhance learning and generate discussion within the systematic review community.

Methods

Over the last 5 years, we have explored several creative communication tools within the systematic review process and beyond to extend dissemination beyond traditional academic mechanisms.

Central to our approach is the co-production of a communication plan with potential evidence users which facilitates (i) the identification of key messages for different audiences, (ii) discussion of appropriate tools to communicate key messages and (iii) exploration of avenues to share them. We aim to involve evidence users in the production of a variety of outputs for each research project cognisant of the many ways in which individuals engage with information.

Results

Our experience has allowed us to develop an understanding of the benefits and challenges of a wide range of creative communication tools. For example, board games can be a fun way of learning, may flatten power hierarchies between researchers and research users and enable sharing of large amounts of complex information in a thought provoking way, but they are time and resource intensive both to produce and to engage with. Conversely, social media shareable content can be quick and easy to produce and to engage with but limited in the depth and complexity of shareable information.

Discussion

It is widely recognised that most stakeholders do not have time to invest in reading large, complex documents; creative communication tools can be a used to improve accessibility of key messages. Furthermore, our experience has highlighted a range of additional benefits of embedding these techniques within our project processes e.g. opening up two-way conversations with end-users of research to discuss the implications of findings.

Keywords: Communication, Dissemination, Science communication

Background

Increasing pressure to publicise research findings and generate impact, alongside an expectation from funding bodies to go beyond publication within academic journals has generated interest in using alternative methods of science communication to disseminate research findings. The UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) defines dissemination as 'getting the findings of research to the people who can make use of them to maximise the benefit of the research without delay' [ 1]. We know that most evidence users do not have time to invest in reading large and complex documents and may lack awareness or be unable to access newly published research [ 2, 3], and so in order to communicate effectively, we need to go beyond our academic 'bubble'.

Over the last 5 years, we have explored a number of creative communication methods, to extend dissemination beyond traditional academic mechanisms and share our research with the diverse range of people who could benefit from the findings. Our general approach is based on evidence based guidance [ 4- 7], principles of good dissemination [ 1, 8, 9] and examples of best practice relevant to the communication of systematic review findings [ 10- 12].

Our aim in this paper is to (i) share and describe our experience of using a variety of creative communication tools (illustration, podcasts, infographics, blogs, briefing papers and board games and social media shareable content) and (ii) reflect on their use in different situations within the review process and thus to enhance learning and discussion amongst the systematic review community.

Underpinning our approach are three key questions:

i)
What are the key messages?

ii)
Who needs to know about them?

iii)
How can we get the messages to the people who can use them?

Consideration of these questions will help guide decisions in involving evidence users in developing a dissemination plan that outlines key messages, identifies potential audiences and explores suitable format(s) and outlets for sharing messages which make the most of existing networks and opportunities.

At the heart of our work in this area is (i) an awareness of the need for producing different formats for different people, (ii) the importance of images to attract attention, and to aid learning and recall and (iii) a desire to communicate complex messages in easily accessible formats to foster enthusiasm and ultimately action. We are mindful of the need for evaluation to identify issues, learn from them and improve. To date, we have focussed primarily on informal formative and process evaluation as an ongoing process through consultation and feedback with representatives of those whom we hope will engage with our messages.

In the remainder of this paper, we provide examples of our experience in developing and using six communication tools for systematic review findings, illustrations, podcasts, blog posts, briefing documents, boards games and social media shareable content, before reflecting on our learning about creative communications.

Illustration

Illustrations are drawings or images that give a visual explanation or interpretation of a topic or context. They have been used as a means of communication for centuries, adapted for different specialties and using a range of techniques. Today, illustration often sits under a broader concept of graphic communication whereby numerous design techniques can be brought together to communicate a topic in a variety of formats for different audiences.

'...today the discipline of illustration is often lauded by the way it enriches and expands the lives, imaginations and sensibilities of individuals. In fact, it's known to create and interpret cultural capital in all of its forms, most notably by its contribution to education and learning, research and new knowledge.' Professor Alan Male (Emeritus Professor of Illustration, Falmouth University), Keynote address, International Conference on Illustration and Animation, 2015 [ 13].

We have used a range of illustrative techniques at several stages of the review process.

"Graphic Medicine" is a relatively new terminology coined to encapsulate the use of comics within healthcare for the purposes of education and patient care [ 14]. Comics can provide an opportunity for patients to share their experiences of medical care, treatment or living with an illness, which provides them with the opportunity to learn more about their illness and access support from peers living with a similar condition [ 14]. On the other side of the practitioner-patient relationship, comics also support practitioners to gain additional insight into the patient experience [ 15]. Comics, as a form of illustration, have the potential to create a shared narrative across different audiences and convey complex and/or emotion information in an engaging and accessible format [ 16]. We wanted to adopt the principles of this approach within the academic field to engage evidence users with the work that we do.

Scribing, sometimes known as Graphic Facilitation [ 17, 18], is a technique that uses a scribe to bring together key messages, ideas or insights from an event or meeting. Scribing usually involves the team working collaboratively with the scribe giving them as much information as possible beforehand for the context of the event, the intended aims, and what is expected of the output created. Scribing can take place in person or online, and with the scribe working on the illustration as the event is happening, it is possible to see progress immediately, dynamically reflect live events, actively engage attendees and make changes on the go.

Infographics aim to provide information and/or data in a form that is quick and easy for the audience to engage with and as such can use a variety of techniques to share information within the same output/product [ 19- 24]. Infographics are often highly technical pieces of communication produced by trained professionals to simplify and ease communication of complex knowledge [ 24].

Example 1: parent-to-parent support interventions for parents of babies cared for in a neonatal unit (PaReNt)

Stage of review: protocol development

This example is based upon a review evaluating evidence regarding the effectiveness and experiences of support groups for parents of infants admitted to neonatal wards [ 25]. We developed a plain language protocol summary (PLPS) which was intended to be a more accessible version of the scientific protocol [ 26]. Scientific protocols are usually written using technical language for the people conducting research. We wished to develop a more accessible version to support the parent advisory group to more fully engage with the review process by enhancing their understanding of the review rationale and processes, thus empowering them to share their knowledge and experiences.

Whilst the process of developing the PLPS helped us to identify the most important messages in a format which was definitely more concise than our full protocol, the final output was still well within our academic comfort zone. It was a three-page written document, and although it felt like an important step in improving communication from our perspective, our parent advisory group were nonplussed. On reflection, we felt we could do more to make the information accessible and useful. We decided to explore the potential for using illustrative techniques to convey the rationale, aims and methods of our project to parents and members of the public. Drawing upon the information provided within the PLPS, a researcher and artist from outside the project team (LS) created a series of illustrations to emphasise key points. These illustrations were then arranged in a series within a one page document through consultation with the Parent Advisory Group and project team.

Stage of review: dissemination

We asked artist Rae Goddard from Scriberia ( Scriberia.com) to attend and live draw two meetings where the results of the project were discussed, the final project meeting with the research team and the final meeting with the parent advisory group. Rae created a summary of key findings that evolved and developed during the meetings. The images captured a record of what was said including key quotes. We used the images to reflect on the parents' experiences but also as mementoes to thank and acknowledge the parents for their contribution to the project. The final output (Fig. 1) involved interpreting both researcher and parent narratives to create a one-page visual summary of the project process, findings and implications for further clinical practice and research. This illustration was included within a newsletter for the BLISS charity, and postcards of the image were sent to neonatal units across the UK, along with an electronic image file with permission to be printed as posters for display on neonatal wards. Parts of the final image were also incorporated within a Briefing Paper summarising the review findings.

Example 2: multicomponent hospital-led interventions to reduce hospital stay for older adults following elective surgery

Stage of review: dissemination

We used Graphic Medicine to support the dissemination of findings from a systematic review [ 27] aiming to evaluate the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of interventions to reduce the length of stay for older adults admitted to hospital for planned procedures. A researcher within the project team (LS) created a series of illustrations to accompany brief text excerpts which summarised the rationale, methods, findings and implications of the review. We circulated the final two-page document to local patient groups and clinical contacts. The black and white format was intended to be suitable for photocopying and sharing within hospital waiting rooms in a way which minimised use of hospital resources. We also incorporated individual images into conference posters and the project Briefing Paper for clinicians and service commissioners. Due to time-limitations, it was necessary to focus on producing one comic which could be shared with a variety of stakeholder groups. We would like to use the images to create materials which identify and communicate messages tailored to the specific needs of different groups to enhance the project's accessibility and relevance to different stakeholders.

Example 3: improving continence in children and young people with neurodisability

Stage of review: interpretation of findings; dissemination

In this example, we used digital scribing undertaken during virtual meetings, to bring together the findings from a survey and a systematic review of interventions to improve continence in children and young people with neurodisability [ 28] (Fig. 2). This project involved a large number of stakeholders, e.g. clinicians involved in the care of children with neurodisability, representatives from third sector organisations and parents, and concluded during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. We had planned to hold a whole team face to face meeting and present and discuss the findings with an artist present but it became clear that that would not be possible due to pandemic restrictions. We therefore discussed and agreed the key findings as a team before sending a summary to the artist, Matt Swan of Scriberia ( Scriberia.com). One member of the research team then met with the artist virtually to discuss the project and the key findings. Matt produced a mock-up of the eventual illustration before attending a virtual team meeting where we discussed the findings in more detail to produce a final agreed version of the infographic.

Example 4: using creative techniques to communicate systematic reviews

Stage of review: dissemination

In this final example, we worked with a sketch note artist, Grace Elizabeth, to create an infographic (Fig. 3) that describes the various methods of creative communication discussed within this paper and the advantages and disadvantages of using them. Development of the infographic involved an iterative process of discussing and sharing key points with the artist and editing and amending draft illustrations. We also shared draft versions of the infographic with individuals unconnected with the paper to check external understanding. The infographic was used to present our work at a national conference. Discrete sections of the infographic have also been used on social media.

Reflections on using illustration

Overall, illustration can be an interesting and engaging method to involve key stakeholders with both the process of conducting systematic reviews and sharing the findings. Whilst producing illustrations can be labour intensive and require additional time (if utilising in-house expertise), or financial resources (if hiring a professional artist), we have found that the outputs can be used flexibly across a range of academic resources and can be an easy and cost-effective method to share project information and findings with evidence users. To maximise the usefulness of this type of output, we recommend the final illustration represents collaboration and a shared understanding between researchers, evidence users and artist.

Example 1: interventions to improve the mental health of young people with long-term conditions

Stage of review: dissemination

We produced several podcasts as part of the dissemination of the findings from a complex systematic review of interventions to improve the mental health of young people with long-term conditions [ 31]. We initially recorded two podcasts: one to allow members of the research team (researchers, clinicians, young people and their parents) to describe the findings of the systematic review and one for researchers, young people and their parents to reflect on the process of involvement in the project.

These podcasts were resourced by the dissemination budget allocated to the project. We were able to travel to London to record conversations with the young people involved in the project and their parents. We also had the support of a science communications specialist with professional recording equipment who guided us through the process, from developing the script to producing good-quality audio and editing the audio clips. This support was invaluable in producing a seamless and professional product from multiple recording sessions.

The finished products are hosted on our project page, are available on SoundCloud and were shared via Twitter alongside the release of the final report. Our discussions with the young people and their parents indicate that producing the podcasts was a rewarding experience not least because it provided an opportunity for their voices to be heard on a subject that they felt strongly about. They also enjoyed being able to make a practical contribution to the dissemination of the research.

A further about the project was recorded and featured alongside a blog by the 'Mental Elf' (@MentalElf) following the 2018 Cochrane Colloquium in Edinburgh, UK. This involved Erin Walker, Patient and Public Involvement Lead, and Katrina Brooks, a young person from our advisory group, discussing their experiences of being involved in the project.

Example 2: Exeter HS&DR Evidence Synthesis Centre

Stage of review: dissemination

Having previously produced a successful set of podcasts, we were aware of the value of such an approach. However, we found it to be a fairly time-consuming and resource-heavy endeavour, requiring recording equipment, multiple meetings and technical expertise, which we considered prohibitive. That was until we were inspired to pilot a regular research podcast by a twitter discussion, when a member of the public professed that it would be nice to hear academics talk about their work. We wanted to know whether a podcast could effectively confer the findings of a research study and whether it would be achievable with a low-tech, low-resource solution. We found that this was achievable and have now produced two podcast episodes to accompany outputs produced by the Exeter HS&DR Evidence Synthesis Centre.

The first described the findings of a rapid review of evidence to inform the Independent Review of the Mental Health Act (1983) in late 2018, with a single speaker describing the work. This was quick and easy to do, using a podcast producing app called Anchor on a smartphone. Anchor allows audio to be recorded and re-recorded with the touch of a button, in the comfort of the office or home, without the requirement of additional equipment (although this can be added to enhance quality).

For the second episode, we described the findings of a large review of interventions aiming to reduce length of stay in hospital for older adults undergoing planned surgery. Rather than a single speaker, we wanted to include a range of voices including clinical stakeholders and members of the review team.

In order for this to run smoothly, we needed to ensure that all speakers had clear instructions about their contribution to the overall episode, had access to the required technology (smartphone) and could contribute with minimal time commitment. By combining separate recordings we were able to have one researcher 'hosting' the podcast, asking questions of the other contributors and varying the delivery of the episode. We promoted links to the podcast on social media alongside the final report and links are available on our project pages.

Blog posts

Blog posts or short, written, accessible opinion pieces can be used to talk about a systematic review using a relaxed but informative and engaging style often from a variety of perspectives [ 33, 34]. This approach to communicating can be adapted for most audiences [ 35] and can be used to talk about a review at any stage, for example, experiences in developing the protocol with stakeholders, or views from researchers on working on a systematic review for the first time. Producing regular blog posts can be a helpful mechanism to build interest in a review before it is published, and it can also be informative for those interested to understand methodological challenges.

Example 1: blog series on the perspectives of patient-initiated appointment systems for people with long-term or chronic conditions

Stage of review: dissemination

In 2020, we published a Cochrane systematic review [ 36] that looked at the use of patient-initiated appointment systems in place of consultant-led appointment systems for people with chronic and recurrent conditions being managed in secondary care (hospital outpatients department). The review itself had taken some time to finally bring together and publish and during that time the idea of patient-initiated clinics was becoming increasingly talked about. We knew that the review findings would be well publicised in various forms with the help of the Cochrane team, and we had also published a briefing paper on the review to increase accessibility for a wider audience. So, for the blog series we decided to focus on the intervention itself and reflect on how it was received by a range of stakeholders: a service-user, a clinical nurse specialist, a consultant, a service manager and a health service commissioner). Whilst this could have been incorporated into one post, it would have been very long so we decided to make a blog series-one post per perspective-that could be published over a number of days or weeks. An additional advantage of this approach was that each new post not only directed readers to the review (and associated dissemination outputs) but also to the other blog posts in the series, those that had already been published or those that were forthcoming. We created tweets to share the blog posts to a wider audience and also asked our stakeholders to share the links. The series was well received in terms of comments and re-tweets.

Example 2: a single blog post on social work practice in the UK

Stage of review: scoping

In 2017, our Exeter Health Services and Delivery Evidence Synthesis Centre was commissioned by the HS&DR programme to undertake a systematic review of the effectiveness of different models of social work practice in the UK. Our first task was to become familiar with the area and to explore the available evidence. In doing this, we realised that there was very little evidence available that could be synthesised and the project did not progress. We felt, however, that a summary of our scoping of the topic might be a useful resource for others and could also provide some insight into the processes that we use to become familiar with a topic. We posted the on our team blog-Sifting and Sensemaking-in July 2017 and shared the link via both our Twitter feed and via email to those who had been involved in the scoping process. The blog post was well received in terms of comments and re-tweets and allowed the review team to feel that although the project was paused due to lack of available evidence, their work in reaching that decision could still be useful.

Reflections on using blogs

Blogs can be used in lots of different ways and at different stages of the review process to engage with the audience. We have found that preparing blog posts, especially with other stakeholders, can help to clarify key messages, provide an outlet for discussion and increase the diversity of people who engage with review findings. However, it can be time consuming in terms of identifying and liaising with the contributors, preparing the posts on the blog site, finding the appropriate images and devising tweets and emails to promote them. Publishing the methods and outcomes during the review process can help to improve the transparency of the work undertaken by the team, something which is important to establish trust between scientists and evidence users.

Example 1: Exeter HS&DR Evidence Synthesis Centre: the Briefing

Stage of review: dissemination

For this programme of work, we have developed a template that combines the 1- and 3-page summary to create a 4-page document, tailored to the anticipated audience and focused on the findings and implications with little methodological detail. The front page presents a complete summary of the review with key take home messages and the following pages provide explanation of context, brief methods, findings and implications for practice, policy and research. We have also used this template in a number of other projects and found it to be easily adaptable to different review topics and audiences.

Example 2: how do "robopets" impact the health and well-being of residents in care homes?

Stage of review: dissemination

For this review, we created a newspaper style briefing paper, The Woofington Post, to share our findings with care home staff. Methodological detail was minimised to dedicate space to communicating key messages arising from the research. Based on our experience of working with care home staff, our intention was to produce a short, easy to read and visually appealing briefing paper that would be suitable for staff to read on breaks. We shared this briefing paper predominantly in hard copy format in response to feedback that many care home staff do not spend their breaks in front of computers or devices. The Woofington Post is also available electronically and the visually appealing format has proved popular on Twitter.

In both examples, we provide easily accessible links to signpost the reader to the full report, other related resources and the contact details for the research team and thereby provide further information for those who are keen to have a more in depth understanding of the research.

Reflections on using briefing papers

Briefing papers often form the mainstay of our communication activities as they provide a quick summary that is easy to share both electronically and in hard copy format. We have found them to be a useful device in communicating with, for example, creative colleagues to inform discussions about producing other outputs and, with support groups and third sector organisations to facilitate communication and enable effective decision making about the suitability of the research for newsletter or website pieces. The process of creating briefing papers itself can also be beneficial in creating clarity within the team about the nature of the important messages and their implications. The written form may not be accessible to all and this type of output can be easily overlooked amongst the volume of written/electronic information we are exposed to on a daily basis.

Example 1: Pet Purrsuit-a board game to share evidence on the impact of animals in care homes

Stage of review: dissemination

We developed a board game, Pet Purrsuit (Fig. 4), to share evidence from two systematic reviews on the impact of animals and robotic pets on the health and wellbeing of older people living in care homes (paper in preparation [ 40];), in order to engage care home staff with our research findings. Our aim was to design a game that would help care home staff consider the benefits and challenges of having animals reside in, or visit their care home. We followed Groppel-Wegener's three plus one stages in board game design: diagram stage, game mechanics, visual impact and assembly [ 41]. In the diagram stage, which drafts the game path, we focused on the decision-making process for staff considering introducing animals to the care home. In the game mechanics stage, we discussed different ways of introducing potential shortcuts and obstacles and triggering chance events (for example, game cards). We devised two types of game cards, 'treats' cards which would give the player a turn and 'paws' cards which would mean that the player missed a turn. The 'treats' cards highlight some of the reported benefits of animal therapy, whilst the 'paws' cards consider issues such as staff training and the practicalities of having resident/visiting animals in the care home. During the visual impact stage, we considered potential visuals to illustrate the content of the game and thought about how we could organise the game path. The game path follows the world wide classic 'snakes and ladders' board with numbered, gridded squares, some of which were allocated to 'treats' and 'paws'. We sketched out ideas that included animals that are often found in care homes and ways in which we could incorporate a 'residential home' into the design. Lastly, in the assembly stage, we brought together the previous stages with a sketch of the prototype board game.

We then worked with a local artist and designer to design and create a visually appealing and professional looking prototype board game, Pet Purrsuit which incorporates images of care home staff, residents and animals.

Initial observations from playing the game with researchers and care home staff suggest that the board game is an engaging way of learning which encouraged the players to think and engage and apply the research findings to their own context. Conversations occurred during the gameplay, as the players read the content of the 'treats' and 'paws' cards aloud. Several aspects of our approach to designing the game helped make it easy for people to engage including basing the visual appearance and the rules on familiar games and permitting play to stop and resume later. We believe that playing the game may also have the potential to flatten the power hierarchy between researchers and research users.

Reflections on using board games

In this example, the board game was used for dissemination but this method of communication could provide an opportunity to engage with stakeholders in other stages of the review process, e.g. in explaining the scope and remit of a review albeit this would require a less polished product. Researchers should note that designing and developing a board game is resource and time intensive, in this case, requiring a professional artist and consultation with stakeholders. There is also the possibility that the concept of a board game as a way of engaging with research may be viewed by some as trivialising the research and engagement may be limited if playing the game requires facilitation. People are motivated to play games for different reasons [ 42], and it may be a challenge to develop a game which appeals to all audiences. As a result of the global coronavirus pandemic, we have had limited opportunities to explore these issues in depth with care home staff.

Social media shareable content

Social media shareable content is content that can easily be shared on social media as a means of signposting the audience to more substantial outputs. Using visual images has been shown to be effective in increasing engagement with social media [ 43- 45] which is perhaps not surprising given that the use of images to improve attention to and recall of information is a well-known approach in health education [ 46]. The use of visual snapshots of the findings of systematic reviews is a technique frequently used to share Cochrane evidence [ 47] in a dissemination product they refer to as blogshots.

Example 1: World Alzheimer's Day

Stage of review: dissemination

We recently created and shared a series of Twitter cards in order to share our relevant research in celebration of World Alzheimer's Day (Fig. 5). Each card has a similar design and contains a short statement of the main findings from the review, a visually appealing image and a link to the published paper. We shared the cards on Twitter over the course of the day.

Reflections on using social media shareable content

Social media shareable content is relatively quick to create using existing content. In this example, we were able to highlight a collection of previously published research relevant to World Alzheimer's Day in a cohesive style. This form of dissemination enables the sharing of key messages from a published paper in an eye-catching format. As this example demonstrates, it can also be used to promote previously published research (rather than new outputs) as part of a themed collection. It can, however, be challenging to summarise the key points with the necessary degree of nuance in the space available.

Discussion

In this paper, we have described our experience of using a variety of creative communication tools at different stages of review production and dissemination and reflected on the advantages and disadvantages of each tool. Our reflections are captured in an infographic (Fig. 3). Collating our combined experiences has given us an opportunity to reflect on some of our shared learning which we have organised into seven key areas: the aim and purpose of creative communication products, benefits of a multi-layered approach, consideration of digital vs. non-digital outputs, the role of non-researchers, choice of images, evaluation and unexpected benefits.

Aim and purpose

In common with many others [ 6, 48- 50], the underlying aim and purpose of our creative communication products is to present key messages in useful and accessible ways to improve engagement with our work. Whilst this may feel self-evident, we have found that it is useful to actively reflect on the aim and purpose and to remember that any creative communication product is unlikely to be able to present the whole story. It can be challenging to identify and distil the important information for a lay audience from the wealth of detail required by academic audiences. Working closely with non-researchers to understand the level of useful detail is helpful, as is being prepared to work iteratively and to make numerous changes. It can be helpful to allow time to reflect on whether sufficient information is provided to allow the reader to apply the appropriate level of confidence to the findings. Sharing with researchers who are not closely involved with a project and asking them to feedback what they understand from a creative communication product can be invaluable.

Multi-layered approach

As others have described [ 49, 51], we have often used a multi-layered approach to communication. For example, producing a briefing paper (which includes illustrations created specifically for the project), a blog and a podcast and sharing these outputs by social media as well as via more traditional methods, e.g. mail outs. With their STEP tool, Elijz and colleagues [ 52] plot the relationship between complexity of the information to be communicated and the available level of interaction with potential audiences. We (as others) would argue that even with this in mind, one size is unlikely to fit all, and at different times, individuals will have different preferences for the balance between complexity and interaction and between words, graphs, images and videos. Hence, by linking together the various products to enable audiences to access some or all of them, our intention is that the information we seek to share is accessible to individuals with a range of engagement preferences [ 49, 53]. Furthermore, sharing key messages in bite sized packages exploits the audience's desire to find out more-the 'pull' model of knowledge translation [ 54].

Digital vs. non-digital

Getting to know your audience and their preferences for accessing information is an underlying principle of effective science communication [ 55, 56]. By working closely with the people who we hope will use the findings of our research in their practice, we have learnt not to assume that a digital output via email or social media will be the most convenient format for audiences. Unlike academics, many health and social care professionals do not spend the majority of their time in front of screens and a paper version of a creative communication product may be more useful and relevant. For example, after discussion with care home staff, we chose to share the briefing paper for our robotic pets review [ 40] as a paper document as staff felt they were more likely to pick something like this up and read it in their break than open an email after work. Likewise, following a request from staff, we offered the illustrations created during our peer support in neonatal units project [ 25] as a poster for display on the ward and created postcards with the illustrations on one side and further details on the other .

Role of non-researchers

In addition to working with representatives of the potential audiences during the review process, non-researchers have had an essential role in directly or indirectly shaping all of our creative communication products. Starting early, allowing sufficient time to distil the key messages for different audiences, developing a plan and engaging the right people to deliver the plan are all important elements of effective communication [ 10]. We have found non-researchers particularly helpful in de-prioritising the methodological detail that as researchers we are keen to share, in preference to promoting messages which will be influential in contributing to changing practice or behaviour.

Evaluation

We are mindful of the need for evaluation [ 58]. Our preference has been to undertake informal evaluation both at the formative and the outcome stage [ 59]. We are aware that in approaching evaluation in this way we are not able to benefit from objective critique. Nevertheless, as research dissemination often happens beyond the funded stage of a project, formal evaluation can be challenging. We undertake formative evaluation to guide development by identifying optimal content, format and delivery channels during the process of creating content. As described above, an important element of all our work is listening to the potential audience, and formative evaluation takes place through informal discussion via face to face meetings and email. Outcome evaluation, assessing whether an output meets its goals, whether they be behaviours, attitudes, knowledge, skills or intentions is more challenging to undertake informally. Our approach has been to capture metrics on, e.g. blogs and tweets and exploring reasons for some outputs attracting more attention that others, with the intention of incorporating learning into future communication. However, metrics are not easy to analyse and whilst they may guide understanding of the reach of a product, they provide no indication of the extent to which the evidence is subsequently used [ 60].

Conclusions

In summary, it is widely acknowledged that most stakeholders do not have time to invest in reading large and complex documents. Creative communication tools can be a useful mechanism to improve accessibility to key messages. As well as helping us to better understand the context of the research findings and their value for evidence users, we have also observed some unexpected benefits of the processes of producing creative communication outputs. Furthermore, our experience has highlighted a range of additional benefits of embedding these techniques within our project processes, e.g. opening up two-way conversation with end-users of research to discuss the implications of findings.

Acknowledgements

This paper would not have been possible without our travel to the cancelled Cochrane Santiago Colloquium and the generous hospitality of the DoubleTree by Hilton Santiago Kennedy Hotel in Santiago, Chile, who provided a safe haven for us to write during the civil unrest in October 2019. The paper has also benefitted from the COVID pandemic lockdown allowing some of the time spent on the daily commute to be re-assigned to writing. We would also like to thank the funders, speakers and contributors to our PenARC Creative Communication series and Sarah Chapman, Selena Ryan-Vig and Rebecca Abbott for insightful comments on drafts.

Adherence to national and international regulations

Not applicable.

Authors' contributions

JTC, NO and LS conceived the idea for the manuscript. All authors discussed and agreed the content. JTC, NO, LS, MN and BW drafted sections. All authors edited and approved the final version.

Funding

This manuscript presents independent research supported by the National Institute for Health Research Applied Research Collaboration South West Peninsula and funded by the National Institute for Health Research HTA Programme (17/20/02 and 14/157/06), the National Institute for Health Research RfPB Programme (PB-PG-0416-20032) and the National Institute for Health Research HS&DR Programme (16/47/22). The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the National Institute for Health Research or the Department of Health and Social Care.

Availability of data and materials

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