Answer These Three Questions Before You Build a Single Slide
Most dissertation figures, defense slides, and chapters get built the same way: open the software, start making things, and hope it comes together. Before you visualize any data or build any part of your presentation, three questions deserve answers:
1- Who is this for?
2- What should they walk away with?
3- How does the data make that happen?
Who is this for? Get specific about your audience. Who exactly will be in the room, or reading the chapters? What do they already know? What assumptions are they carrying in with them, and will those assumptions work for you or against you? Where is your common ground?
The trap here is aiming at "general audiences" or "whoever will listen." Aim at everyone and you resonate with no one. A slide built for "anyone interested in education research" is built for nobody in particular. A slide built for the methodologist on your committee who distrusts small samples is built to survive her. The more specific your audience, the more successful your communication.
What should they walk away with? You should always want your audience to know something or do something. Decide what. Which background is essential and which is clutter? What does a successful outcome actually look like? Is it a signed form, a convinced skeptic, a follow-up question you're hoping someone asks? And what's the tone: are you celebrating a result, raising an alarm, or making the case for action?
Your medium changes the answer. This is worth sitting with, because dissertations have two very different mediums. On the written page, you have no control over the reader's experience: they wander, skip, and reread without you, so the detail has to be explicit and the document has to guide them alone. In the defense room, you're present. You can read the audience, guide them through the data live, and expand where the faces look confused. Same research, different medium, different build.
How does the data make your point? Take stock of what you have. Which results strengthen the case? Which could weaken it, and should you address those head-on before someone else raises them? Is your audience already familiar with this data, or is it new to them?
Your data is the supporting evidence for the story you're telling. And a warning that saves careers: showing only the data that backs your point makes for a weaker case, not a stronger one. A discerning audience, and every dissertation committee is one, will poke holes in a one-sided story, and your credibility goes with it. The right build includes context, supporting data, and the opposing data handled honestly.
Answer the three questions early, because this creates your blueprint.
Data in Plain English helps you tailor your message to your audience and fine-tune the figures and slides that carry it. We help you understand your data in plain English, and help your audience do the same.