Ch 5: Visual Media

Aram is creating a presentation to deliver at his company's regional conference. His portion of the presentation is a story about a mom shopping for new school clothes at Aram's store with her little boy with autism. Aram's employees were extra helpful in finding soft clothes with no itchy tags or seams. They were patient with the boy and asked the mom lots of questions about the best way to approach him and help her. The mom was so impressed that she wrote an email to Aram about his employees and included a picture of her son in one of his new outfits. She also posted stellar reviews of his store on Yelp and on a forum for parents of kids with autism. Aram wants to get across the emotion of the story while also making some points about the value of good customer service. Which of these is his best approach?

Use the picture in combination with a few slides with brief notes on them that help tell the story and discuss the business outcomes.

Dmitri is writing a review of a new movie. He wants to use stills from the movie and a promotional poster for the video as visual aids in his article. Is this use legal?

Yes; since he's writing a critique of the movie, this use falls under fair use.

Graphic artists use this principle to show that objects in a visual have a connection with one another.

alignment

If a visual isn't working well in your communication you should ________.

evaluate it by measuring it against your visual media standards, and choose a new visual if it doesn't pass muster.

If you see a teddy bear in the foreground of the picture and other stuffed animals in the background, you pay close attention to the teddy bear. That's due to the visual design principle of

hierarchy

Our visual standards are based on the seven principles of business communications, which are clarity, consistency, relevance, conciseness, objectivity, completeness and consideration of audience knowledge. The standard for evaluating the effective use of visual media that's not explicitly called out in those seven principles is:

persuasive

Visual media that is purchased with a one-time payment and includes no additional payments for copies sold or time used is referred to as being

royalty free

Visual media works in a report when it ________.

supports the ideas you're communicating by being clear and simple, persuasive, uniform and on brand.

As a communicator, you can determine if your audience understood your message by ________.

surveying your audience, referring to employee engagement strategies that indicate your audience's level of comfort

When creating a line chart that can be read by an audience member who is color blind, a communicator should

use contrasting colors with dotted and dashed lines and labels

When trying to show a two groups and their properties, and a place where those properties intersect, you might choose a

venn diagram

If the speaker is visibly uncomfortable and doesn't speak effectively:

video may not be a good choice for this communication

Making sure your images are all consistent and uniform allows you to

"Break pattern" to really draw attention to a specific area

Videos increase your message's accessibility because it:

"humanizes" a company and its mission by showing employees at work

If I'm managing a project for my team and want to keep track of all the different moving pieces, the chart that might best suit me is

A Gantt chart

How many of the business communication principles should apply to your choice of visual media?

All of them

Your colleague, Chichi, has asked you to develop a visual aid to include in a proposal she's working on for a new project. You developed a chart that she isn't quite happy with. How should you respond to Chichi's feedback?

Ask directed questions to get a better understanding of what Chichi wants the chart to show.

Which of the following is NOT a part of the video creation process?

Building a set on which to film

A mnemonic is best supported

By the written word, considering that mnemonics use text to create a memorable word or phrase

When using an image in a communication, a communicator can make it more accessible to sight and hearing disabled audience members by

Captioning it with detailed "alt text"

Charts and graphs needs to make your message more accessible by being:

Clean and simple Uniform Persuasive On brand

A license that allows creators of visual media to express which rights they want to reserve and which they wave is referred to by the name of the non-profit which grants them, and that is

Creative Commons

As part of the process to evaluate the effectiveness of a message, your boss has asked you to measure the amount of people who opened up a particular email. Which question will doing this answer?

Did the audience receive the message sent?

How many categories is too many categories for a pie chart?

Eleven

You see a line of soldiers standing at attention, and one of them is sitting cross-legged on the ground. Your eye is drawn to that soldier that's sitting because

He's breaking pattern, and the eye always goes to the part of an image that's different

In which of the following situations would you NOT use video?

If information regarding an impending layoff needs to be distributed to those employees remaining at the company

Clara has put together a presentation on new vacation benefits for a staff meeting. She has carefully made sure that her powerpoint slides have functional images that can still be understood in greyscale and have a detailed notes section for each slide. How would printing out the presentation also make it more accessible for any audience members WITHOUT disabilities?

If someone comes in late they can get caught up quickly.

Ming is a manager at a home improvement store and is sending an email to his employees about a new procedure to request time off. The email has an instructional video to describe the procedure that has closed captions making it more accessible. How does including closed captions make this video available to the widest audience possible?

If someone is unable to watch the video with the sound on they can still read along to understand the video.

Renee is creating a chart showing an increase in traffic to her company's marketing site. Which of the following is the best title for her chart showing this increase?

Increase in Marketing Site Traffic

Once you've decided to make a video to communicate your message, your first step is to

Interview subject matter experts and stakeholders to determine what the message should be

How do we decide if an image is suitable for use in our communication

It's suitable if the image stands up to our visual media standards

If you have numerical data and you want to show a trend, the best graph to use is a

Line Graph

When choosing a title for a graph, a great way to communicate your message to the audience is to

Make the title active and point out your message

There are many items you need to make a video, but the three most important ones to make a quality product are:

Microphones, camera, and tripod

Maria is preparing for a presentation she will be delivering to her fellow store managers at a district meeting. She's decided to use a PowerPoint in order to keep herself on track. Which of the following is the best piece of advice for her to keep in mind?

She should use just enough words on her slides to remind her what her next topic is.

When faced with communicating a complicated process, an image is

Sometimes helpful to make the process more accessible and easy to understand, but sometimes the process is so complicated that it should only be written out.

If a company is talking about the future and how its products will nourish generations of users, then the images it chooses for its report should

Support that mission statement

When should you use a chart or graph?

To simplify data of any kind, whether it's represented in numbers or in words

When choosing colors for your graph, you should

Use a contrasting color to call out a piece of the chart that you want your audience to notice