Overcome Overload: Design for the Mind
Explore how to align your messages with the brain’s natural pathways so that you can tailor content for cognitive ease, ensuring clarity, retention, and impact.
In Person: 3 hours in four parts, plus 45 minutes in breaks.
Live Online: 3 hours in two parts over one week.
For Your Team
Interested in training a team of six or more people? We’ll work with you to understand their needs, optimize group sizes (for large teams) and coordinate schedules.
$3,900 for up to six people
For Individuals
Beginning in June 2024, we will offer individual seats in publicly scheduled courses. Let us know you’re interested so we can reach out to you when we launch this program.
$650 per person
- Overview
- Approach
In this workshop you’ll recruit cognitive science principles to enhance the effectiveness of your presentations and pitches. By understanding how your audience processes information you’ll improve your ability to convey complex ideas. We address four vital aspects of cognition that will guide your designs to ensure that your content engages and resonates:
- Attention: how to capture and focus your audience’s attention as you introduce new information
- Bandwidth: how to break down complex data into manageable pieces without oversimplification
- Processing: how to pave a smooth path to understanding using a shorthand of images and easily digestible analogies
- Visualization: how to use imagery, animation, or other visual elements, and to select them so that they appropriately serve your audience
Each of these modules is structured to provide actionable insights and skills. We first highlight common communication issues by presenting relatable examples. We then explore and discuss practical solutions before engaging in hands-on exercises to put them into practice.
Whether you’re addressing scientists, business leaders, or potential investors, applying these cognitive principles will help you create presentations that connect, engage and persuade, forged by thoughtful design. This is not just a learning opportunity; it’s an investment in your capacity to influence, lead, and achieve the meaningful impact you seek in the biomedical sphere.
Part 1
45 minutes
Attention: seize and guide it.
- What grabs attention, what interferes with it, and why
- How to seize and guide attention
- Practical exercise and discussion
Part 2
45 minutes
Bandwidth: manage the cognitive load.
- Limits of mental load and how they are easily overloaded
- Several ways to reduce the load without oversimplifying
- Practical exercise and discussion
Part 3
45 minutes
Processing: design to align with the human mind.
- Time-saving ways to accelerate understanding
- Five design principles that instantly improve slide design
- Practical exercise and discussion
Part 4
45 minutes
Visualization: use visuals appropriately and effectively.
- How to determine whether you need visuals
- Principles for selecting appropriate visuals
- Practical exercise and discussion
Live Online
2 x 90 minutes
Two 90-minute sessions over one week. Each session comprises two 45-minute sessions separated by a 30-minute break.
In Person
example
More Training
Five Steps to Clear Slides
Join us on this before-and-after journey to experience the transformation of a key slide from an oncology pitch-deck into a clear, compelling scene that powerfully engaged prospective investors.
In-Person or Virtual: 2.5 hours
All Eyes on You
When you’re in front of an audience it’s normal to feel stress, triggering instinctual “freeze-flight-fight” behaviors. These self-protective responses shut down empathy with your audience, creating barriers to communication and persuasion. The skills you’ll practice in this workshop help to remove those barriers. You can apply these skills whether you’re presenting to a large business audience or engaging a small group. Past participants have called this workshop, “life changing”.
In-Person Only: two 4-hour sessions
Visualize Your Data Story
Dive into the art and science of data visualization with your own dataset at the helm. Using practical examples from drug discovery, we clarify the decisions ahead so that you can bring out the core message of your data. Join us and transform your own data into a captivating story.
In-Person or Virtual: 3 hours
Persuasion Strategy
In this hands-on workshop, you’ll learn how to build a well-structured, persuasive story tailored to motivate your target audience to act. Throughout the workshop, you’ll apply Cruxio’s seven-step process to a strategic story of your own. These outputs will give you a jump-start on developing an upcoming persuasive communication that matters to you and to the success of your business.
In-Person: two 4-hour sessions (recommended)
Virtual: four 2-hour sessions