87: Improving the scientific poster (with Mike Morrison)

Episode 87 · July 1st, 2019 · 51 mins 16 secs

About this Episode

We chat with Mike Morrison, a former User Experience (UX) designer who quit his tech career to research how we can bring UX design principles to science. We discuss Mike's recently introduced 'better poster' format and why scientists should think carefully about UX.

Here's what we cover:

  • What’s the story behind the “better poster?”
  • The Better Poster video
  • The Better Poster template
  • The importance of minimising cognitive load
  • Science isn’t badly designed, it’s not even designed at all
  • What is good User Experience (UX)?
  • The most important feature of SciHub
  • Version 2 of the ‘better poster’
  • Weird poster designs that James has seen over the years
  • The Fish Market study
  • Common misunderstandings of the better poster
  • Empirically investigating the performance of the Better Poster
  • The meta-meta poster
  • How better posters get better questions
  • Mike’s next target: Better Presentations
  • Andrew York’s Github paper
  • A special give-away!

Other links

Music credits: [Lee Rosevere](freemusicarchive.org/music/Lee_Rosevere/)


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Episode citation and permanent link
Quintana, D.S., Heathers, J.A.J. (Hosts). (2019, July 1) "Improving the scientific poster (with Mike Morrison)", Everything Hertz [Audio podcast], doi: 10.17605/OSF.IO/BNP7E

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