Deliver Effective Customer Training with Brain Rules and Haiku Deck

By: Adam TrattWe all want lessons to be easy to understand and hard to forget. But for those of us non-designer types, creating customer training materials that live up to this standard can be a frustrating and time-consuming chore.Because of this, we built Haiku Deck to make it 10x faster for anyone, even the design-challenged, to make presentations that are 10x more effective. And this goes a long way when you’re on the hook to build training materials. Our approach was to productize the best practices recommended by neuroscientists, psychologists, and design experts. Some of the research we relied on when building our app is revealed in Professor John Medina’s best-selling book, Brain Rules. Here are some key lessons anyone in customer training can draw from Medina’s work and how Haiku Deck helps deliver on them.1. One Idea at a TimeIn Brain Rules, Professor John Medina points out the most common mistake we make as communicators is, “...relating too much information with not enough time devoted to connecting the dots.” If you want listeners to absorb the lesson, you’ve got to crystalize key points and present them one at a time. By getting to the essence of your message, you make it more memorable. Here’s an example of how we teach one idea at a time in the context of transforming your Haiku Deck presentations:

10 Tips to Transform Your Presentations - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires2. Use Powerful VisualsMedina contends vision is the most powerful of the senses. His research suggests information heard results in 10% recall 3 days later. Add a picture to that same message and recall jumps to 65%. Whether you use Haiku Deck's photos or your own, the data shows including imagery is a critical component of delivering memorable lessons. Haiku Deck user Zaheen Nanji does a great job including powerful visuals in her deck about beating procrastination.

4 Reasons You Procrastinate and 7 Strategies to Beat It - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires3. Our Brains Get Tired After About 10 MinutesResearch from Brain Rules shows that no matter the material, most brains start to lose interest after about 10 minutes. Medina recommends breaking up your lesson at least this often with an emotionally relevant moment to regain the attention of listeners. You can do this through an activity, story, or video. Embedding videos into presentations is the perfect way to deliver the brain break listeners need during a lesson. User Ellen Hunt does a masterful job of this in her QAR Review Presentation shown below.

The Path to Success - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspiresInterested in learning more about how Haiku Deck can help you deliver more effective customer training materials quickly and easily? Head over to www.haikudeck.com.---

This article is a guest post from Adam Tratt. A lifelong entrepreneur, public speaker, team-builder, teacher, and storyteller, Adam Tratt is Co-Founder/CEO of Haiku Deck. Prior to starting Haiku Deck, Tratt was one of the first employees at board game company Cranium and held roles at Microsoft, Stamps.com, and marketing agency MRY.