What are some effective ways to communicate microscopy results to stakeholders?

Utilize high-resolution images or time-lapse videos to show details, annotate key findings, and provide a scale bar for interpretation of results. Incorporate descriptive labels to explain any phenotypes or abnormalities. Present quantitative data through graphs, highlighting measurements or comparisons. Use simple language in presentations to convey the relevance and practical implications of the results.

As with any communication: the messeage comes to live at the recipient. Hence you have to know your audience to avoid being misunderstood. Presenting your results to your sponsors the audience might rather be interested in the big picture and vision behind than how you did it in first place. If you talk to industrial fellows the future impact and possible translation into product is the way to go with your presentation. Research collegues can face unedited material and technical details whilst outsiders prefer clear images with eliminated background noise and sharpened contrast to see what you wanna show them. So keep in mind: always know the audience.

Communication shall be part of the animation through ritual as such steering committees, for instance. These comitees must be planed regularly with identified stakeholders. A RACI can be put in place for supporting the key messages to the key people. During the committees, the topics must include a debrief regarding the deliveries/outcomes statement, the financial statement, the risk assessement and the next steps. A Q/A moment is important to get involved the stakeholders. The messages shall be delivered at three times at least with several level of languages depending the stakeholders roles.

At the end of the first steering committee, allow a time for questionning what kind of format each stakeholder will get preferences. Then, depending of the topic you will speak about, place the right format. For instance, when you will treat about technical improvement, show graph and percentage variation. Or during the financial report, show sheet,numbers, with curve evolution. Last example, when addressing Product Owner, prefer pie charts especially when talking about team ressource. Do not hesitate to rephrase with other terms to get engaged your all audience.

Using visuals effectively is a powerful strategy for communicating microscopy results to stakeholders. By incorporating well-chosen images, graphs, and diagrams, researchers can convey complex information in a clear, concise, and compelling manner. Visuals not only enhance understanding but also facilitate engagement and retention of key findings. By selecting visuals that highlight relevant details and trends, researchers can effectively illustrate their conclusions and insights, making the data more accessible and impactful to stakeholders.

Visuals might make your presentation lively, but do not overdo it. Use clear visuals that proof your point and - especially in an interdisciplinary presentation - select wisely what you show. To much information at once can not be computed, especially if you choose seemingly contradictory results that confuse the audience and make it hard to follow your presentation. Less is more, select the easiest comprehensive visuals to tell a coherent story. Do neither over nor underwhelm the audience. Keep them curious for more instead of oversaturaturated with details. If there is need of further explanation, keep some additional slide in your backhand to go deeper if needed.

At the first steering committee and to obtain adhesion to your work, detail your method and way of analyse. At each following meetings, recall the main line of your method when you will speak about risk mitigation. Furthermore, whatever the issue you did encounter, use it as a tip that will enrich and improve your method and process, sharing the solution you found out to the audience.

Once the project, the study, the new development is done and delivered, it must be a time for conclusion with all the stakeholder : the closing meeting. You will then explain what has worked well for integrating as good practice and what has not worked well for improvement and refining. During this part of the meeting, this wil be crucial to show the stakeholders that you learnt from this experience. Hopefuly, the indicators and tools you did put in place, over the method and steering committee update (RACI, KPI, P&L, outcomes balancing...), will help for arguing and introduce consistency with the stakeholders. After validating your approach with stakeholders, use this experience of microscopy for future projects.