Visual Aid

Kha, Cheannie
November 26, 2014
COMM 204, Wang
Visual Aid Speech Reflection

Choosing a visual aid speech topic was definitely the most difficult out of all the speeches we had to do. I did like that we were able to pick an informative or a persuasive speech to do because it did open up more possibilities. The thing that made it most difficult was finding a topic that would be best presented with visual aids! My first thought was to do a topic about “media representation of women” because there are SO many visuals that can demonstrate that topic, just walk into any grocery store or watch ANY movie. But I didn’t want to choose a topic that almost every communication student has seen if they’ve ever taken COMM 203 with Stacy Smith, so I veered away. The first topic idea I sent to Cynthia was to present a speech on the effects of Reality TV. When she got back to me about the topic, she pointed out that it might be a difficult topic to explain and effectively present my ideas in such a short amount of time, and I agreed so I started back at square one. I had another topic idea in mind that utilized a series of pictures but I wanted to save that for the final project so in the end I decided to go with a topic that related to my COMM 422 class. The topic was “How Facebook Became The King of Social Media”.

            I thought this topic would be good to use because it’s relevancy and importance to our generation. Facebook is widely recognized, utilized, and the second most popular website on the Internet, just under massive search engine, Google. But we all know that Facebook wasn’t the first social media network as it was first launched in 2004 but did not become available to the masses until 2006. Before that, we all remember a time when MySpace was known as the king of social media or when people found each other on Friendster instead. I wanted to do more extensive research on why, out of all the social media networks available to us, did Facebook beat out the rest, become the most popular and stayed the most popular. It’s was also interesting to note that Google+ launched in 2011 and people expected the masses to make the switch just as people did when Facebook launched. However, many people remained unimpressed about what Google+ offered and no such switch was made. Facebook remained the number one social network site and I wanted to find out why.

            Doing the research for this project was different in the sense that whenever I found any facts I had to see if there was any way I could translate the facts or support them with visuals. This included any screenshots or tables, and by doing a project on Facebook, an actual website, this was quite easy to gather. I kept Cynthia’s notes about PowerPoints and what we learned in class in mind because I wanted my visual aid to supplement my speech. I didn’t want it to overpower my speaking nor did I want it to be irrelevant and unneeded. So while presenting I made sure to point at things on the presentation, explain the images and show how things related to what I was talking about. I made sure not to put a lot of text and to blur out any unnecessary text on my slides to make sure all the attention was on what I was talking about and not on reading what my slide was about.

            I definitely have improved from day one of 204, and I definitely don’t get as nervous anymore. I spend more time preparing and that leads to a less anxiety before my speech. While we don’t have any speeches left, I think that for future presentations, if I can utilize visual aids I am going to because it makes your speech more comprehensive and easier to get across to your audience I feel. I feel prepared in making visual aids now, since I know what to avoid and what works. This was also one of my favorite category of speeches to watch and listen to!