Warning: This is work in progress.

Poster

The idea of conference posters is to provide a place and time-dense way to present contributions. Ok, there is actually more to this, but we are fine with this simplification. A poster session may take place in a hallway, conference room, or all the way up to the stadium-sized hall with dozens of posters. Just see, as of the time of writing, the linked article Designing conference posters.

During the conference poster sessions, you would hang your poster and then stand by it ready to answer questions and chat with anyone interested. If you got lucky, it is quite possible that there are multiple people interested in your work. Yet, you can only talk to a few people at a time. As a result, the others have to wait or just read the poster without your assistance. In addition, some posters remain hung and unattended for the rest of the conference. As a result, the poster should be designed to be self-explanatory.

If you search for information on how to create a poster, you are quite likely to find information for conference posters. Unfortunately, the poster you need for a defense is a different kind of story.

Let me start by briefly describing what you are about to experience. It begins in the same way. You hang your poster, probably in a hallway, and then you wait for the commission. Once it is your time, the commission gives you 5 to 7 minutes to explain your work. Next, they summarize the supervisor’s and opponent’s reviews, and you can react. After your reaction, there is an open discussion where the commission usually ask a few question.

There, you can see the major difference. While the conference poster needs to be designed so that people can read it without you. The main objective of your poster is to help you present your work and answer questions. The commission is not going to read the text; they are going to listen to you.

That is why you should prepare the poster to help you present your work. If you have a poster, and you do not point to it during your presentation, the poster is not helpful.

So, how to design a poster? Easy question with a difficult answer.

First let us take a look on the official requirements. The poster must contain:

• Title of the thesis
• Name of the author
• Name of the supervisor
• (optional) Link to your repository

The title of the thesis, your name, and the QR code link to your work are important; put them on top! The name of the supervisor is not important; put it near the bottom. Now we just need to fill in the space in between.

While students often put a lot of text there, I am not a fan of this approach. The text is not what helps you present your work. In fact, try to minimize the amount of text.

Try a simple exercise. Stand in front of a mirror and record yourself explaining your work in 5 minutes. Repeat until you are satisfied with your performance. Play the recording and think: what visual would help you?

If you are still not sure, here are my takes:

• Motivation / problem statement You need something that helps you visually explain who your users are and their problems.
• Solution You likely created a software solution you need to present. This is about the architecture of your solution, the UI design, etc..
• Experiments If you have experimental results? Graphs, plots, you name it, use them.
• Summary / contribution Summarize your results.

You probably know the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words”. At the same time, it may be complicated and wise to communicate everything visually. So do not be afraid to have some text in the poster, just try to keep it to a minimum.

A final reminder: practice your presentation. You should be calm and confident, at least on the outside, when presenting your work.