A short primer on innovative evaluation reporting

This book by Kylie Hutchinson presents a number of innovative ways of reporting, including different methods for presentations, narrative summaries, presenting findings visually and making use of digital outputs.

Kylie also discusses how to make sure your messages get through to your audience - including using a layering strategy to present your key messages in different levels of depth across multiple content types, and advice on making these messages 'sticky'.

The information provided was supplied by Alice Macfarlan. 

Authors and their affiliation

Kylie Hutchinson, independent evaluation consultant and trainer with Community Solutions Planning & Evaluation.

Key features

This book starts by walking readers through an overview of good reporting, covering principles for more effective reporting (targeting your audience; developing a communications plan; layering your content; and reordering your key messages), how to make content 'sticky', and common errors in reporting. It then outlines a range of reporting methods that can be used in place of (or in addition to) the evaluation report that includes:

Presentations

• Oral presentations
• Slides
• Screencasts

Narrative summaries

• Two-pagers
• Slidedocs
• Policy briefs
• Newsletters
• Conference posters
• Press releases
• Physical items

Poetry, drama and dance

Visuals

• Infographics
• Data dashboards
• Mapping
• Graphic recording
• Cartoons and comics

Digital

• Animated videos
• Interactive websites
• Email marketing
• Podcasts

How have you used or intend on using this resource?

So many ways. There's the inspiration and ideas from the list of innovative reporting methods, as well as the 'what not to do' reminders that I hope I'll have the sense to remember about when I'm next finalising a report, but I'm also really interested in communication and reporting in evaluation, and so I really like Kylie's ideas about layering different content types and tailoring messages to target audiences (which sounds commonsense but so often isn't).

Why would you recommend it to other people?

I think there's a lot in this book that will help people - even if it's just to help broaden their thinking about what reporting can look like and help them build up the courage to experiment a bit and be creative.