Display boards are among the most essential parts of science fair projects. They give viewers an overall picture of your research project, including questions or scientific inquiries explored, hypotheses proposed and experiments performed.
An effective project display board should be structured and easy to comprehend, moving logically from left to right and top to bottom with sections such as these:
Design
Students competing at Regeneron ISEF or Broadcom MASTERS science fairs or simply participating in their school science fair must craft an eye-catching display board in order to showcase their projects to judges and peers alike. After all, it serves as their visual presence when communicating their science fair research to judges and peers alike.
Science fair boards come in all sorts of different designs and sizes; however, there are certain components essential for an effective board. No matter its size, what matters is that its text is easily legible – not too large that it becomes distracting or difficult to read.
Color can be an effective way to capture an audience’s interest and add creative flare. To effectively use it in presentations, choose colors which are soothing yet work well together; grey or brown hues tend to work best as they don’t stand out as much compared to brighter options.
Layout
Layout and design play an essential role in making science fair project boards shine. Selecting the appropriate structure for your board, and displaying all of your collected data clearly will help your research stand out.
Science fair displays should typically be divided into sections that include an abstract, background research, hypothesis, experimental setup, results and conclusions; while experimental projects may also include an experiment outline and literature review.
A comprehensive project board should read from top to bottom and left to right, such as by listing starting research questions/hypotheses on one panel, materials/procedures on another, results/conclusions on a third and finally colored paper accenting sections for attention drawing purposes or just accenting sections with colored paper in order to draw your readers in from faraway. Font size/style must ensure all text can be easily read from a distance.
Text
An effective project display board should provide all of the information a viewer requires in order to fully appreciate a child’s project from start to finish. It should include sections detailing literature related to an experiment or topic, procedures used during its creation, results obtained, conclusions drawn and any significant data or insights gleaned. Make sure font size is large enough so it can easily be read from a distance and use different colors to differentiate text sections.
The hypothesis section includes a statement by the student regarding what they expect will happen from their investigation, for instance “I believe that monkeys can learn sign language to ask for bananas.” In addition, their procedure section shows how they tried to test their hypothesis with real monkeys, with results displayed on the board after testing is complete. Any information collected along the way – for instance showing it more often and how many responses it generated should also be recorded using charts or graphs.
Images
Each year, hundreds of students come up with new research ideas and then create projects around it for the science fair. While that part is straightforward, creating something that stands out in a crowd may require additional creativity.
One of the best things students can do to prepare for their project presentations is to observe examples on the Internet of great project presentations. Take note of how they balance information elements such as title size and photo placement to make reading the board content effortless for viewers.
Students can enhance their project display boards with images, diagrams and charts that represent data. This visual aid allows judges and viewers to better comprehend the experiment on display. Charts and graphs may be more effective if they include summary captions to explain what each chart or graph depicts – this makes them accessible even to non-scientists.