MLDP Recap: Presentation Design for the User Experience

This week’s session was to highlight the importance of presentation and how to achieve positive and successful results when making a presentation. Guest Speaker Dave Uejio shared his thoughts on PowerPoint and successful presenting strategies by demonstrating through his presentation why they worked. Dave’s presentation was engaging and entertaining, and to me, was one of the best presentations we have had so far.

            Dave highlighted a few important tips when creating a presentation: 1) Design for them – Design for your audience; they are giving you their time so you might as well not waste it and give them an engaging and worthwhile experience. 2) Design for you – you’re the one creating the presentation, so make sure it’s useful for you; don’t overcomplicate your slides, you must design for your sake and understanding. 3) Mindhacks (tips) – highlight your slides with good images; carry the presentation with a story; adding quotations gives you credibility; having a good color palette will draw attention to your slides.

            Dave also addressed what NOT to do when creating a presentation: don’t put in animation; don’t put in bad clip-art, avoid distracting fonts; don’t have too much text – a PowerPoint is to add to what you have to tell your audience, not take away from it; keep in mind the PowerPoint only takes you so far – it’s your presentation that your audience will connect with. When you are presenting, you should know what you’re saying and be well rehearsed. Take the time to do it well.

            Though Dave’s tips may seem inherent at first, he emphasized the reality about presentations – if you care for people to like what you are sharing, you should put in the time to make it worth their time to pay attention to you.  I thought that this was a very strong point when creating presentations. If the point of a presentation is to add to what you have to say, it should be well planned and practiced.

            After participating in this session, I now know and understand what it means to have an effective presentation, and how to achieve your desired outcomes when making a presentation.

-Maya Herm ‘13