MDLP Recap: "Presentation Design for the User Experience" with Dave Uejio

 This ongoing series explores sessions of the Management and Leadership Development Program (MLDP) through participant narratives. MLDP is a one-term program designed to develop citizen leaders among sophomores, juniors, and seniors at Dartmouth College. Led by expert guest speakers each week, sessions employ experiential teaching techniques to engage students through hands-on learning of core management and leadership skills.

“The thing about a great design is that it has something so intuitive about it that audiences it isn’t intended for can still use it.” -Dave Uejio

Dave Uejio led the fourth session of the Management and Leadership Development Program this term with a talk entitled "Presentation Design for the User Experience." At the outset of the presentation, Uejio gave us a framework of what to expect: learning about storytelling, communicating data, and resources to inform slide design, followed by an opportunity to practice these new-found insights in order to assert a point of view.

Photo by Thanh V. Nguyen

Uejio drew upon classic examples to illustrate his points. He spoke first about the design process at Pixar Animation Studios, where animators spend two to thre years on perfectly sketching out every scene of a movie. Designing the story is one of the keys to an effective presentation. He later drew upon another well known company, Apple. Steve Jobs would frame his audience’s expectations at the release presentation for every new product. Such a framework, much like the one he laid out for us at the beginning of the session, is the scaffolding necessary to effectively communicate main points to an audience.

Throughout the rest of the session, Uejio continued to captivate me and the rest of his audience by communicating his insights and experiences with presentation design. His talk was particularly poignant to me as I am currently enrolled in Design Thinking, and Engineering Sciences course where we apply these same principles to a variety of problems. My biggest takeaway from this session is that focusing on the human experience is key to executing the task perfectly in whatever you do.

-Written by Zonia Moore '16, Fall 2014 MLDP Participant