Presentation Planning

When planning my presentation I first listed out all of the information I wanted to include in relation to my portfolio website and elements project. My primary aim in this presentation is to clearly display my process throughout both projects and how my research and research deliverables have impacted the final outcomes. To achieve this I want to include a flow chart similar to that provided to us in class. As I go through the project I want to include a marker on each slide to highlight exactly what point I am at in that process. This will help to guide the audience through my presentation and give a clear indication of what stage they are at in the presentation as I go along.

To highlight how what I have learned through research and testing has been incorporated into my final project I want to include points on key insights that were gained at each stage. I do not want to complicate my slide by including too much text. However, I would also like to discuss how these insights have been addressed at the current stage of my project or how they will be addressed before the project is finished.

To finish strong I want to include a reflection on each project and talk about the feedback I had received in interviews on my portfolio website. As my elements project is not fully complete I would also like to include points on what I plan to do before the project is finished.

I also considered including gifs at points to add humour but was concerned that the repetitive movement would become distracting.

When considering design I wanted to produce an outcome similar to what Steve Jobs has achieved in presentation slides i.e. I want to keep my slides minimal. For the most part, I want to have single images on my slides and minimal amounts of text. I have included some examples above of outcomes that I felt kept a minimal pathetic while combining a little personality. My branding is another consideration I must include. As my portfolio website is fairly minimal this should translate well in my presentation slides.

For my cover slide, I kept the outcome very minimal, including only my brand, the module title and my name. I have used the typeface Satoshi throughout in line with the visual style of my personal brand. I used a flow chart to demonstrate my process and tagged each slide with the part of the process I am at each point. Areas I wanted to emphasise in the above slides were the discussion that took place about my previous website and the content wireframes I completed as these two steps had a massive impact on my final outcome.

Throughout my slide deck, I tried to keep the focus on imagery and avoid using text as much as possible. I have included drop shadows on images that present screens and tables. While an image of a spreadsheet may not be the most visually appealing thing, I have attempted to style spreadsheets consistently. The text presented on the tables/ spreadsheets included is also too small to read. This is intentional as I do not want my audiences to be distracted by attempting to read it. Throughout the slide deck, I have primarily split my slide into one and two-column layouts with an image cover half if not the full slide. I have also included as limited a number of images as possible to address the topic. This is to avoid cluttering my slides and to ensure images are large enough to be fully viewable.

As displayed about and throughout the entire slide deck I have also attempted to present my content in the chronological order that it was carried out. In the above competitive analysis and user interview slides, I have included slightly more text as these were two areas I gained a lot of insights from that have been carried into my final outcome. Likewise more text has also been included in my problems and solutions slide. As this slide addresses how I have establishes a list of problems/opportunities from the insights found in my research as well as my solutions I felt that the information was important and wanted to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

My final slides outline the final outcome of my branding, my planning of how to organise and present the content in my app, my visual style, early prototype, usability testing and final outcome. For my prototype outcome, I have included a screen recording of the app in use. As I had set out to do in my presentation plan I have finished with a reflection on my elements project and points that need to be addressed before the project is complete. This is followed by a closing thank you slide which I have included a Happy Christmas to finish on a high. I wanted to add in a festive visual here however I didn’t want to break with the style of my presentation so I included a minimal red line to highlight the Happy Christmas.

Final Slide Deck: Designing with Content

 

Feedback and Reflection

Feedback on my presentation was that I was rushing too much and talking far too quickly. It was noted that I did finish within my timeframe however that I could have left some of the slides out and focused on some of the more important information. I also did not leave myself enough time to talk about my elements project and ended up rushing through the last number of slides.

What I need to consider in future is the number of slides I am presenting and how much time I want to spend on each slide. This will help me to estimate how much time I have and will stop me from feeling the need to rush my way through the content.

However, what I felt was my biggest downfall was that I did not have time to practice presenting my slides in advance. This has a massive impact. By practising I could have timed myself made a more conscious effort to talk at a reasonable pace and removed the less necessary content to make this more manageable within the timeframe.

I was given positive feedback on my slide design which I was really pleased with and the overall level of my work. I was also able to take the feedback provided and apply it to my presentation of design tasks in interviews which was really helpful. Overall I feel I have learned a lot through putting together and presenting my work in this context and I hope to carry this learning into future work.