User experience: Personalization

As a designer who truly believes that form follows function, I’m going to vouch that we all become an advocate of this principle.

Let’s talk about presentations. When presenting to your audience, it’s essential to motivate them through personalization. Imagine that you’re in an auditorium on a nice Summer’s day, filled with people anxious and excited to learn about you and the topic that you’re ecstatic about. It might be your dream that you’re sharing at an inspirational camp, a discussion topic at a Ted Talk that you’ve been invited to, a product that you’ve been working on, just so eager to launch, or simply an introduction of your company after a successfully accepted Request for Proposal. What‘s going to make your presentation succeed?

I’m content with my content

I believe that the more you know about who you’re designing for or who you’re talking to, the better you can guide them to what you want them to achieve. If I were to make an analogy, you’re basically a curator at a gallery that gets to decide what to put up on your presentation. Whether it is ten bullet-points (I really hope you’ve put a limit on those..) filled with “benefits using our product” or a flow diagram with ten arrows that just confuse you, you get the responsibility in empowering your subject, to make the listeners think. Make them curious.

Who are you speaking to?

So you’ve already made an outline and you’ve memorized the presentation by heart. What next? Think about the audience. Will they be captivated from the moment you introduce yourself all the way until you start saying “Any other questions?” User experience blends through in the design world and it’s especially helpful when researching and understanding the target market. This can easily be translated into the presentation world. If you’re excited about displaying your work to people, express it extensively and inspire them, as if you were inviting them to join you in your dream.

Design

After you’ve prepared yourself a handy presentation with filled with flashy effects, bouncy lines that form charts and slide transitions (just kidding, cheesy transitional slides are so 2008!), you should hand it off to a graphic designer that can pimp that presentation with golden grilled fonts on cover that speak “I’m here to make a statement.” To be truthful, that’s only partial to giving a great presentation with all the consistent formatting in terms of design. In my practice, I’ve always customized the cover, agenda and conclusion slides with imagery that catch people’s attention that make them think, “wow, he went through all that to really make this stand out.” I never judge a book by its cover, but I do scratch my head when I see a presentation that seems like it was put together in 15 minutes.

Remember, content is king, but design is key.

Delivery; there’s no app for that

It’s all about the delivery of the content. This means you’ve possibly introduced a story that draws people in and given the audience something to have empathy for. It takes practice to engage with ease and leave filled with claps and smiles, but I believe in you. Now go make your statement like that beautifully designed cover-slide.