7 tips to better present your ideas
How to present ideas to enhance their value
1. Tell nothing in the first 2 minutes
When I did my first presentation in front of clients I was so excited that I started quickly and in less than 10 secondes I entered in the topic. What I discovered is that people usually need at least one or two minutes to be concentrated in a presentation. That means that the first minutes of your presentation should not be used to present anything important. I wrote provocatively that you should tell nothing in the first 2 minutes. In fact you can use these two first minutes to setup the atmosphere for your presentation.
Today, when I do a presentation I use the first two minutes to introduce what the presentation is about, how much time it should take or that people should write down their question so that we can discuss them and the end. If it’s the second or third presentation I do with a same client I start by telling what we decided last time and what was pending.
2. Show that you worked hard from far
Once I pass the first minutes I quickly reassure the client by showing that there is a huge step of research and exploration that lead use to the idea that we are presenting. I find it useful to break the myth of the creative genius at the begining of a presentation by showing that ideas do not come from nowhere in no time, but that they come out of a process and with extensive time.
Showing that you worked hard is nice, but it’s there only to reassure the client. Therefor this part should not go in the detail. We have to show here that we searched for numerous solutions, without showing them really, because we want this part to be only a trailer for the upcoming idea.
3. Structure, structure and structure
A good presentation needs a good structure. And to find a good structure you first need a good plan. But a good plan is not enough. Once you start working on your presentation you will see that your plan doesn’t really fit, therefor you will need a lot of iteration until you get to the definitive structure of your presentation.
“Structure is meaning”
The structure you use for your present changes how your idea is percieved, that’s why you should really care about how you introduce your idea, what point you develop and how you conclude. But there is another structure that is not always taken under considreation: the visual structure. How you present visually elements changes the meaning elements have. If you present one sketch per slide, it means that each one is really important. If you present 150 sketches on one slide, you show that there are a lot of options but that we don’t need to look at them deeply.
4. Present only one idea
This is an advice that I learned from Olivier Perez Kennedy, he once said:
“A doctor doesn’t give you several options for your medical treatment.
That’s why as strategist we present only one solution.”
This advice is quiet hard to follow, because if you really do design research, then you know that there is more than one solution to one problem. But to be percieved as someone who know what he does you have to present one, and only one solution. If you present one solution and explain why you choose this solution, then you reassure your client. Because, at the end, he he has the same relationship with you than with his doctors: he trusts you.
5. Don’t be a tourist guide
In his book “Design Is a Job” Mike Monteiro explains that one of the most usual mistakes people make during presentation is to act like tourist guides. People just say what is on the screen: “Here is the header, then on the left you have the sidebar”. Monteiro sums it up by saying:
“Don’t waste a client’s time walking them through
what they can already see.”
6. Tell a story
In the previous section we saw that you should not just say what people see but go beyond that. Mike Monteiro expresses it in his book this way:
“Your job is to explain how what they’re looking at
is the best way to achieve their goals.”
I would even go further by saying that when you are presenting something, be it a product, an idea, or a design you should tell the story of it and not describe it features.
7. Repeat and repeat what you said
When I was in college I had a professor teaching french class in the most boring way possible. With the years I discovered that it was also the most effective way. Each day, this professor repeated key sentences of his lecture, again, and again. At the end of a class I knew this sentence by heart even without wanting it.
What I learned from that experience is that by repeating several time a same idea this idea sticks in the head of the listener. That’s why today, when I do a presentation, I always sum up what we presented in the previous chapter before going to the next chapter.
Let’s be critical
Feel free to share your best practice and start
a conversation with me on twitter: @danielec
