9 articles that’ll turn your presentations from 😴 to 🤩
Presenting your work is a core part of being a product designer.
At FanDuel the UX & Design team put emphasis on the importance of communicating our work to colleagues and stakeholders in a structured and thoughtful manner. We do this to make every step of the design process accessible to everyone throughout the company. This transparency empowers people to give feedback and in turn builds a collaborative environment where the design process is understood by everyone.
This article and the links within will provide you with tips that are guaranteed to improve not only your presentations but the amount of engagement from your audience and the quality of your feedback. You’ll receive more buy-in from key stakeholders and end up with an overall better product.
Preparation is key
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
That quote is probably overkill but you get the jist — it’s important to know not only the work you are presenting but also to understand the audience you are presenting to. When you show work internally, especially when you’re part of a large tech company, there will be people from multiple disciplines with different levels of knowledge of your designs and their space in the product.
A presentation to your design team should be different from larger company-wide showcases which should also be different when sharing your work with engineers. Each audience will have different needs and interests and it’s your job as a product designer to appeal to those, increasing their engagement in your work and most importantly; prompting the valuable feedback you need to progress.
FanDuel is a globally distributed company so most of the time we’re presenting to people remotely — either in meeting rooms or from our desks. While this provides a set of challenges, like having to contend with troublesome internet gremlins and laggy presentations, it also provides some benefits such as freedom from distractions in a group setting, allowing you to have supporting notes on your screen and it can be a more comfortable environment to present your work.
Recommended reading
The challenges of presenting your work in different settings and scenarios are not unique to FanDuel. Lots of very smart people have thought and written about ways to overcome them.
When new Product Designers join our team we provide them with the below list of articles to help them learn about tips and tricks to overcome the challenges of presenting their work to different audiences in different spaces and different places.
1. Presenting Design Work with Intentionality
A fundamental part of your work as a designer is to present ideas as clearly as possible so others can provide informed and useful feedback. In order to communicate effectively, you need to consider how your ideas are received. Taking the time to thoughtfully deliver information will speed up your process and help you accomplish your goals faster.
2. 5 ways to improve your design presentations
In this Design Snack, we’re taking a break from software tips to talk about how to present design work. If you’re not in the mood to be wildly entertained and educated by a short video, feel free to read along below.
3. How to present design work to non-designers
As a product manager in a large corporation, who previously worked in small design firms as a designer, I have learned the hard way how to present designs to get stakeholders on board. Now sitting on the receiving end I can confirm what does and doesn’t work for getting product managers on board. Unlike me, most people working in dev-ops, product or marketing don’t have a design background and have very little understanding of the design process and lack the imagination to see the potential of work-in-progress.
4. How to present your design to stakeholders
For this article I’ll define stakeholders as leadership or executives who oversee business lines, products or disciplines outside of your working teams (both product and design teams). These are people that have a stake in what you are designing but stay high-level so they can focus more effectively on strategy and business. Because of their leadership, it’s exciting (and possibly great for your career) when you get a chance to present your work to this group.
5. How to present design work to your design team
Sure, there’s a mix of pride and ego that contribute to poor intra-design team presentations. But in my experience managing design teams for the last five years, I find the biggest challenges faced in intra-design team presentations are 1) lack of clarity as to what a designer is presenting, and 2) confusion about what type of feedback they need. You’d expect designers should be the best at presenting work to each other but our own expertise can often work against us.
6. How to level up on presenting your design work
Design, in nature, tends to be a social endeavour that relies on your ability to sell, persuade and rally the troops around an approach to problem solving. Being able to share what you’re working on, articulate a rationale for the design decisions you’ve made, and solicit feedback and approvals from your peers and leads are all fundamental to moving work forward. From art direction and advertising to user experience and user interface design, your work is only as good as your ability to convincingly share it with others. Let’s look at some of the crucial considerations in making presenting your work a success.
7. 5 ways you can master storytelling
Scrap the jazzy PowerPoint slide transitions — when it comes to delivering a presentation at work, it’s your ability to tell a story that’s the key to magnetic communication
8. The art of presenting creative work
As designers, we’re extremely creative and passionate people who pour our hearts and souls into design solutions.
But we often lose this passion when we present our concepts to clients. Presenting design work incorrectly can create a vacuum for clients to provide misdirected or overly prescriptive feedback, which in turn leads to subpar final work. Proper presenting skills help clients see our point of view and ultimately allow us to put designs out into the world that we’re proud to put our names on. Here are some thoughts for your next presentation.
9. Presenting Your Work to Executives: 8 Tips for UX Designers
Presenting to executives isn’t always a walk in the park. I’ve been in more than my fair share of VIP meetings and asked to reveal my work in front of some of the most daunting figures within the company. I’ve found it most troubling when I’m presenting to people who are far-removed from the creation process — people who haven’t spoken to an actual customer, in some cases, for years.
It’s all about the preparation, knowing your audience, and telling an engaging story — but don’t get too caught up in crafting the perfect presentation that you don’t enjoy yourself. If you’re not confident at presenting yet it’ll come with practice. The more you present, the more comfortable you’ll be and the less you’ll need to rely on the tips in this article. Eventually it’ll become second nature.
Smile more, worry less.
