Labs Workshop: Present Like a Pro
Labs Workshops are opportunities our designers take to lead a discussion with the rest of our design team to build new design skills and/or hone existing skills
Two of our Senior Learning Experience Designers lead a workshop focusing on how to improve our communication and presentation skills.
This blog post’s goal is to explain the journey we embarked on while creating a workshop that targeted specific learning objectives for our design team. After discussing potential workshops with the design team, we identified the following two learning objectives to guide the overall process:
- Answering difficult Q & A Questions
- Presenting new information to multiple types of audiences
We asked ourselves, “How can we create a low-pressure practice situation?” The answer was simple: create a workshop with funny topics.
In the effort of making this workshop as low stress and enjoyable as possible, we made short, ten-minute presentations ahead of time for the designers to use.
Initially, we created funny presentations that had nothing to do with design work but soon realized that even a funny topic can be made into a serious design deliverable with the right framing and perspective. In time, the short presentations began to mimic the style of presentations a Learning Experience Designer might typically deliver, such as:
- User research presentation
- New product feature
- Kickoff
We then assembled five presentations with the following titles:
- Shark Week🦈
- How to Make a PB&J🥪
- Cats: How Cute Are They?😸
- U.F.O. Sightings Map👽
- Dangers of AI🤖
To emphasize understanding the needs and motivations of different audience members, every team member played a different role in each presentation, for example, CEO of Skippy, Marketing Director of the AACPA, Director of Shark Week, or presentation team member. Their job was to ask and answer questions as if they were that audience member.
Each presentation took roughly 15 minutes, with the bulk of that time being scheduled for Q&A sessions. The presenter and team member reviewed the slides beforehand, but no one else attending reviewed the work, providing an additional opportunity to practice spontaneity in presenting.
To mimic a Q&A session, only the designers presenting and their team members were allowed to review their presentation. This allowed our designers to practice being quick on their feet and answer unexpected questions. Here are some practices questions thrown out by our “fake-holders”:
“What does jelly have to do with the peanut butter industry?” — C.E.O. of Skippy
“What was the number one problem UFO enthusiasts encountered when using our product?” — CTO of UFO Sightings Map
“Do you see cats being returned now that covid is winding down?” — Head of Marketing at AACPA
“The balance of shows range from educational to outlandish. Do you recommend we incorporate more Sharknado films next year or more informational shark videos?” — VP of product development at Discover
Before and after the presentations, we offered an open reflection for the group. First to discuss presentation best practices and then to reflect on what went well or could be improved in the future. Team members used this time to compare and contrast presentation strategies, calling out methods that felt most effective during the practice presentations from our workshop and also from previous presentations with other members of the team and external audiences.
Our team’s take-away from this workshop were:
- Identifying the audience you’re presenting to will help anticipate what information to prioritize and what questions to expect
- It’s okay not always have the answers. Unexpected questions will come up and in those scenarios, it’s okay to acknowledge you don’t have an answer and reassure your audience you’ll address their question or concerns.
In the future, we’ll be planning additional sessions that will allow our team to learn new skills and hone the skills we use daily. For now, we can celebrate and feel like we can now present like pros.
About Labs
WGU Labs invents, builds, and enables innovative education products and offerings that multiply the effects of WGU’s mission to have a transformative impact on higher education: to expand access, improve quality, and optimize student outcomes. Click here to visit our webpage to learn more about our team, the projects we’re working on, and our expanding list of partners.
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