TECH 621 Fall 2011 – Presentation Structure

Remember that we will meet back in Knoy for the last class session: Your final project presentation.

Please keep your presentation short – no more than 5-7 minutes, and follow this structure:

1. Research Question – explain the purpose of the research
2. Methods – explain how you collected and analyzed data
3. Findings – describe your sample and your most important findings
4. So, what? – explain what your findings mean, why they are important and to whom and their implications

The presentation is not graded – but if you do not present or don’t give it due attention, your APP points will suffer.

The main goal is to inform each other about our projects – it will be interesting to see what people did and what they found.

I will bring some snacks. If you’d like to, you’re welcome to bring something, too – but you don’t have to.

Don’t forget the usability issues

Remember that, the end-goal of conducting usability testing doesn’t stop at timing how long it takes users to accomplish tasks. Ultimately, we need to identify usability issues: aspects of the site’s design, organization, functionality that presented problems to users. Here is where your observations and the interviews provide useful data.

Make sure that, in addition to detailed and clear presentation of usability metrics, as discussed in my previous posts, you identify and explain usability issues. Your report should make it clear to the reader what aspects of the website presented problems.

You can identify major issues for each task, and have a separate section where you list the usability issues, and make recommendations for fixing them. Remember to be very specific about what the issue is and what your recommendations are.

When presenting this information on slides, I recommend placing each issue and recommendation on a separate slide. The slide could look something like this:

Screen shots are helpful here. If a screen shot refers to a specific URL, make sure you write the URL at the bottom of the image, so it’s visible and maybe even clickable. If you use screen shots in the slides, then you will need 2 slides per issue (one with the screenshot), and another one like the one above.

Using color in your presentation

Color is a powerful way to communicate, because colors affect people emotionally and influence their moods.

See these slides on the psychology of color:

Try to think what your color scheme communicates, what mood it sets. More important than the dominant color (reds, greens, blues, etc.) is, in my opinion, the boldness of the color scheme you use. Do you go for muted colors, or for bold, high contrast ones? What kind of color scheme can you choose to make your presentation “pop” and communicate confidence? I, for one, don’t like the muted, elegant, dainty color schemes that mix beiges and greens (yawn). I prefer strong, high contrast colors, but still ones that go well together in a color scheme.

Resource: Here is a Presentation Zen post about a free web tool from Adobe, Kuler, that helps you create color schemes or even pick them  out of photographs.

One idea per slide

This is one of those presentation tips that sound much easier than they are – especially when you need to relate ideas or show comparisons among elements. Not impossible, though .

Instead of trying to pack more into a slide, try to take away – reduce (excise) until you can communicate what you want to without having additional clutter on the slide. Can you keep your slides very simple, very clear, free of bullets, and constrained to one idea per slide?

Here are some examples, first from Steve Jobs. The contents of the table below are from the book “The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs.”

Note how little information is on each slide, and how each slide communicates only one idea:

 

You can see here a 60-second summary of his presentation, and take a look at the original slides (note that he goes with 4 main points, not 3, but you get the idea of keeping the number of main points small and manageable):

The slide below presents two groups of variables, but it sticks to one idea per slide (the correlation between Reading blogs and Learning.)

The power of Three

A good presentation (and paper, for that matter) is one that not only:

• is well organized, but also:
• makes that organization clear to the audience.

Because of human memory limitations, and maybe because of the “magic” qualities of the number 3 (look at mythology, religion, tales – most important things come in 3s), powerful presentations are organized around 3 main points.

Once you have decided what your 3 main points are, use the power of 3 to deliver your presentation:

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Announce (preview) the three main points at the beginning of your presentation.

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At any time during your presentation, the audience should know where you are in the structure. Make sure your presentation communicates where you are, where you are coming from, and where you are going next (same principles applies to website navigation.)

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Review the three main points at the end of your presentation.

Don’t Suck at PowerPoint

These days, it is fashionable to use slides with lots of images and little text. Though it is fashionable, it is not always effective, because visual learners will understand/remember your points better if they can read the words.

For presentations that you won’t deliver in person, this is especially important. Even though you will be recording audio over your slides for your final presentation, you can’t be sure that people will take the time to listen. So, can your slides stand on their own, without your voice-over, and still communicate effectively? That’s quite challenging, but feasible. Here is an example that accomplishes that:

[Update: One additional tip for not sucking at powerpoint is to proofread your text, something the above presentation occasionally fails at.]

And this is an example of what your bio slide could look like: