Presentations 101
Presentations are about much more than public speaking and overcoming stage fright. A good presentation always has the intention of being functional: There should be a reason for presenting, and, in most careers, professionals will be expected to present to some degree for many of the reasons described below. In the case of the senior design program, we simulate some of these aspects in order to help students gain experience; however, even within this sandbox, the objectives can have very real consequences on amplifying success and outcomes of projects.
INFORM ATTENDEES
Nearly all presentations will come with the intent to inform those involved. These people may be customers, peers, managers, investors, members of the public, or stakeholders. The ability to efficiently communicate to a wide array of audiences is critical for professionals as it can mean the difference between success and failure for a wide array of reasons.
Students in the program should be working to develop skills around:
Clearly introducing a project to a broad audience
Breaking down complex topics
Detailing risks and opportunities
Addressing ethical and social concerns
Detailing costs and resources used already as well as those still necessary to complete a project
Tracing the path taken thus far and lessons learned
Laying out the path forward
COLLECT FEEDBACK
A good technical presentation should provoke an audience to think critically about the topic. One of the best things that can happen after a presentation is for someone to hand over a solution on a silver platter or point out something that would cause problems soon which the team had not considered. It is human nature to resist feedback as it can be uncomfortable to be told that something is wrong with a heavily invested plan, but it is far more painful to discover later that a failure could have been avoided.
Avoid being defensive: It is human nature to try to address questions with defiance. It is okay to correct a comment that has a misconception, but one should focus on being self-reflective of if there is any truth in a question raised. Rather than saying "No, we've already thought of that," instead keep the door open to dialogue with something like "We've considered aspects of that, but is there something specific you think we're missing?"
Take action items: If an audience member brings up something a team hasn't considered, that team should write it down and follow up with it. Respect your audience enough to bring a pen and paper as a presenter and write down the feedback and prompts that come your way. Even if the presentation is recorded, these notes are easier to process than scrubbing through a video or audio file.
Be honest: If there's a problem with a project, the last thing a professional should do is try to skate around it. Much like being defensive, it can be enticing for team members to change or embellish the truth to make the team seem more prepared, but this is short-sighted. A professional should stand up for themselves when they are right, but they should accept when they've had failures rather than attempting to skew or change the truth.
SOLICIT RESOURCES
Audiences often contain individuals who may have physical, digital, or intellectual resources at their disposal, so a presenter should keep an open mind as to what can come from an audience. It is incredibly common in industry for someone to speak up in a meeting or presentation and say something to the effect of:
"Oh, you need that tool? We've got one sitting around we can let you use."
"I've got experience doing that kind of analysis. Chat with me afterward, and I can try to help you figure out where you're going wrong."
"We've got tons of data like this that we can share with you, and the thing you're looking for may be in there."
A presentation shouldn't prioritize begging for resources, but it pays to be honest about what a team's needs are and where they are struggling. A manager, investor, or customer never wants to find out after a project failed that the team would have been successful if they had been honest about what they needed.
HOW TO PREPARE
KNOW THE TOPIC
Nothing beats a presenter who is well informed on the topic at hand. It is very hard for a presenter to overcome having a shallow knowledge of a topic. While a memorized speech may play well in certain circumstances, unless a presenter is well informed, they won't hold up if difficult questions are asked or something goes wrong.
USE NATURAL LANGUAGE
Most audiences can tell when they're getting a sales pitch. This is why the show "Shark Tank" often feels "cringe," and advertisements are often disconnected from their audience. A technical presentation should leverage professional but natural language. This can often be challenging when a presenter is uncomfortable, and it is okay for a presenter to have a planned or memorized portion of the presentation, but the goal of many technical presentations is typically to evoke action, dialogue, and/or feedback. This can be difficult to develop, but the more genuinely informed the presenter is with the project, the easier it is to speak naturally about it.
HAVE REALLY GOOD VISUALS
It is very common for presentation to have small, unclear, and/or useless visuals on-screen. Presenters should prioritize large, clear, and uncluttered visuals in presentations.
A detailed schematic in the corner of the screen with unreadable text provides little value to a presentation other than to imply that there is one. Much better to fill a slide so the audience can see the details and read elements.
A computer science user interface with very small text may be readable by the person who developed it, but if it is screen-shotted onto a slide without labeling or magnification of key-features there's little ability for an audience member to review, gauge interest, and/or provide feedback.
A wall of text with a tiny picture of a test pales in comparison to a big picture that the presenter knowledgably describes in detail.
PRACTICE
Thinking about doing something or planning to do something is almost always inferior to doing that thing. Teams should set aside time to perform their presentations prior to the event. This presents an opportunity to check timing, duration, and gain comfortability working together in this setting.
It can be very informative to film yourself doing a practice presentation. This is quite informative on where things are stiff and uncomfortable.
HAVE CONTENT WORTH PRESENTING
A good presentation starts with worthy content. A team who hasn't been doing the work in research, development, analysis, build, and test before the presentation starts getting drafted will have a much harder time producing a quality presentation. A team who has made obvious great progress will naturally have a more engaged and invested audience. Progress is exciting and audiences want to be excited. (Don't forget that attempt and failure is still progress, and some failures are really exciting.)
LEARN FROM GOOD AND BAD EXAMPLES
There is no perfect way to speak or present. Many different strategies exist for conveying information and different personalities adopt different tools which help them perform in these scenarios. Below are several examples of very different presenters in different environments with different objectives. Adopting the useful characteristics and avoiding the poor techniques of others is a valuable method of developing skills like communication.
Steve Jobs Presents a New Campus Design to Cupertino City Counsel
Clear statements of context, objectives, constraints, and requirements.
Language aligned with various technical background of audience.
Clear visuals.
Significant information presented in first 10 min (before questions) despite slower speaking pace.
Lacking some technical content.
Riverfront Park Butterfly Structure Design
This is a public update and a design report presentation provided by principally by GuildWorks and Coffman Engineers related to the redesign of a historical structure in Riverfront Park.
The update provides historical context to a broad audience along with high-level progress notes, paths forward, and anticipated costs and timelines.
The design report presentation provides a higher-detail look into the design logic, analysis summary, along with detailed images of the design features.
The report blends technical information with summaries to be approachable by a broad audience.
Some aspects, such as the lanyard, are detailed at a low fidelity level. This may seem lower quality, but this type of quick-sketch approach is often used to display simple concepts which don't justify the hours to model in early design.
The presentation has minimal introduction as it was likely a part of a larger meeting which had introduced the project already.
More text on slides than it may be easy for an audience to digest during a presentation.
01 Riverfront Park Butterfly Update02 Riverfront Park Butterfly Phase 1 Design Report PresentationRebecca Tinucci Presenting Tesla's Charging Developments to Investors
Clear, fluid, honest, and confident voice.
Communication that is understandable for technical and non-technical audiences.
Similar to a status/final presentation is which it covers objectives, background, progress, current status, and forward looking objectives.
Regularly frames the decisions and progress against the objectives.
Packs a lot of clear information into 8 min.
Quality visuals that are well spoken to.
SpaceX Team Presenting Complex Combustion Analysis Technique
Enormous scope of technical content covered with background in ~45 min.
Visuals clearly architected for informing the audience and making topics approachable.
Communication is matched to a reasonably technical audience, but may not be approachable to everyone.
Reshma Saujani Detailing the Building of Girls Who Code
Narrative speaking style.
Establishes background, problems, process, and results.
Visuals stress critical data.
Very catered toward a non-technical audience.
Steve Jobs Navigating a Harsh Audience Criticism
Ability to take the criticism in stride
Comfort in some silence and ability to slow down and collect thoughts without losing audience while still saying a lot in not much time
Honesty in response in owning failures while upholding what was done right
A bit long-winded depending on objective
Steve Ballmer Going Too Strong
Certainly committed to the message
Comes off as artificial and difficult to believe
Coerces audience rather than convinces them
Risky to come off as seeming irrational to your employees, partners, and peers
Later owns to his infamous speech in an affable manner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spwU2P5U_1U