Presentations
In any presentation, you are the center of attention. Not your slides. Not your props. Not your placards, exhibits, or signs. You. But you only get there by preparing with the audience foremost in your mind.
To succeed in a presentation is simple, but not easy: You first dump all your information on the table. Then you sort, shape, simplify, and support.
Graduate Thesis: Identifying Slide Designs for Effective Communication in Presentations
My graduate thesis paper was a comprehensive literature survey of presentation slide design.
My paper included scientific research, papers, articles, and popular books on slide designs. I distilled the information down to four basic areas of slide design and the effect each can have on audience engagement.
My research led to multiple “presentations on presentations” to students at Carnegie Mellon.
Teaching Design Without Teachers
My graduate thesis project involved designing for learning in a multimedia environment, specifically online learning. Online learning is relevant to presentations because many of the same principles used in online learning correlate directly to effective presentations.
In this project, I worked with a small team of professors and students to design and test an e-learning environment to teach document design to non-designers. My role included researching effective multimedia learning techniques, designing a video tutorial, refining learning goals, simplifying language, and performing user testing.
Courtroom Presentations
For more than three years, I worked with law firms from all over the United States to create compelling presentations for judges and juries. Our clients ranged from large multinational corporations to small one-man law firms.
Effective persuasion depends on creating a story that a judge and jury can believe in, appealing to their morals, values, and sensibilities.