How to present your UX work effectively?
In this article, you will learn how to presenting your UX work effectively. A good presentation always has a start, a process and an ending.
You should start with a promise.
A promise means what the audience will get eventually after they reading or listening to your presentation. By doing so, it frames the audience’s expectation about this presentation. It is like building fence in your backward garden. You do not want other people or things to be distracted in the presentation. Most importantly, you are telling the audience the value of your presentation which makes them stay and listen to you.
The question further down is what makes a good promise at the start? In many cases, UX designers are presenting their work in a business context which time always is a scared resources. And very often they are communicating an idea to audiences who has limited knowledge to what they are going to listen. To tackle that, you require extra elements to support the promise so that the audience can pick up your stories quickly — and hence I am introducing you Promise-Context-conflict-(PCC) framework.
Promise — Context — Conflict (PCC) framework
PCC framework, in a nutshell, is a summary of why your solution is valuable to your audience, what is your solution and how it works. (Start with why)
Translating the framework in UX context, it is the metrics(value) of a user pain points(what), and the UX artefacts such as user research, user flow, user data, journey map and wireframes.
By giving context and conflict of your presentation, you are highlighting the tension/problem facing. In a business context, it is not uncommon that the problem definition is vague and empty. With context and conflict putting upfront, it keeps everyone inside the room on the same page. Do not make any assumption that our audience will understand your work easily. We put this presentation as top of our agenda, but business stakeholders aren’t.
And, it helps UX designer to prevent jumping into the screens immediately. UX artefacts are the deliverables but themselves do not communicate the reason of their existence. We need to explicitly mention why they exists. It then brings back to the promise stated in the very beginning.
Show your design process
After we setting up the scene, you need to show how you getting the final deliverables. It is vital to explain a lot of what and why we are presenting this design as the chosen one. They could be flows, wireframes, and prototypes. With a steps by steps slide, we are telling the audience what has been gone through before this presentation.
When we are presenting the design work, our design alternatives or exploration should come handy. No matter how good your design, it is not uncommon for the questions like can we change the flow, why the button looks like this, can we move this piece of information up front etc. All of these come to the information architect and prioritisation. Very often, we have brainstormed various options before. And it is the time for them to shine.
Use the sentences like “We have considered that as well… <showing the wireframe/design alternatives>. However, we discovered that.. <defects/reasons why not choosing that as an option>..
Also, it helps designers to facilitate the discussion. By showing the alternative design, we are actually inviting the stakeholder to participate the design process. They start to understand the rationale and comment. The kind of progressive loading on the design is a way to frame the discussion direction. Designers can then shape the direction by showing which area we want to discuss and make the changes. Such co-creation process will also increase the satisfaction on the design for both parties as both are feeling they are contributing the final result.
Of course, if you are in a job interview, the above scenario might not be applicable. Instead, showing the alternative design can demonstrate how throughly you’re.
