MSLD 500 Module 8- Good Presentation Design

Whether it is something persuasive or informative, the goal of any presentation is to effectively deliver your knowledge to the target audience. Most of us probably came across horrifically boring presentations to the point we daze off or become distracted in something else. Almost always, the ending results we get from the audience is the lack in absorption of the presentation (memorization). Boring presentations can be a dangerous situation for leaders especially since it their goal to gather as many people to look up to and support them. To avoid this situation, one critical quality all presentations should have are something interesting.

Interesting elements of a presentation can come in various forms, however the one thing they all have in common is that they target the potential interests that the audience has. Classroom sessions provide a perfect example. Almost always, most students are stressed and bored since the topic is often something irrelevant to their goal or interest. With most professors aware of this, they often input something eye-catching such as a discussion, story, or image. For instance, I had several professors back at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Daytona Beach campus often implementing video clips from popular television series. They are often funny enough for students to engage in, which often results in better attention and stronger abilities for students to absorb information. Adding interesting elements is most important at the beginning of the presentation since this will allow immediate attention to the presentation.

Though adding something interesting is good, it is important to make sure that these interesting things are relevant and for your audience. For instance, I had a professor back at the Daytona Beach campus who was a huge fan of DreamWorks’s Kung Fu Panda. Though I was able to make some connections to the lessons, most examples from the film were irrelevant and the professor often ended up being too carried away. This is a dangerous habit to have in any presentation since relevance is an important quality in any form of communication. Having relevance to the presentation provides the audience the mentality that you truly understand the topic, but relevance also maintains your audience’s interest. Though implementing Kung Fu Panda might be funny, it is important to keep in mind that not everyone has seen or like the movie.

When it comes to visual presentations, design matters. From numerous experiences, the one common mistake I see is too much information shown. Personally, I believe too much information is not only is confusing, but it also “gives out” too much of what the presenter needs to present. The goal of the presenter is to explain as much as they can without the dependency of the visuals. Too much dependency in my opinion represents uncertainty or even laziness of the presenter. This might be something important to consider in leadership since these two characteristics can lead to some dislike from your followers.

 In addition to design, quality is also important. Quality can refer to the information or images provided in a presentation. It is important to always ensure that the information you implement in presentations are reliable and dependent. For example, when providing charts, perhaps receiving them from government websites might be more reliable than charts from someone’s blog since the source can be altered by anyone. How the chart looks is also important to consider. It is important to make sure that the chart is not overflowing with details to confuse your audience and is clear from any flaws. For instance, I came across numerous presentations where pictures were overstretched to the point they were pixelated and hard to read. It is also important to make sure that the pictures don’t look squashed since this too will cause some difficulty and look unprofessional in general. This can be dangerous in leadership since professional image usually establishes trust from your followers.

Lastly, the language of the presentation is also important to consider. I had a project one point during my undergraduate days where we had to make a presentation on a business park and airport expansion to the elderly citizens of Volusia County. Our goal of the presentation was to ease the anxiety these citizens had: such as noise, safety concerns, and the loss of land. During the making of the presentation, I constantly got in an argument with a group member also part of the project. He had the part to discuss information on runways, but as a pilot, he added very complicated terminologies as well as unnecessary numerical information. Though the information he implemented in the presentation might be helpful, it is important to keep in mind that our target audience are general elderly citizens and that not all had prior pilot or aviation-related experiences. For any presentation, you need to consider your audience and not yourself. Similar to the Kung Fu Panda example, it might provide examples and might be fun for the presenter, however not everyone watched or like the movie and it can only cause confusion to the audience.