This transcript was fully generated using Descript. The transcript wasn’t corrected. Which means it can be pretty creative, funny or wrong at moments.

Introduction

The thing that I see over and over again, and it, it’s caused me to write about this and to do videos about this too, is your presentation makes just all the difference. It really is not just what you say, but it’s how you say it. And it’s not just what you want to say, but it’s what you want people to do with what you’re telling them. And over again, the jury, we have an external jury who come in. We’re all human. And when you’ve sat through, three days of presentations, it really makes a difference.

Yeah, absolutely. I think this is a very insightful part for people who are new to this thing, which is the backstage view, which is we go as supervisors or jury people, we go through a ton of these presentations. Having very engaging presentation really changes a lot because

if you have to go just through the same people just looking at a piece of paper and say, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

then it’s very long days.

But when you have people, trying to make it engaging, making it visually appealing using some rhythm, then it’s much easier to. Be really focused on the content, which at the end is a goal, but it makes it a bit easier.

Breath!

Andy: And you just mentioned something which I wrote and said several times as a comment, which is breathe. Breathing helps you when you’re presenting, it gives you time to just pause and have a thought and it really helps the audience because, one of the things that people forget is you say a whole lot of stuff and obviously, it can be quite insightful or dense information in a thesis presentation. And if you do it without any pause, you don’t give the audience time to actually listen and the buffer of I’ll let that information go into my head and let me think about that, and then you go on to, it’s just here’s a whole load of information, here’s a whole load more information, here’s more information, and as the audience member, you basically I start thinking, oh, hang on, what, I’m still, I’m either still thinking about something you said two minutes ago and not really listening to what you’re saying now, or I’m listening to what you’re saying now and I’ve forgotten the things you said two minutes ago. And so it really lands. I really learned it from someone actually talking about delivering speeches and storytelling at literally like reading out stories, which is, you say the sentence and then you let it sit, know, and it’s important.

Daniele: And there is one thing, where, many people tell me, oh, I’m not a good presenter, I get stressed, so I need to have notes.

Test different note styles to find yours

Daniele: And there is this stigma, like having notes is a bad thing, where I would say for people who have kind of the struggle to go fast, in the notes, having a little note, which says breathe,

like count to three, like one, two, three, Okay, this kind of stuff really works.

And it’s not something new in theater. We do it, in theater, we have these little lines that say the guy is breathing

and now he’s back in the scene. And I think if you’re someone who is a bit stressed, having notes is perfectly okay. But then use those to remind yourself that you have to put a break because otherwise you’re going to read super fast and just having the count to three it’s a bit mechanical, but for the other people looking at it, it’s going to be a very nice pause.

Andy: Yeah. I think you have to find what format works for you. So I’m not someone who likes some notes, but I like just bullet points. Cause I like to think for each slide, okay, what’s the one, maybe two, three things I want to say for this slide. And, there might be some facts and figures that I have to remember and I’m not very good at remembering that stuff.

So I much prefer that. I fall apart if I have a whole script. The only time I did it was actually after COVID and I had that sort of slight brain fog for about two or three months. it was the first time I found, oh, when I’m presenting, I actually almost need to write this out what I’m going to say. But most of the time, when I do my reflection videos like you do I just have some bullet points of what I want to say. And that really works for me. If I have none, that’s okay, because usually I have, I’ve got some images on the screen and I’ve got maybe one line of text and that’s my reminder. I can’t do the reading out thing. I know for other people, and particularly if it is not your mother tongue reading out from something you’ve written really helps. I also think there’s no problem with that as long as you’re not doing that. Two things. One is just, the paper is there and you’re just reading, right?

And people’s view of you through the whole thing is the top of your head. And the other thing is doing that thing you just said, which is just going through incredibly fast without pauses.

Daniele: Yeah, it’s super interesting because, I’ve been through that with many people in the professional world where I do like coaching for presentations within the organization. And there is a spectrum, which is very interesting. There is really these people who are, super extroverted, who, can do a presentation without notes, without anything. And then there is like people on the other side, but there is also in the middle.

and that’s an interesting middle too. One thing that I learned from somebody is this idea of having the start and the transition sentence and not the middle.

So this person, what she did, she had to start because she knew that it was important for her just to get going. And then she knew that she could manage to do the middle part. And then she just needed to make sure that the transition to the next slide worked well. So she just had these two notes and she could have it, just sticky note size thing or in the presenter’s note.

And it looks very professional and at the same time, it’s very reassuring because you know how like you have the sandwich of start and end, and in the middle, I’m sure that you guys will run a little bit more in free flow, but you know that you always land in a good transition and it will feel very structured.

seeing the spectrum is a very interesting way, and maybe trying it, sometimes it’s a strange thing. My wife was a passionate. She always before, did it free flow, and she learned from the experience. She was pushed by one of herpeers to, to say, write it all down and try it once.

And so she tried it once, twice, and now she is more on that side of the spectrum, which is interesting. So I recommend, try it out see if writing works or bullet points or just, slides as. As a script are enough.

Andy: I have this metaphor for managing teams or, directing creative teams and actually for coaching, which is sometimes, If people are in a very gaseous, or a team of people are in a very sort of gaseous state and it’s all bouncing all over the place, you need to give them a frame and because they don’t know where to go and there’s a million possibilities and by giving them some kind of frame, whether it’s a template or whatever, or limiting the palette in some way, they’re elbows butt up against it and they start to get a sense of their own form. And I think that’s that, right? I think when you write stuff down, I’ve been a writer for a long time and a journalist sometimes for a design magazine for many years. The written word is linear. And writing is not really linear, but it really forces you to put your sort of minestrone of thoughts down in some very kind of clear way. And it’ll soon tell you, okay I need to bring some structure to this. How am I going to start? Where do I start? Where’s the beginning, middle and end? And I think for other people, it’s the other way around where they’re very fixed and solid and actually they need to shaking up a bit and doing something crazy.

And for them, I think sometimes that’s those people who just reading something and it’s very stilted and boring then maybe, you want to try and open that up a bit and be a little bit more improvisational.

Daniele: Absolutely. And so we covered a bit of the oral side of

it, but for the visual side, do you have one, two, top three tips to make also a good visual companion to an oral presentation?

Start with structure

Andy: So it’s actually structure first. So for me there’s a couple of things that I think are really important to remember, that the deck is not the presentation, all right? And certainly professionally, there are two things, right? There’s a thing you’re going to send away, a PDF or something.

You might have built it as a deck. And that has to live on its own, right? So it probably has more text in it. That someone has to receive that and be able to understand it. The thing you’re presenting to orally is a different kind of deck, right? It’s supporting you. And classically on TED Talks, there’s maybe three slides and, and that’s it.

And people do their kind of 20 minute TED Talk like that. So the first thing is to start off with structure. And, I am a fan of three, three act structure. It’s a thing that’s present everywhere in all of our kind of stories. You might have a kind of fourth act or something like that, but pretty much there’s usually an opening, which is, this is what my project’s about.

This is what my idea is in the problem space. And here’s my sort of question that I’m trying to answer. And then there’s a kind of a bit in the middle, which is here’s the work, some of the work I did, and, here’s my project, here’s what I’m doing. And then there’s an end bit and the end bit’s often forgotten. I think actually often starting at the end and go, how do I want to end this? What’s the sort of call to action for people or, what are my next steps, whatever is a good place to start and work backwards. Because otherwise people do a presentation and they say, here’s all the work and here’s my project. Thank you very much. It’s oh, that didn’t, whether you feel like I don’t have anything more to say or not as a, as someone in here, we’re all used to listening to stories and not having that sort of denouement at the end is deeply unsatisfying for an audience member, even if we’re that conscious of it or not. And then structurally within that, I would say, There’s a couple of things. One is, for every slide, what is the idea that you’d want to say with these slides? You can do it extractions. What’s the main points of those three structures? And then for every slide what do I want to say with it?

And if there’s maybe one, two or three points you want to say with this slide. And crucially, have I said this or nearly this anywhere else? Because the thing I noticed over and over again is People say a thing and then the next slide is and I’m going to say the same thing in a slightly different way and now I’m going to say it in this next slide in a slightly different way and actually, you can just cut all of that stuff or, you might combine things and so that’s really crucial and can condense, those sort of 80, 80 slide presentations that are gabbled through really quickly.

That can condense it down into a really concise 15, 20 minutes by just editing basically that. So when you do that, and I would post it in those structures.

Structure your presentation like a Blueprint

Andy: One post it note per slide and just actually, first of all, think about what’s the story. And then after that, it’s what things are going to help support or illustrate the point I’m making?

Is it a quote from someone I’ve done some research with? Is it a quote from someone in the literature who’s important? To support my arguments, particularly when I make a claim, I say this thing’s going on in the world and it’s not just me who says this, but, here’s a quote from Einstein who said it too. or is there an image or a metaphor that really works well to support this? I’m a huge fan of metaphors because I think they really help people understand new areas. So that’s how I would approach it before you even get to doing any more details on that stuff.

Daniele: And it might feel very naturally, I think, for people who have studied service design, who are doing service design. Because, you can see it from what I hear from you and from my own practice. You can see it like as a blueprint of your

presentation before doing the presentation, doing the blueprint where you say, okay, I have the slides having as one lane where I say this is the idea that I want to get across.

Then you can have a second lane where you say what’s the content that I’m going to show. Then you can even go further and say what’s the type of visual or media. So is it Text. Is it a sketch? Is it a photo? And then it allows you to zoom out of your presentation and just see what’s the rhythm, and you realize, oh, this is text, photo text.

And so even before you are in Keynote, Google Slides or whatever, you already doing the editing in a very quick way because you notice, oh, this is going to be boring if I build it like that. And so you can switch it quite quickly. This is one of the killer tips. And it’s also one of the killer tips that most people that I’ve been through in coaching for presentation, they always say, Oh, the one thing that helped me the

most was don’t start in PowerPoint.

Start on sticky notes. It’s a weird one for presentations, but maybe that’s a good way to start again for the visual stuff to not start visually, but start with the content

and the structure.

Andy: I still think doing sticky notes is good, but the shortcut to it is you make a keynote in, and it’s just text on white backgrounds, or even just sticky notes, because you can have sticky notes and keynote, just so you’ve got that sequence.

Because you can always go into that sort of lightbox view. I’ve noticed quite a lot of students use Canva and sometimes I say, listen, if your design skills aren’t that strong, then consider something like Canva or existing, template, because I said that you might think that’s weird for a design school, but actually, some people say in service design might not have particularly strong visual design skills. And you don’t want those things to be a distraction and no one’s really grading you on your visual design abilities if you’re a service design student necessarily. But it will detract if you just present something that looks awful. That said, I’ve really noticed that Figma and Canva seem to, using those tools, seems to encourage people to make very overlong decks 80, 100 slides. And I don’t know why that is. I suspect it’s something to do with the way you always view them in that kind of broad view and you just keep adding stuff to it.

And it doesn’t feel so long as if you have to click through them every time or so. I’m not sure what it is but the other thing is you don’t get to put in speaker notes and I think that’s a really kind of crucial bit too. So I know I much prefer using Keynote.

I hate PowerPoint, if you’re going to do it, then, it is what it is.

Use timing as the base structure

Daniele: And there is a bit of a calculation thing that so many people forget to do, which is, how long do you have? And then how many slides do you have?

And you divide that and you see how many minutes do you have per slide? And then suddenly you realize, I’m going to have to talk so fast.

What if I do it the other way around and say, okay, I’m going to have so much time. What is a good amount of time spent on one slide, and then you know how many slides you can really use. Because, One of the weirdest thing that you can do is speak and the slide just move, because then it creates this kind of overload, which is quite strange,

especially if it’s not just pictures.

If it’s just pictures, it’s another thing. But if it’s pictures plus text with something else, then it’s a really big overload.

Andy: What’s your

Daniele: rule of thumb?yeah, my rule of thumb is thinking that each slide is at least one or two minutes.

Andy: Yeah, me

Daniele: So that’s like a basic thing to know that if you are a skilled presenter, one minute is really the thing that you can aim to.

Depending on how used you are and how rich your slides are between one and three minutes is a good starting point. And if you are below that’s a danger sign, I would say.

Andy: Yeah, I go for one minute per slide, usually, and so if I’m doing a 20 minute presentation, I would look to probably have 20 or, but 20 to 25 would be my maximum if I know I’m presenting for 20 minutes. And that’s because the exception to the one minute rule for me is. jokes and reveals So sometimes there’s a thing where I’m talking about something and I do click through quite quickly and literally in one sentence I’m saying, and so you don’t want to end up with something like this and you click to that slide, that’s the joke and you click off of it quite quick. which brings me to this other thing around sequencing, right? you can do a lot with sequencing, right? Just like you’re editing a movie. You can have the same footage and you can tell a very different story depending on the sequencing. I spend a lot of time now coaching the students.

And I realized this many years ago, actually at HSLU, so back in 2009, 10 or something, where would present something pretty mediocre really well and do well. And some people would present a really good idea really badly and not do very well. It’s quite difficult to, or we will, people will see through a really average or bad idea presented glossily, that usually doesn’t do too well.

But, I really noticed with the sequencing sometimes that, the setup of I found all of this out and here’s someone’s experience of this. And you go, it’s really awful. And so much, and you’re thinking, Oh, this poor person. And then they show, and here’s how many people this affects.

And you’re like, Oh my God, this is an enormous problem. This is brilliant. Your project should definitely address this. That’s a kind of real reveal. Whereas if you start off with thousands of people suffer from this thing, and then you go back down to the individual, it’s easy to go, yeah, but that’s just one person, what about all the rest? And it’s amazing how that sequencing can make a difference. And the key to all of that is practice. The last thing you want is for the first time you ever present this to be your presentation day.

Rehearse until you get bored by it

Andy: Absolutely. You want to finish like a week early so that by the time and practice and practice. so when you’re presenting in York on the final day, you’re almost bored of it, right? And then the nerves will just get you to the right level of enthusiasm.

Daniele: Yeah, it feels, like comedians, comedians are doing exactly the same,

they go in tiny bars where nobody knows them and they try out their stuff, they edit it and they do that for one year and then they do the big show. But arriving to the big show, it’s quite interesting if you listen to the interviews of comedians,

they usually say, Oh, I’m so bored by my material arriving at the big stage.

And fortunately there is a big stage

to create

like the mood, but it’s just like a mechanic thing, but people feel like, Oh, he’s such a natural, but it’s not natural at all. This is something that has been built over one year.

So building a final presentation over one week.

It doesn’t feel that much when we compare to the right scale in a way.

Andy: That’s such a great comparison. I’ve definitely seen people like Eddie Izzard. talking about their material and you know he’s comes across as someone who’s just like improvising the whole thing but it’s all very careful sometimes there’s a sort of thing that happens in one show where they do improvise and they go oh that worked well and they integrate it in There’s a really good documentary. It’s a two part documentary on Steve Martin and he talks about how he spent like 15 years and just drew the sort of big rise of his massive fame, basically doing the same show over and over again. And about sort of 10 years in, he’s I think I nailed it now.

I think I’ve got it, but you hear him go, I’ve got this thing. And I know it’s funny, but I don’t really know why. I can never get it to quite work. The laugh never comes or it doesn’t come at the right point on all of that. Yeah it’s a real art,

Daniele: so for our kind of last element, what is something that is more on the art side of making a great presentation? What will be your last tip for someone watching this video?

Andy: the art side of it. in order for it to be engaging, you almost need to be bored with it. I really do think there’s that thing of you’ve spent enough time on it and. You know the material really well. You know what’s coming next.

I think actually you’re talking about your colleague who does those transition sentences. I think when I’ve got something that I’ve presented lots of times, and I really know what’s coming next. And so I can really be flexible with the timing. And I know I can if I’m running fast, I will check my watch and I can stretch a bit out or if I’m running out of time, I can, there’s a lot of squash and stretch and I can speed through, but I know the next bit and so anything I’m talking about is preparing me for that next thing and it’s like stepping stones and I think the counterintuitive thing about that is It’s almost feels if you went out of your way to almost be a little bit more, a little bit more boring in the way you construct it and feel like this is all very obvious. It actually ends up being more engaging because it’s the obviousness of like, I know what’s coming next. And you want to just be that tiny bit ahead of the audience, but not so much that they’re lost. and not so little that they’re really bored and yeah, come on, I get it. I get it. Get on with it.

You’ve just repeated that. There’s that idea of the, my favorite things is when someone asks a question in the middle of a kind of talk or something. And it’s my next slide. Because then I know, okay, they’re exactly with me. I’ve set up the question in their head and then I answer it in the next slide.

And so that kind of thing. It actually sounds quite boring but that’s really where you’ve got people engaged, I think. How about you? What do you think?

Do something weird but relevant at the start

Daniele: So my kind of unexpected and arty thing would be there was one person who did that for a presentation this year, which was something quite impressive. She had a project about underwater goggles and she came with a full neoprene suit.

Andy: Okay.

Daniele: And just seeing that level of commitment, I was just like already, okay, that’s going to be a good presentation, and so thinking about these kind of little things, that can show to people, oh, this is someone who’s committed to this thing. It’s a bit crazy and it attracts the eye and it attracts the attention. You’re like, Oh, I’m not looking at my grading sheet anymore.

I’m now looking at the scene because something strange is happening here. And so that’s, this is thing, I think again within, especially this student things where, you know, the evaluators, the jury are spending a lot of time in the Excel sheets, making comments and stuff. And what can you do to just grab their attention out of the Excel sheet to be truly with you?

And, Depending on your topic might be something very crazy, something very simple but thinking about how do you grab the attention so that people are really with you at least for one minute where they think this person is committed to this project.

Andy: Yeah. I think there’s two caveats to that, though. I think you have to be committed to it. If you do it and you’re a little bit like, Oh, this is a sort of bit of a kind of funny thing I’m doing to grab your attention. It doesn’t work. You actually have to almost play it straight, I think.

And then the second thing is it has to make sense in the context of your project,

right? Just like any visual in the slide. Otherwise, it’s a non sequitur, it’s okay, so you did that bit and now you’re going to carry on in it. What was the point of you being in the scuba suit? it has to really work, but yeah, that’s good.

Ask your questions

Daniele: so Andy, thanks so much for all your precious Insights, tips, and backstage knowledge. And I’m sure that people might have questions and we will obviously be happy to answer those questions wherever we will find them, be it on social media, LinkedIn, or just on our internal teams for our students.

Again, thank you so much

Andy: Thank you very much. Lovely to chat, as ever.

Daniele: cheers. Bye bye.

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