There’s nothing like being face-to-face when giving an important presentation. You naturally take cues from the others in the room: eye contact, body language, and facial expressions.

However, presenting in person isn’t always an option. 80% of corporate presentations are being delivered remotely. In these cases, making a virtual connection with your audience is key, especially when presenting UX designs. The most articulate person always wins; the more successfully we communicate, the higher the chance that our designs become reality. Use the tips below to resonate with your audience, even while presenting remotely.

1. Create a Presentation-Ready Environment

Nothing screams ‘webinar’ like a pixelated image of someone’s face and poor audio quality. Break out of the mold and use what you can to create a presentation-like atmosphere.

  • Mimic an in-person meeting environment. Use a conference room and invite a few attendees to be there with you. This will create a presentation atmosphere and give you energy to play off.
  • Stand up to face the camera. Position your camera to capture you from a standing angle. Not only will this put your body in a natural presentation position, but it will also open your chest cavity for better enunciation.
  • Share the spotlight. Use usability-testing videos and user quotes to make your presentation more compelling.  Real users can bring a breath of fresh air during a long presentation and can keep the audience engaged.
  • Arrive early. Arriving early to the virtual meeting will give you the time you need to prepare the room, setup any electronics, iron out any technical difficulties, and get comfortable.
  • Use an upgraded microphone. While many webcams have decent built-in mics, you can buy a much better one for around $100 and a professional-quality microphone for maybe $250. Sounding good will definitely make the audience less likely to drift away from your presentation and may make them think you’re smarter — along the lines of the halo principle.

2. Be Human

Since you can’t be in the room with the majority of your audience, modify your slides to take your place.  Make your content not only informative, but also relatable and emotional. Below are ways to have your slides carry you into your audience’s room:

  • Use your slides to take your place. Place a visual representation of yourself on each slide, especially if you have multiple people presenting. This picture allows the audience to not only imagine you, but also call you by name when asking questions.

Humanize Your Slides to Resonate With Your Audience

The more human, the better. Place a picture of the presenter on each slide, to help the audience to match a face to the voice. You can also add context to your design using personas, customer journeys, or UX stories—anything that humanizes you and your designs.

  • Give each slide a clear purpose. In-person presenters can afford to have a slide that easily melds into the next. When you’re not in the room, giving a clear purpose to each slide will direct focus to your key concepts. Let’s face it: remote audiences are more likely to multitask (for example, by checking email or browsing the web) at least occasionally during your remote presentation. Clear, simple, brief content on the slide will help them quickly recover context. Aim for one major idea per slide.
  • Tie the slides together visually. The main point of continuity in an in-person presentation is the presenter. Without your physical presence, create continuity by instilling a visual identity throughout your content.

Mastering Remote Collaboration- Use a Cohesive Visual Language

Use color, shapes, or slide titles to visually and mentally create cohesion amongst your slides.

  • Communicate your preparedness through your slides. When presenting in person, preparedness and expertise can be expressed in a variety of ways — how you dress, eye contact, energy, and more. Remotely, you lose the ability to leverage these mediums. Create tight, concise, and well organized slides to communicate preparedness and expertise. Use the moments before (e.g., meeting-agenda email or calendar invite) and after the meeting (followup email, action items) to drive home the overarching goals of the presentation.

3. Reduce Distractions

Countless internet memes have been made from the pitfalls of presenting remotely. A controlled environment will reduce distractions for speakers and will help them get ahead of issues that might arise.

  • Get away from your desk. Find a conference room where you won’t encounter the daily distractions that come up at your desk. If a conference room is unavailable, try covering your walls with large blank sheets. This will keep your eyes from wandering over to your to-do list or calendar.
  • Delegate technical work. Have a colleague or two help with setting up the phone or video line and answer chat questions from the audience. Create a collaborative document for any notes or actions items to be recorded and accessed after the meeting.
  • Eliminate visual distractions. Put your phone on silent, close your instant messenger, and log out of any apps on your computer to ensure your eyes don’t wander while presenting.
  • Make eye contact with the camera. If your face will be displayed during the presentation, move your slides or any other content you’ll be looking at on your computer as close to the video lens as possible. This ensures that, when you do take a peek at the slides, your eyes will seem as if they’re still engaged and making eye contact with the audience.
  • Reboot your computer. The worst distraction of all is when your computer freezes or crashes while you’re trying to get a complex point across. Rebooting before the presentation will reduce (but sadly not eliminate) crashes.

4. Prepare Beforehand to Prevent  Poor Performance

Success of your presentation will depend on many factors, a few of which you cannot control. However, preparing as many ‘known’ factors ahead of time reduces the chance of a poor performance. Whether a team presentation or a large-scale webinar, take time to document what you can control ahead of time.

  • Communicate meeting details early and often. Dial-in information, video links, and instructions for participants joining should be shared ahead of time to reduce delays or interruptions in your presentation.
  • Prepare the team. If presenting with a team, set a meeting before your presentation to review all important information, as well as the technology that will be used.
  • Have a backup plan. Veterans will tell you that something always goes wrong. If you’re doing a live demo, have a recorded video ready to go. Have a plan in place for your team to step in if you are not able to present at that last minute. Even when a mishap seems improbable, have a plan that can prevent the unexpected from rearing its head.

5. Turn Your Presentation into a Story

Every presentation has a story that’s ready to be told. It’s your job as the presenter to take your content and create a story that people will remember when they sign off. UX practitioners are immersed in user’s stories — their wants, needs, context, and actions. The story you tell around your design should not be made up, but rather pulled from existing user research and interviews.

The users and their goals are the most rudimentary components of a story, upon which empathy, context, conflict, plot, and insight can be built.  A good UX story should be simple, yet engaging enough and accessible to a range of audiences: young to old, beginner to expert. Create a story to use in your presentation, and then use the following tips to help it resonate with your audience:

  • Establish a sense of curiosity. Leave small gaps in your presentation or withhold ‘filling in’ the picture to create a sense of curiosity and draw the audience in.
  • Use pauses and directives to guide your audience. Pausing between ideas and using directives to guide the audiences gaze across the slide ensures that your participants are on the same page and following your cadence.
  • Link your story over multiple presentations. When creating multiple presentations, use the same story throughout. Your storyline will progress and create relatable concepts and language for your audience to apply to your new ideas.
  • Take your story beyond the presentation. Your audience’s experience with your presentation begins the moment they receive the invitation to attend. Take care to incorporate your story throughout the audience’s experience.

Conclusion

Remote presentations are convenient and enable you to communicate to many globally — at a magnitude in-person presenting does not afford. With the right strategies and approach, presenting remotely can help set the stage for persuasion or a call to action, ultimately bettering the design at hand.

Following these 5 general tips will improve your remote presentations.  However, the best way to achieve success is to test and iterate: our presentation methods need to be tested and iterated upon just like the products we design. Zig Ziglar said “maybe you don't hold the title of salesperson, but if the business you are in requires you to deal with people, you, my friend, are in sales.”

To learn more, check out our full day course Communicating Design.

 

Reference

Nancy Duarte. Mastering Remote Presentations. Harvard Business Review. February 13, 2013.