The Good Presentation Design was a great lesson for me because
I was able to relate the lesson to both my personal and professional life. Alignment,
contrast, proximity, and repetition are all important elements in the brief
presentations I prepare for my supervisor and other leaders in my organization.
I recall when I first started preparing power point presentations in the
military and my presentations being all over the place. I would include fancy
backgrounds, the fonts were never consistent throughout, and I had embarrassing
spelling errors. My boss would keep returning my presentations to “fix ” without
providing guidance or expectations on what he wanted the slides to look like or
include. It took me awhile to figure it
out, but I eventually did. I learned to pay attention to detail, even on the
smallest elements such as the location of the page number and I often ask my
colleagues to read my presentations as a second set of eyes for errors or inconsistencies
with the information on the slides.
As I read the pdf document provided, I focused my attention
on the slide decks that were included in the document looking for different
elements as to what a good presentation design should look like. I quickly realized
that fancy backgrounds are not necessary to get a point across, nor do you need
a lot of pictures or fancy animation to have a good presentation. In college my
professors never taught what a good presentation should look like, nor did they
mention that consistency and simplicity are things to consider for a good
presentation. I realized this after looking at some of my old presentations on
my computer files and remembered that they basically gave an assignment to create
a presentation. After this lesson, I was deeply surprised that I received
multiple grades of “A” on my presentations.
What needs to be done for a good presentation in general is
what we discussed in our discussion question. A good presentation consists of
slides that are simple and straight to the point, engagement with the audience,
and no shortcuts in the brief. The effort and time that is put into a brief is
what the audience will receive when being briefed. Meaningful information on a
slide is much better than a slide full of animation, and of course it is always
a good idea to include some visuals such as pictures or graphs. Giving direct eye
contact instead of roaming the room is something I constantly do and didn’t
know it was actually a good practice. I like to do direct eye contact so I can
catch somebody if they are sleeping through my presentation.
This module is a great tool for me as I stated above. It is
interesting that what my boss was trying to tell me was something he probably
learned in his graduate courses or from his previous boss when he was in my
position. I now know that this will only benefit me in the future and beyond my
years in the military and private sector.
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