Design_at_the_edge

Communicating- again

Before I post about design I thought I would alert you to some interesting presentations at http://www.nokia.com/nokia/0,6771,76279,00.html presented at Nokia Connection 2005. They have an interesting mix of visual and textual content on the slides. Some of them seem ripe ( e. g. Monday

15.15		Capturing opportunities of voice convergence
		Seppo Aaltonen Director, Wireless Technology Marketing)

for making into Notes pages in Powerpoint as per Cliff's advice on "sending your Notes pages not slides" http://www.beyondbullets.com/2005/02/notespages.html. The Nokia "stuff" seems to lend itself to this treatment which would add value to slidesets that have obviously had a lot of care lavished on them. A case of "thinking outside the presentation (box)"; even taking their own medecine? see Monday 9.00

Nokia – Inspired human technology
		Pertti Korhonen Senior Vice President Chief Technology Officer, Nokia Frank Nuovo Chief of Design, Nokia

What do you think about the move to a more visual presentation style with textual content as backup to content, which is following (or leading)the direction of our design strategy development to deliver competitive products?

Putting visual material and the story in harmony

I often see presentations which are difficult to take in even if I have a desire to really pay attention as the content may be really interesting. Sometimes people have decided to put in a visual to help interpret the textual or tabular material and often it distracts as I know find myself asking "what on earth has that to do with the table?", so I loose the plot even more quickly!

In the mid-90's I worked with Angela Dumas and one of her presentations involved displaying works of art and then asking questions like " would you buy a used car from this firm? Or this one?", The responses were always entertaining and often enlightening as it dawned on the audience that they were reading an awful lot into the content of the picture giving it a "visual brand". This is of course waht we are doing all the time so our visuals are very important.. they have to be authentic to our story but not necassarily slick! The attached Acrobat the Notes pages of a Powerpoint I have created to illustrates Angela's message. What do you think?

Download you_have_3_job_offers.pdf

Better Communication by Design

20:59 02 June 2005 MVC-002X.JPG

21:00 02 June 2005 MVC-003X.JPG

21:00 02 June 2005 MVC-004X.JPG

A few month's ago I decided I wanted to design better presentations that engaged the people who had taken the trouble to come and listen to me. that meant a more affective approach that ended with people wanting to act.. to use the material that they had just learned.

In the early 80's I attended a one day workshop to "create better 10 minute presentations" facilitated by a man named Napoleon duFault. This was before PC's had appeared in any quantity so the workshop slides were hand-drawn straight onto acetates.. The pictures above show the 8 slide format that starts with

1. Problem

2. Idea (to solve problem)

3. Benefits

and then continues...

4/5/6. Evidence (in the form personal Incident, Analogy, Judgement, Example, Staistics/Facts)

7. Summarise slides 1, 2, 3.

8. Meaning/Action

At the end of the day the 8 delegates, including myself, stood up and presented in around 10 minutes, totalling 15 with questions. We used a mixture of text and sketches on the slides, influenced by the format which had columns for verbal notes and visual concepts, highlighting the need to visualise what we wanted to communicate.

The format is stumbling towards Cliff Atkinson's storyboard template http://www.sociablemedia.com/thebook_resources.php4

which I have been busy learning since the beginning of the year.

One of the topics on the Beyond Bullet Points discussion board is how to tie the visual material to the story.....

Finally its time to cross the start line

12:30 26 March 2005
Image(118)

A picture I took in Stratford-upon-Avon a few weeks ago.... It seems to be a metaphor for my efforts at starting to Blog. Almost get to the start line and then find a way to get past it up on the top right! So here goes!