Photo by airfocus on Unsplash

“They loved your presentation!” my manager told me. She was referring to the deck I had put together to request more development funding for our Broker web platform that was in dire need of design love and attention.

See, I was assigned to a project where the scope of work was just to give a visual lift to the overall look and feel. But after doing an audit of the current state, I knew we wouldn’t hit our goals if that’s all we did. The UI and IA were a mess. The MVP for a Q1 release they had originally planned wasn’t going to cut it. As the lead UX, I had to at least put these things on their radar. Kind of like a…

“Hey, so here’s the opportunity. This is what we can do about it. I get it if you don’t want to go forward with it because it’s kind of late. But, I’m just going to put this on your radar anyway because that’s my job. It’s totally your call!”

I was expecting something like a…

“Yeah that’s all true, but we’re on a really tight budget and timeline. It’s still great work though!”

But no. Apparently this deck turned some heads — including the Chief Digital Officer and the rest of the steering committee. They were all on board to support us in our change recommendations. I was the last person to expect a quick and dirty presentation could instantly land with some of the top brass in the organization. But it worked!

Any tips?

Yes! I took a moment to reflect and asked myself why this deck worked, including what I would tell someone who’s looking to do something similar. Here is what I’ll leave you with:

#1. Before starting, ditch the idea of explaining your process and methodology.

To my former students who may be reading this, you may be thinking…

“Jon, you always told us to explain the What, How and Why in our presentations… Why are you going back on your word?!”

You have to remember that this is a different audience.

Explaining the processes you used (eg. card sorting, sketches, photos of people user testing your prototype, etc.), demonstrates your specific contributions and capabilities as a UX Designer to hiring managers.

Here, you’re sharing to executives. They’re a lot more interested in a clear summary of the problem and what your solution is to make things right. The more effectively you can communicate this, the better. Verbose explanations of how, what and why you did what you did aren’t really necessary when you’re trying to convince a group of decision-makers.

#2. Be super direct and clear about the problem and the solution.

Make it so direct, clear and easy to digest. Executives prefer something that’s short and concise. You can accomplish this by using a Gap Analysistemplate:

An example of a Gap Analysis template (Credit: CIToolkit.com)

After the opening slide, you can get right into it and show this. In my version of it, the sections looked more like this:

• Current state (What are things like now?): The web platform today has a poor Information Architecture that makes essential page content needlessly challenging to find for all users.
• Gap (What’s the problem?): Users will be increasingly frustrated with the platform. They will not be happy.
• Impact (How will that impact the KPIs ?): High help desk call volume, low NPS, slow task completion speed
• Solution (What are you proposing to fix this solution?): Conduct UX research to understand which organization of labels makes sense for users across the country.
• Future state (What is the desired expected outcome?): Higher NPS, lower help desk calls, increased task completion speed

Now, this isn’t anything particularly different or new. The trick, is to communicate the above 5 sections in 1 slide. Just use 1 sentence/bullet point. That’s it.

#3. Then, hit them where it hurts — Speak to the impact of KPIs.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) should be in every presentation. Because design can be measured, your solutions/proposals should speak to how it will result in the outcomes that matter to stakeholders. You can speak to your Product Manager if you’re not sure what the KPIs are.

Have a look at the 3rd bullet in the section above for example.

#4. Follow it up with the customer’s voice — Nothing is more powerful

Ahead of the presentation, I had conducted some user interviews to get a feel for what their current experience was like with the web platform. They all more or less said the same thing…

“Give us a better search!”

“The search sucks.”

“It can take me upwards of 20 minute to find something on the search bar… If I can’t, I call the help desk.”

“It feels like the search is not doing what’s supposed to do.

If you have any, sprinkle in some gut-punching quotes that speak to the pain points. These inspire action like none other. You can follow up the next slide or two with some compelling verbatim quotes.

#5. Finally, sell your vision.

A wireframe of a search experience (Credit: Rebecca M Allen on flickr)

Never finish a deck without a vision for what you think the solution should be. Describe in some detail what it looks like and how it works. This can be one of your last .ppt slides. In my case, I created some low-fidelity wireframes of the web-platform with a contemporary search experience with some notes describing how it worked and how it would make life easier for users. That’s it!

What should the deck look like now?

• Intro slide — 1 slide
• Agenda — 1 slide (I think this is optional. It can be in your meeting invite)
• Gap analysis — 1 slide
• Customer quote — 1 slide
• Vision — 1 slide

_________________

Total:

4 to 5 slides