English 3110 Assignment:
Final Project–Oral Presentation

Overview
Your oral presentation gives you an opportunity to present your project directly to your client-the organization or business for whom you have designed your product/project. Because of this unique medium, you have a chance to make some direct, persuasive appeals that are not available to the written format. It is very important then to emphasize key points instead of trying to be comprehensive. Remember, the oral presentation is a complement to, not a replacement of, written communication.

Grading Criteria
Your oral presentation will be graded based on three major aspects:

Content & Organization
Although you can’t be as comprehensive in an oral presentation as in a written report, you should try to present at least the major aspects of your project. Of course, you can’t present every detail, but some significant details should be included if they are crucial to your project. Like your written report, the organization of your presentation should demonstrate a certain logic. In other words, it should be coherent and cohesive in a way that one segment naturally and logically leads to another.

It might help to look at your oral presentation this way: you are essentially making an argument-that the product you designed is the best outcome/alternative for your client given the kind of time and resource constraints (if any). To make your argument forceful, then, you need to contextualize it (needs and context analysis, for example), support it with evidence (research findings and interpretations, for example), show the logical steps that lead to the argument (for example, setting up objectives, determining research methodology, analyzing findings, drawing conclusions, design analysis), and “sell” it to your audience (benefits of your design, for example).

Presentation Demeanor
How you “act” and “behave” yourself in front of your audience will directly affect your oral presentation. The most important thing is: don’t present for presentation’s sake; present to convince your audience. Therefore, show me your knowledge, show me your confidence, show me your enthusiasm! A dry, boring presentation where you show no interest or confidence in what you are talking about will convince and persuade no audience. Don’t do anything that may distract your audience.

Visuals
Visuals are an essential part of an effective presentation. There are two kinds of visuals involved here: 1) the pages that show your product as illustration in your design analysis and 2) visuals that present the main points of your presentation. You can use any program you consider appropriate to design your visuals, e.g., PowerPoint, Word, HTML, Composer, etc. So, what visuals do you need for the second type? Well, you can have, for example, an introductory visual (in which you introduce the project title, your client’s organization, and the presentation team), an outline visual (which overviews the presentation), and whatever visuals you need to highlight the main points of your talk. When designing visuals, keep the following in mind:

• Make it simple. Don’t try to put too much on your visual. Remember, each visual will be shown probably for no more than 1-2 minutes. Too much information will overwhelm the audience. On the other hand, too little information will be a waste for the visual.
• Make it readable. Make sure the font type is easy to read and the font size is big enough even for people sitting in the back. Take into consideration the size of the room and the lighting, etc.
• Make it professional. Proper use of ornamentation, such as lines, background patterns, color, graphics, etc., will add to the professional look of your visuals. However, excessive and improper use of these elements will become serious distracting factors.
• Make it consistent. Although you should try to avoid making your visuals look all exactly the same, there should be a certain degree of consistency among them. This can be achieved by using, for example, the same background, or the same logo, etc.

Miscellaneous
Time limit
Your presentation should be somewhere around 10 minutes, give or take a few. Being excessively over or under the limit will affect your grade. 

• Minimum: 8 minutes
• Maximum: 12 minutes

Audience

• Intended audience: your client
• Actual audience: your classmates

Although the actual audience of your presentation will be your classmates in this course, your intended audience is your client-the organization or business for whom you’ve conducted this usability test. Therefore, talk to your intended audience, not your classmates. Before your formal presentation, take a minute or two to introduce to your classmates what project you did and who your client is supposed to be so that your classmates can assume the role of that audience. In other words, although your classmates will be your actual audience, you should regard them as your intended audience. This project and audience introduction will not count as part of your presentation.

Questions & Answers
At the end of your presentation, make sure you invite your audience to ask questions. How you handle audience questions will also be a part of your formal presentation.

Level of Formality
Consider this a formal business presentation. This means you should act as professionally as possible. However, I will not impose a dress code. Nevertheless, some consistency among the group in the way you are dressed will be expected.