My reflection blog this week for MSLD 500 is the summarizing my thoughts on good presentation design. There are the four big attributes to presentation design: contract, repetition, alignment, and proximity.

Design

Contrast is considered the most important part of presentation design. Contrast according to the reading material defines something that is different.  When reviewing presentations, it is defined that a person automatically looks for different in contrast whether is the colors, empty space, line and text formatting.  A presenter could possible bold particular words in a presentation to exemplify a concept that sends a message to the receiver. For example, in presentations that I have generated for schedule effectiveness that is measured by a statistical number, I would put unfavorable numbers in red font, and numbers that are favorable in green font. I use red and green based on a simple learned behavior. When I approach and intersection with my car, if the light is red I know to stop and green is my permission to continue through. This same concept applies to the design of my statistical presentations.

One element of contrast is repetition. Repetition of using the same colors, schemes, fonts is the same for consistency. The caution the reading material highlights is too much of the same repetition of a contracts may not represent your presentation as a whole.  When I design charts, I always tend to use the same background schemes so there is a standard view, and it tends to be simple for a person like myself who is always running around managing several things at the same time. I like simple, organized and what I call one-stop shopping for consistency. Every month I use the same backgrounds and fonts for my status charts.  

Another element of contrast is alignment. The purpose of alignment is to make sure you are organizing your data with a consistency without just putting data randomly on a chart. It’s easier to present information if it is logically aligned in an organized manner. When I design presentation charts, I like to use numbers and bullet applications to keep my data aligned within its text box. I like to use as much white space as possible, but not overload it with words. Nothing is more annoying when watching a presentation and the information is unaligned and you have to ask the presenter to explain what’s on the charts.  

The next element of contrast is proximity is about organizing data on your chart that relates to each other. I actually had an embarrassing moment when I was presenting some work information and I did not prepare by looking at the data ahead of time. In the presentation, I stopped myself and was confused as the data on the chart for a particular bullet did not match the words. It was really confusing as I wanted to follow the words (bulleted) to the pictorial graphic, and it did not work. I found myself confused and apologetic for the unpreparedness.

Pet Peeves

From a business application, I have several pet peeves about chart designs. The pet peeve that tops all is color scheme. An example is when I see metrics in colors such as pink, lime green, or purple. I respect that this is an opportunity to express your personal choice, but it may not be the optimal choice to represent a business. Too often these color choices are displayed with white backgrounds, making the data hard to read. The value of working in a large corporation, the company itself defines a chart design that is consistent across the teams. Also, eliminate the assumption of perception of a customer or supplier that may place a negative remark about a personal choice.

Another pet peeve of mine is when people design a presentation to use interactive graphics.  This approach is okay as it demonstrates a sense of creativity, but depending if it has noise or constant movement it could actually be a deterrent form the overall presentation.  I thought I would be creative one time and inserted an F22 flying all around in the background of my presentation. Although a few of us thought it was cute, it was annoying and took away from the other data on the chart.

In a nutshell

Basically the design of a presentation does matter and its purpose is to deliver communication that is easily understood for the viewer. A designer should remove annoying attributes such as 3-D Graphics including noise, and make sure the chart overall is not cluttered with information that is not really needed.

As a leader in my company, he amount of effort of applying contracts, repetition, alignment and proximity to your design, defines you as a person.  What I mean by this statement is the amount of effort you put into the design of the presentation, defined how much you valued the presentation, itself.  The great thing is my company takes away your choice to ensure consistency, and provides standard rules.

As a student, the ability to more creative is allowed.  I still struggle with assumption that various presentations design maybe my choice and possible not a choice of the instructor. I have never had an instructor come back and determine my choice was inappropriate, which I wouldn’t think they would. I do like doing collegiate presentations better then business work related due to the element of freedom.