In class this week, we explored presentation techniques. The content largely focussed on ideas around structure and the visual side of presentations, so I wanted to dig a little deeper into how to make presentations more engaging. I’m a big fan of Dragons Den, so felt I had already seen ways to make presentations engaging, but needed to contextualise what I had seen into actual ideas.
I found this article useful in giving an overview of the key aspects of creating an engaging presentation. One of the points I thought was particularly important was to script the presentation but not to read it as a script. I’ve done this in the past by writing the key talking points and leaving the joining words to what I come up with on the day. I’ve found this to work well as it makes sure I hit my key points while it still feels natural and conversational.
Another point I thought was interesting was to prepare for the Q&A, by identifying what questions might come up. This was one of the areas I was most worried about for my presentation so will definitely keep this in mind when I come to preparing.
This article was useful for an overview, but one of the things I found really interesting was the idea of using body language to engage your audience. This is something I wanted to investigate further.
How to Give an Engaging Presentation: 10 Tips
I had some ideas around body language already, like eye contact which I knew was important for engaging your audience. This article was one I found useful to think more about the different aspects of body language that affect engagement.
One aspect I found interesting was position and movement. Moving around the area you’re presenting in can help to engage the audience more, and make you're presence bigger within the place you're presenting. While the area I’ll be presenting my pitch in will be small, I definitely think it’ll be important to keep some sort of movement, even if that just taking a few steps. Movement is something I think I’ve been aware of but haven’t thought about before as an engagement technique. I really enjoy going to concerts, and a artist having stage presence through there movement is something I’ve noticed as something that makes a performance particularly good. G0ing further still, it’s obvious that movement is inherently engaging when you consider something like micro-interaction in user experiences, where some movement makes for a better experience. The idea around movement and engagement is something I could come back to int the future and explore further, as I feel I’ve identified it as being a universally engaging thing across so many types of experiences.
How to use body language during a presentation - EtonX
Hand gestures are another one of those aspects of presentations which I’d notice a lot but never really think about. I found some interesting points in this article around the topic.
One important point I felt was interesting in the article was that hand gestures have to give out the right message. It may be instinctual to gust move you're hands around when presenting, but if you actually consider what you're hand are doing it can hep to engage you're audience more. For example, extending you're hand towards you audience is far more effective than holding your hands together, as it give a more positive feel to you body language. This is definitely something for me to consider in my pitch presentation as I haven’t a lot of room to work with, I can’t use much actual movement, but using hand gestures may be an effective way adding engaging energy to my presentation.
Do's and don'ts: Hand gestures when public speaking
Looking further into presentation skills has been really useful for me and has allowed me consider how other factor aside form the words I’m saying effect the engagement of my presentation. I think what I have looked at will benefit me a lot and be useful in the future.