UXPA Boston offers many opportunities for our members to share their ideas, including presenting at our conference, monthly meetings, short talk formats, and in mentoring and networking.
Presentation Design
Focus and Specificity
Focused and specific presentations get better feedback that ones that try to cover too much, or when presenters spend too much time on background information. If your presentation deals with an intermediate or advanced topic, assume that the audience has the necessary background to jump directly to the core of what you want to cover. Remember that the practical and engaging always trumps the abstract and vague.
Review your presentation with an eye toward your original proposal to stay consistent with attendee expectations.
Readability and Accessibility
At our conferences and meetings, we are held to a high standard for the usability of our presentations. We ask speakers to adhere to basic guidelines to ensure the readability of their presentations.
- Use a Sans-Serif font 30pt or larger for body and headline text
- Maintain a high contrast between your slide background and foreground (black text on white background/white text on dark background)
- When using large background images, overlay text against a semi-transparent or solid background to maintain readability (see example below):
Additional tips from the pros:
Public Speaking Resources
Presentation style matters, especially in a highly competitive conference review environment. First time presenters and those who wish to improve their presentation skills are encouraged to take advantage of the following tools:
- Coursera Introduction to Public Speaking
Self-paced, FREE online course - My Speech Class
10,000+ speech topics - Public Speaking & Presentation classes on Skilshare.comSelf-paced, reasonably priced online courses
- Public Speaking on Udemy
Self-paced, online courses - Toastmasters Clubs
An amazing resource to practice public speaking in person and get over stage fright - Improv Boston & Improv Asylum
Learn to think on your feet by taking a class in Improv techniques. - Speaker Camp Book
- Speaker Camp Boston (check for future dates)
- Speech Topics Help
Public speaking speech topics and ideas