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How to ensure you don’t lose your audience 5 minutes into your user research presentation
The one essential tip to telling better stories around design: first, establish common ground
One of my most awkward experiences as a Junior Designer was presenting user research to a silent crowd.
After presenting our user testing results, I saw a sea of blank faces and what felt like an eternity of silence. It was broken by the Product Manager giving me noncommital thanks, and it was at that moment I knew that they probably wouldn’t follow my design recommendations.
While you might not have experienced something awkward, presenting user insights to a mixed audience can be daunting and sometimes ineffective, as your stakeholders don’t seem to listen to your suggestions.
I’ve discussed the impact design storytelling can have on engaging users and helping you avoid these situations. However, I made a more straightforward mistake that lost my audience: I failed to establish common ground.
To explain why common ground is essential, let’s take the perspective of a target audience member.
Why common ground is essential for understanding
Imagine you’re the VP of Product and barely made it to this presentation.
Your calendar is usually packed with meetings around four different projects, and you just came into this meeting after discussing another project in detail.
You know this is about customer feedback around your product, but suddenly, the Designer comes up and says, “We need to add onboarding to this product, because our users don’t understand what to do.”
Suddenly, you’re pushed into a fight-or-flight response, thinking about the project timeline and the launch date. You notice the Product Manager getting antsy as well.
“This guy’s not even wearing a suit.” You think to yourself. “Does he know what he’s talking about?”
Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating with the last step, but the point is that you’ve lost your audience’s attention right away.
