How to present UX designs flawlessly
Don’t let your audience get hung up on pixels.
There’s a demo tomorrow. You’ve just pulled an all-nighter. You’ve been working on these designs for weeks, and you’ve put a lot of effort into every decision that’s been made, to deliver an immensely smooth user experience.
And yet, when you finally start to present your magnificent concept, you find your audience hung up on trivial things like button colours, alignments or microcopy. Congratulations, your presentation has been completely derailed.
Perhaps in an ideal world, these things won’t matter. People will look at exactly what you want to show them. But right now, things are far from ideal — and as designers, we need to prepare for the worst.
So, here are a few points for UX designers to check off before presenting their designs to non-design stakeholders:
1. Weave a tale
Engage with your audience, capture their attention. Gain their empathy through your users’ journeys — their motivations, pain points and goals. It shouldn’t just be a bunch of screens. Tell them a story.
2. Get your ducks in a row
Make sure your elements are perfectly aligned. Using a grid always help. Grids also come in handy when you need to move around elements or introduce new components into the design
3. Lorem Ipsum is evil
I know how tempted you are to wrap things up with a bunch of “Lorem ipsum” pasted on the screen — trust me, don’t do it. Take the time to fill in meaningful copy — this leaves a good impression on your audience. It means you weren’t lazy, and you’ve thought through all possible use cases.
4. Add variety in imagery
If you are creating cards, or using tiles, don’t use repeat imagery. Good images bring variety and richness to your design. Use tools like Unsplash Plugin, or create and import folders of content.
5. Colour and style
If you’re working on a fresh project which doesn’t follow a style guide, try to make a rough one yourself, and stick to it during your presentation. Colour is deeply linked to emotion — dissonant colours distract your audience, leaving a bad taste. Tip: Find inspiration in nature for pleasing colour palettes.
6. Anticipate questions
There will always be some questions which you can expect — so why not answer them ahead of time. Eg. If you have a button on the screen, your audience will want to know what happens when it’s clicked. Include these flows in your design and save time.
7. Everyone loves micro-interactions
Don’t leave transitions and interactions to the imagination. Prototype, prototype, prototype! The move from one screen to the next should be as smooth as fine whiskey. Every small motion counts towards the best experience.
Conclusion
Aesthetically pleasing design creates a positive response in people’s brains, and leads them to believe the design actually works better.
And going that extra mile will make you stand out from the crowd. So like it or not, the devil really is in the details. Happy presenting, and good luck!
In Collaboration with
Mohana Das, who helped out with the content 😘
