How do you create a UX design presentation that tells a compelling story?

Context setting is super important for your audience. Often times as designers on a project we will be working day in and day out, living and breathing the various aspects of the project. People seeing the presentation may not have that context and may be lost if one dives right into design work. So providing context can help bring the audience along the journey and make them knowledge partners and better to provide insights and feedback.

If you are not sure of your audience, ask the person who is the meeting organizer. As you study your audience, try to think of questions they might have and how you can address them before they ask those questions.

As you introduce your presentation and if you are asking for feedback, be clear on what kind of feedback you are looking for. Give an example if you can. Indicate if the audience should wait until after your presentation to comment or if they can interrupt you.

A good story is key. Here are two possible story arcs. One would be the "infomercial", where something bad happens in the beginning, this is the classic infomercial where there is a black & white scene that shows a frustrated person with a problem. This approach can be used when telling the story of a redesign, where the design solution is meant to fix the challenges identified in the beginning. The other story arc is the teaser. You often see this in movies where something shocking is shown in the first few minutes and then the rest of the movie leads up to that moment. This can be useful in a UX presentation because you can show the final product and then viewers have a vested interest in understanding how you got to that solution.

Write your story first. Before any image, any slide(especially slides), write it like a script and read it out loud. After you’ve done that and like it read it to a friend and see if they understand it. Once you’ve passed those check points it is easy to decide what visuals you’ll need to support your story. If you do slides first you’ll end up supporting them and your audience won’t be focused on you.

Adding to great point made by Jason here in the thread I would look to add who is the “bad guy” in the story. It can be any hurdle your persona is experiencing that makes the story of your solution so much clearer.

The key for me, is to always keep is very simple and easy to understand by breaking any experience design narrative into modules. What has always worked for me is to create presentations where each slide (of a typical presentation) or section of a Miro board is broken modularly. Think of it like the recipe for soup or a mocktail or the inverted pyramid if you took a journalism class. Find toom for ice-breakers during these sprints. Explain any technical jargon used for stake holder buyin towards the end.

Always start with the user. Telling A day in a life story makes it tangible and relatable. Think movie trailer. Using name, age, profession and a story of who the user is and what their struggle with.

My suggestion, use a glossary section in the end. I do so to accomodate non-tach-savvy and non-native English seaking stake-holders. Figure out your way to educate your clients and about dark patterns in audits while retaining conversation rate optimization. Introduce a legend for simplying readability of of live presentations. Giving out handouts with visualizations is a neat little practice for take home, allows them to focus more on listening and participate as well.

Look into accessibility best practices and suggestions for presenting date if you are not using a hand-on activity on Miro or whiteboard of sorts. I'd urge young practistioners to look into more handon presentation methods like LEGO Serious Play or Improv method to really understand presentations with the various ideation methods. You can check out Adam St. John's Global service Jam for more amazing hands on presentation methods.