Group Presentation - Reflection

The presentation's now out of the way, so I can now comment on how I feel it went.

As ever, I was somewhat nervous and stuttery as I stood before the lecture hall, which was probably my largest audience for any presentation I have ever done... despite it being at least a third empty. But thanks to my own mental preparation, I think this time I handled it suprisingly well. Being quiet by nature, having a microphone in front of me helped to make me loud and clear to the audience, and in some cases I interacted with and shared some humour with the audience, getting good responses from that.

Normally when giving presentations, the actual slideshow itself is displayed behind me, so oftentimes I'd find myself turning to the projector to help me remember information. This time however, I had both the laptop in front of me, as well as my cue cards to aid me in presenting my information, and stopped me from having to turn around all the time - although there were some cases where I turned around in order to point certain things out. As far as the cue cards, I don't think I actually read from them too much. At one point, I went to look down to see what information I had to give for a certain slide, and it turned out that I hadn't even been swapping them out.

Along with the improvements I made, there were still a small few scuff-ups. I think due in part to my nervousness, there was some key information that I forgot to mention, such as the functionality of the DS (Wireless, Microphone, more detail about the Touch Screen atc), and there was also at least one occasion where I stuttered, which was more to do with trying to find the right words, so I had to stop and start again. I think generally in some cases, my delivery of the information may have been a bit awkward.

Overall, I'm very happy with the improvements I have made in terms of giving presentations. Having other group members with good presentation skills also helped to give me a confidence boost. Again, having a microphone in front of me also helped greatly, as everyone was able to hear my voice for a change.

In future, whenever I am required to do another presentation - as much as I'd rather never have to do them again - I think I can look back at this one, and continue to develop my skills from what I have learnt from giving this presentation, as well as improve on the general mistakes I still make.

Group Presentation - Formation and Preparation

During the time in which we were writing our reports, teams were formed to create group presentations based on any one of the following three subjects:

• Three iconic CD/LP covers
• Three product designs which have had an impact on society
• Three videogames which have influenced games design

Of the three topics available, we initially decided that we would go with either the videogames or products topics, so we all went away to do our research. I ended up being the only one to research anything for videogames, so we instead went with product designs, partially because each of us might have had certain bias for or against certain games.

The three products we chose to cover were the iPod, the Thermos Flask, and the Nintendo DS, the latter of which was to be researched by me.

After a week of researching, we arranged a meeting in which we would give each other feedback, make improvements to our own parts of the presentation and then merge them all into one. The way we laid out the information on the slides was consistent throughout, giving our presentation a nice clean look.

Normally I am quite nervous and stuttery when it comes to presentations, and since this was being presented in front of a large group of people, I needed plenty of mental preparation. I wrote cue cards to help me remember important details that I didn't cover in any of the slides, rehearsed in front of family members, and even imagined how the presentation would go in my head - I think all of this preparation has paid off, and I will cover my thoughts in my next entry.