Design Thinking for User Experience: Ben Sauer

How can you apply Design Thinking to your presentation? What is the total experience of your audience?

Episode 195 (Ben is based in the UK)

In this conversation with Ben Sauer, we explore:

• How might design thinking apply to presentation design and delivery?
• How to think from the audience perspective?
• Why the details mater
• How to design your presentation on the wall with post-it notes
• Why design is more about "how it works" vs "how it looks"
• What is the empathy gap that you need to recognize

About our guest Ben Sauer:

Ben is a designer who helped designers present more effectively. He's since learn how to apply design thinking to presentation development and delivery. He is the author of the book, Death by Screens, How to Present High Stakes Digital Work,

Check out his book here.

https://bensauer.net/deathbyscreens/

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Excerpts from this conversation with Ben Sauer:

We're coming at communication from a different angle today from the concept of how designers think and what you've learned from that process and how you've translated that into better communication.

So let's start with how do designers think and how do they communicate?

That's a great question. Well, you know, I coached designers on how to communicate. So you know, they still have some ways to go.

What I would say about that is, they really like to think in depth about how something affects the audience or the users.

And so what I would suggest that other people can learn from designers is, if you can learn a bit about how they think it can really improve how you deliver your intended message. And then there's also the process.

So how do they go about crafting a message or a piece of communication? These are all skills, you know, we tend to think of design. When most people hear the word design, they think of it in the aesthetic sense.

But that's not really how most designers think they like to think about how something works, what the experiences that somebody is receiving at the other end.

And I believe Steve Jobs, I'm paraphrasing badly, but he said something like this, you know, design people think design is the surface, but actually it's how something works. Yeah. Hmm.

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So designers like to go into these details about what somebody is experiencing, whether it's the thing, the screen, as well as the voice and the story, the environment to you know, this is why we have this phrase called user experience design. So what is that person experiencing?

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I think there's a, there's effectively an empathy gap. That's what you're talking about, right?

Which is how does somebody with an idea about what should happen ie a designer, or somebody crafting a message, actually connect with the state of mind of the person who's going to receive it or use it?

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Your Intended Message is the podcast about how you can boost your career and business success by honing your communication skills. We’ll examine the aspects of how we communicate one-to-one, one to few and one to many – plus that important conversation, one to self.

In these interviews we will explore presentation skills, public speaking, conversation, persuasion, negotiation, sales conversations, marketing, team meetings, social media, branding, self talk and more.

 

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George is a specialist in communication skills. Especially presentation. He’s fascinated by the links between communication and influencing behaviors. He delivers training and coaching programs to help leaders and promising professionals deliver the intended message for greater success.

 

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