PechaKucha: Why Storytelling Makes Us Human
This was something new for me. At first glance, I thought it was something that pretty simple to accomplish. However, this was far from the truth. I slowly but surely found a new found hatred for the word “Pecha Kucha.”
Pecha Kucha is an interesting format. You present a slide deck using ideally visual elements as talking points. What makes this task very difficult is that you have 20 slides timed at the 20s each. This means that the presentation is completely automated. Therefore you have to know your presentation inside out as if it was a script. I approached this by having a few points per slide to talk about but quickly realized that there was no balance between slides i.e. some slides were slightly longer than others and messed up the timing.
Here's what I learned from doing this exercise.
- Don't wing it. If you do that you will struggle to keep on track of what you’re saying or may not have enough for each point. Makes you look like you don’t really know what you’re talking about. So practice practice practice.
- Make sure to keep good contact. When your present it's a good idea not to look at people as it can put you off, however, don't just completely ignore them after all they are listening to your talk. Or in some cases is to focus on one area of the room. A good tip is to look at something in the direction of the audience. This gives the illusion that you are looking at them but when in fact you’re looking past them.
- Try not to move around too much. It can be distracting for your audience and can put people off. Act like a tree and stand your ground. You can still have minimal movement with hand gestures etc just to make it feel more natural
- Project your voice. You are there to be heard so make sure you do so. Speak clearly and slowly so that you are understood.
- The tone of voice. This will depend greatly on what the project is about. If it's a medical app then it will be more serious therefore this will require a more professional approach. On the other hand, if it's about entertainment then the tone of voice can be more casual and light-hearted. For my project, this will more than likely be the approach I will take as well.
- Breathe. Probably the most important takeaway from doing this task. Seems simple right, but when you are nervous or have a lot of adrenaline it can affect the way you speak. Take a breath and pause when you need to. This will help to settle yourself and make the delivery more natural.
https://www.figma.com/embed?embed_host=notion&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.figma.com%2Fproto%2FlUvHhZF4yawZGVdFnLla3n%2FUntitled%3Fnode-id%3D11%253A3%26scaling%3Dcontain%26page-id%3D0%253A1