Communicating with your audience (designers opinion, project related)
Hello my fellow world designers :)
One of my life passions is design, creating good visual content that communicates on several levels. I don't claim I totally succeed at it but I want to and I learn to. I haven't had much time to write but I hope this post will be informational for you.
In order to level-up my design skill, I had to learn and I'm still learning about communicating with my audience. In this post I want to talk about two-way communication with me as a designer and a wannabe marketing expert and my audience or people I want to reach with my work. I am no pro in any of these areas but I want to share some knowledge I got during my education and my work with clients.
First I want to talk about one of the most important things and for me that is the inclusion of a listener or viewer. My goal is to get as many feedback as I can. At the beginning of any project I start, I want to know what do I want from my audience, what I want them to do. And when they ask me something, I want to give them information that are unquestionable. I don't know if it makes any sense but I want to give them as many answers that are facts, that presents something understandable and easy to perceive.
But of course, my initial presentation of my ideas are not only facts. They are at beginning but as the time goes by, I want to make an impact on clients opinion because I know what I know and what works very often, but I don't know on what level of knowledge my audience is. I mean, I don't know what degree of expertise are they, do I even expect any kind of interest from my clients, what do they want to hear the most, what remarks or arguments they could have, what is their possible impact on my strategy or design, etc.
I WANT TO AVOID SELECTIVE LISTENING. I don't want my clients to listen to only those thing they want to hear. I want them to hear all story and to be aware of possible bad things it could happen during that project.
Because of that, I want to talk about the roles that are quite important regarding communication with your clients or audience and I want to use them as much as I can to engage my audience.
ROLE OF MIMICS AND FACE EXPRESSIONS
I want my body language to corresponds to the meaning of the words I'm saying. I don't want to be rude and persuasive to much of course, but I want my audience to feel what I want and what are my opinions on the topic in every way. I want to make an impact on their emotions and make them think more about as many aspects of the topic as they can. I just try not to force it.
ROLE OF NUMBERS
One of them is the role of numbers. We have to give our audience some statistics and fact numbers that are maybe astounding. Some dramatic numbers that can create interest regarding that topic. People tend to believe more when given some information with a sound of undeniable facts.
ROLE OF EXAMPLES
Also, like the role of numbers, the role of examples are very important. For example, if we have some abstract information, we want our audience to connect those information with information from real life. We don't want them to have many questions so we tend to give them as many examples as they need. Mutual understanding is one of the most important thing when working with clients face to face.
ROLE OF VISUAL TOOLS
As my friend said „We humans, we are visual beings“ and I'd like you to know that visual tools can be very important while presenting your idea to someone. We can bore them or amaze them. If you are using number or facts examples, you are going to have a clean design, very elegant but not to much simple because, again, you don't want to be boring such as those numbers maybe are. If you are using creative examples, be creative in your presentation but be aware that you don't have to put every color and every effect so that you can succeed at something you want to do. Make your design idea a template for that presentation. Connect it visually and make it interesting but not crowded.
ROLE OF HUMOR
Humor makes your presentation more effective and your audience more relax. Sometimes while presenting some not that good information you'll have to use humor to soothe some controversy and tension. You want your audience to feel good and relaxed while working with you. But you must dose your humor and try not to force it.
ROLE OF QUESTIONS
In the middle and at the end of our presentation we want our audience to know that we value their opinion and we want to know what they think and want to do. Sometimes their answers can be pretty inspirational and creative. Ask as many questions you can but don't make your client feel that they don't know very much. It tends to get tense when your clients feel threatened.
There are a lot of roles to talk about but for the time I'm mostly using these ones. I like to think about strategies for presenting anything in my life. I like to contemplate different ones and some alternative ones but in the end, all I want is to inform my audience, transform their opinions, assure them of my possibilities, instruct them and take as many information from them as I can.
We want to profile our audience as much as we can. We can do it demographically (age, gender, religion, education...), and by their knowledge about the topic and their preparedness regarding the project in general. We can also profile them regarding their attitudes and values. We never know what type of audience we will get. On the one hand, we can have a well educated, interesting and energized clients that are all about communication and working together. On the other hand, we can have passive clients and all they want is to work to be done. Be careful!
In the end, we want to give enough context, to carefully aggregate information we're about to present, to avoid hiding those information that contradict audiences arguments, to avoid simplifying and overcomplicating information that are so important, etc.
Aaaaand of course, I have a question for you. I want your opinion on this topic and if possible, an answer to my question.
QUESTION
Do you know any alternative and unusual types of presenting an idea to your audience?
I hope this post will help you regarding your project presentation to your audience no matter which one is it.
Steem on! Cheers :)
To listen to the audio version of this article click on the play image.
Brought to you by @tts. If you find it useful please consider upvoting this reply.
Awesome :) I hope this helps people with eye problems that cannot read much or at all.
Thank you :)