About Oral Communication Deliverables

Throughout the course of your design course, you will be asked to present your work and progress in a variety of formats. This document serves to outline the expectations for each of these presentations.

The slides and documents associated with EACH of these presentations should be placed in your team binder and on your team SharePoint site.

Tips for Delivering all Oral Reports or Presentations

• Dress professionally
• Practice body language and delivery techniques that will establish the audience’s trust in your leadership and enthusiasm.
• Practice presentation enough to be comfortable with it.
• Remember that YOU control the floor- you should decide when you are finished with the presentation! Do not look at professor or someone else to decide when to end. A good technique is to have a summary planned for AFTER the questions so that you leave the audience with your intended message at the end.
• Come to class 15 minutes early to load your file on the computer.  Before you start:
• Don’t “project” until the file is open and the show fills the computer screen
• Look at the audience and smile BEFORE you start talking

Additional resources on slide preparation and delivery and preparing posters can be found under “Resources” at http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~cainproj/

Proposal Presentation

Why you do it

The proposal presentation is used to convince your stakeholders, managers, colleagues, peers, bosses etc. that the problem you are working on is important and that you have:

• Done adequate research to completely understand your task
• Developed a good understanding of the important topics relevant to your design project
• Developed appropriate design goals/ criteria / objectives for your project
• Developed several possible design solutions to your project and
• Have a plan for how you will proceed with accomplishing your tasks

How to prepare the proposal presentation

Time: 10 minutes, 3-4 minutes for questions (May vary, so ask instructor)

Goals

• To clearly articulate the design problem your team is assigned to address
• To present the problem you are tackling in context of the medical issue/research issue you are trying to solve
• To present your measurable design criteria
• To present 3-4 options for solving your problem
• Demonstrate some narrowing of your choices for problem solutions with use of quantitative techniques such as decision matrices, concept screening and scoring.
• To explore any difficulties/uncertainties you’ve encountered so that the class can contribute to resolving them.

Opening

• Clearly articulate the design problem your team is working on to the audience.
• Be sure to put the design in context- ie why is this design important, what is the existing solution to the problem, what benefit will you design have over existing techniques, who are your intended users?

Design Criteria

• Describe and justify your measurable design criteria
• May want to rank or weight your criteria

In the body of presentation, discuss

• Where you are in the design process
• Brainstorming - Show 3-4 options for solutions
• Demonstrate narrowing of these optitons ie decisions matrices, screening and scoring
• Currently planned approach- r approaches that will continue to be pursued

In the discussion, address these questions and others you find important

• What are the key technical issues or challenges in this project?
• What are the benefits of the advances you will make?
• What are your next steps?
• Do you have any additional findings/issues/concerns you want to bring to the class’s attention?

Conclusions

• Summarize
• Emphasize the benefits of your design

Project Proposal Oral Presentation Rubric

Business Plan Presentation

Why you do it

After tackling the technical aspects of your design project, you will extend your thinking to consider how your solution might have a broader impact. How could you turn your design into a product? Would you sell the same thing you have made, or sell just a piece of the work you did? Who would be your customers? Would you build a company around the product, or sell the product off to an established firm five years down the line? Often the answer to these questions will actually affect how you complete your design process as well as help guide you toward appropriate decisions as you complete the product design. Often your business will need to get funding to complete the work- developing this plan will convince stakeholders that your project is worth pursuing. This occurs in small startup companies and within large companies- as engineers you will be asked to justify the financial impact of your work.

How to prepare the business plan presentation

Time: 12 minutes, 3 minutes for questions (May vary, so ask instructor)

For the business plan presentation, you will give a flyover perspective on your product and how you would develop it and position it for a marketplace. Your audience is an angel investor or granting organization—you have technology with a potential market, but need funding in order to develop the technology to marketable status. You will focus the business plan on the marketing aspects: the opportunity you see, the market to which you would sell, the competition your product would face, the strategy you would use to get customers, and the development, costs, and outlays necessary to achieve these goals. We want you to demonstrate that you have done the thinking about where your product could go and have specific goals that your angel investor or the grant will help you achieve.

Description:

While you should use the presentations in the BIOE 451-2 course as resources for developing this assignment, we are targeting this assignment more directly to the development of early-stage technologies. You will not be expected to provide complete financial projections for instance, or outline a detailed marketing plan and positioning statement for a product that hasn’t even been developed yet. Rather, you want to demonstrate that your product serves a market need and prove that you have done the thinking required to determine how to bring this product to marketable status.
You should decide the appropriate organization for your plan. As with all business plans, your aim is not to tell the audience everything, but to weave a logical and compelling story about your product. Your goal is to be credible and to sell your product, which means making sure that your potential investor understands its value and, more importantly, how he or she can be a part of it. Whether seeking an angel investor or grant funding, you want to be clear about the benefits of your product and how the money you are seeking will help realize those benefits. This means you should cover the following points in your plan (you do not necessarily need to follow the order listed!):

• Hook:  Be sure to start the presentation in an interesting manner to draw your audience in to the talk- you want them to care about what you will say next! Be sure to present the hook with enthusiasm, sincerity, and commitment. Effective strategies for delivering the ‘hook’ are:
• Ask a rhetorical or actual question
• State a striking fact or statistic
• Tell a short story, anecdote
• Use a quotation form a relevant, respected source
• Provide an analogy
  
  
• Problem statement/value proposition (‘elevator pitch’):  Leading with your value proposition, explain the problem your product solves, the current state of the art, and the specific tack that sets your solution apart. Highlight those elements of your technology that are unique or that are particularly key to the solution.
  
  
• General Overview of Product: Give a concise description of the product and how it fits within the existing market.
  
  
• State of the market:  Describe the potential market for this product. Who would buy it and why? What products currently inhabit that space and how would your product compete with them? Be specific. Quantify as many of the market characteristics as you can, from the number of potential customers to current sales of competitive products in this market, to future direction for your product. Consider, as well, other barriers that may interfere with bringing your product to market, such as regulatory requirements.
  
  
• Product development: In order to realize your value proposition, what will you need to do to develop your product? What patents or IP do you bring to the table? How will you scale up production of your device (what will be the process)? What materials, people, and skills do you need to accomplish this? Again, attach specific monetary values to these items and consider providing a Gantt chart or other visual to illustrate key milestones.
  
  
• Marketing/business development strategy: With the developed product in hand, what comes next? Who will be your first customers and why? What type of sales do you anticipate in the short term, and what sales do you need in order to breakeven? Will you go it alone or aim to sell the product off (and if so, to whom)? We don’t want to know specifics of campaigns (advertising, positioning, etc). We want to know your high level plans for the product once it is developed to market expectations. Throughout this section, be sure to pinpoint the areas where you will apply the funding you are requesting.
  
  
• Exit Strategy: How will the investor get their investment back? Will you sell the company?, Will you license out your technology to a larger company? What are the plans for your product and company?
  
  
• Ownership/personnel: Who are you? Provide a brief synopsis of your development/technology team, highlighting the skills you possess that make you capable of delivering on your promises.
  
  
• Concluding material: Always end by summarizing the plan: What you want to do and why, and how the investment will enable you to achieve your goals. BE SURE TO ASK THE INVESTORS FOR MONEY!

Don’t forget- as with all oral presentations, high-content titles (“The Trouble with the 20 Cent Syringe”) work better in a plan than low-content titles (“Problem Statement”), as they help signal to the audience about what is coming next and generate interest.

Design Review Defense Presentation

Why you do it
The design review is used to convince your stakeholders, managers, colleagues, peers, bosses etc. that your project has value and that you are on track to successfully addressing the problem. The purpose is to

• Demonstrate that you have an effective design plan
• Receive technical feedback on your design plan
• Demonstrate that you are on track to meet your project deliverables
• Receive direction from your management regarding this project

How to prepare the design review

Time: 18-20 minutes, 5-7 minutes for questions (25 minutes TOTAL)

Goals

• To clearly articulate the design problem your team is addressing
• To clearly present your solution to this problem
• Demonstrate that your solution meets your design criteria
• Demonstrate a proof of concept for your design
• Justify your design choices

Opening

• Clearly articulate the design problem your team is working on to the audience with an effective hook.
• Be sure to put the design in context- ie why is this design important, what benefit will it have over existing techniques, who are your intended users, what is the market size?

Design Criteria

• Describe your measurable design criteria and how you intend to test them

In the body of your presentation discuss

• Present a concrete solution to your design problem including specific components
• Demonstrate and explain your design solution and results from proof of concept prototype
• Demonstrate how your design solution will meet your design goals

In the discussion address these questions and others you find important

• Discuss surprises and unexpected issues you have faced
• What are the remaining technical and scheduling challenges you are facing?

Conclusions

• Emphasize the benefits of your design
• Give a realistic assessment of where you will be by April 15th

Design Poster

Why you do it

Posters are an alternative to oral presentation for presenting your work to a wide audience. One of the challenges of effective poster presentations is that you must prepare a poster AS WELL AS a concise oral explanation of your work. A poster presentation is a chance to interact with your audience one-on-one.

How to prepare the poster

A lecture is given in BIOE 451-2 to explain the details and provide examples of design posters. Design posters will be different from a standard research poster, however some features remain the same. Posters must:

• Typically stand alone
• Audience comes and goes at different times
• If you are standing with your poster you need to engage audience and have a concise explanation prepared to draw in the audience.
• Posters must get the point across simply and easily

 
Important features of a good design poster:

• Select  1o message
• What is the problem? Overall objective?
• How did you solve it?
• Convincing results/conclusions
• Pictures and graphs are extremely important. You may want to have a high quality image of your design as the anchor of your poster.
• Use NO paragraph form text other than perhaps the abstract or introduction, use bulleted ideas/concepts
• Emphasize key concepts
• Draw attention to important pictures
• Make the poster easy to read and understand
• Reader should be able to stand a distance away- 3 + feet and easily read poster
• Use a simple font (Sans Serif)
• Explain images/ figures at the image
• Be SURE to include ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS section
• Funding from School of Engineering, Texas Space Grant consortium, HHMI BTB Program, CBEN, etc.
• Significant helpers, mentors
• Be SURE to include REFERENCES section
• Be SURE to include contact information

You can also find many examples of design posters online at the BIOE 451-2 course website. The Cain project also has extensive information and templates for developing posters.  Add link

Preparing the oral presentation to accompany your poster

Posters are a unique form of presenting your work because you will also often need to speak to interested viewers at your poster in addition to having the appropriate layout and visual poster created. The following are some key points to keep in mind when planning the oral presentation to accompany a poster:

• Prepare a 30 second, 1 minute and 2 minute presentation. Let your audience indicate if they want you to delve into more detail.
• Do not expect a viewer to want to or be able to spend 10 minutes at your poster- be succinct, clear and explain our work with minimal jargon.
• Use your poster to help you tell the story- point to pictures and graphs while speaking.
• Avoid ‘presenting’ or talking at viewer…. Present your work in a conversational tone.
• Engage new viewers as they walk up- this can be a challenge as you may be in the middle of explaining something to another viewer. Do not be afraid to allow a viewer to study the poster for a while.

 

Final Design Presentation

Why you do it

The final presentation is the opportunity to present the final design to your boss, peers, mentors, and faculty. It should be made in a very positive and confident manner.

How to prepare the final design presentation

Time: 15 minutes, 3-5 minutes for questions (May vary, so ask instructor)

Goals

• To clearly articulate the design problem your team addressed
• To clearly present your solution to this problem
• Demonstrate that your solution meets your design criteria
• To clearly present evidence of how your device works and your test results
• To put your design in perspective of future work, needed improvements, etc.

Opening

• Clearly articulate the design problem your team is working on to the audience with an effective hook.
• Be sure to put the design in context- ie why is this design important, what benefit will it have over existing techniques, who are your intended users.

Design Criteria

• Describe your measurable design criteria

In the body of your presentation discuss

• Present a concrete solution to your design problem
• Demonstrate and explain your design solution
• Demonstrate how your design solution meets your design goals with test data

In the discussion address these questions and others you find important

• What are the benefits of the advances you’ve made?
• What are future improvements that are needed?
• What are the plans for the future for your device?
Conclusions
• Summarize
• Emphasize the benefits of your design