IDE651. Message Design rocks!

Here is the chronology of what we did in IDE 651 "Message Design" class yesterday:

1. Come to class, bring a print out of presentation slides of our past work.
2. Jerry showed examples of redesigned presentation slides. He showed the "before" and "after" examples.
3. Then we discuss the presentation design principles by Nancy Duarte*. Good points were delivered:
   • Before making the presentation slides, decide: is it suppose to be a Presentation or Document?
   • Know your audience (Duarte listed 7 questions that can guide us to know our audience)
   • Do we want the audience to: Listen or Read?
   • Don't use graphics/ animation that will distract our audience from getting your points. Use one that will support it.
4. Then we were given a time to brainstorm our presentation slides. How do we want to re-design it?
5. To help us do that, Jerry discussed Duarte's point about using Post-It-Notes to brainstorm. Rule: draw/ write our ideas in the sticky notes, one or two (key) words per sticky note. Stick it on the wall or wherever we want, then re-arrange our ideas (sticky notes) later. This way we can be as impulsive as we can when throwing out our ideas.
   
6. So, for about 45 minutes we were trying to redesign our old presentation slides. There are four points for us to consider, as we rethink our presentation ideas: what's the Story, who's the Audience, what are the Verbs of our presentation, what do you want them to learn/ take away at the end your presentation? The layout, font's type & size, spacing, graphic images, animation, should also support our goals.
7. Ten minutes intermission (eat my choc chip cookie and drink my ice tea)
   
8. Then we were finishing up the sticky notes activity as Jerry prepared the videos he wanted to show. I truly enjoy 'playing' around with marker and sticky notes on the wall, as I constantly rearrange the notes. (oh you should see our class walls! So cool!)
9. Class discussion. As Jerry commenting and giving inputs for each of us, he showed us couple videos from TED to support his points and to give us examples of great presentation. Guess what we watch? Sir Ken Robinson and Hans Rosling presentations. I've seen the first one (never got bored by Mr.Robinson's jokes tho'), and the latter was just mind-blowing.
10. At the end of the class, Jerry (with the help of Yan) took picture of each of our "wall" -with all the sticky notes-!!

To sum it up, here's what we do in class:

1. See examples of redesigned presentation slides
   
2. "Play" with sticky notes
3. Watch (cool) TED videos
   
4. (end of class)

There goes my 3 hours class.
...

[my wall]

...
I want more.

Note:
*Nancy Duarte is the author of Slide:ology, whose work was Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth presentation slides. Her starting price for design/ redesigning presentation is $10,000.- at the minimum. (ckckck)