By Guest Contributor Dan Magill
Digital UX is the experience users have when they interact with businesses or organisations in the digital world.
Investment in Digital UX has been booming for the past decade. A company’s website, mobile site, app and social network platforms are all examples of places where customers or other users interact digitally with a business and also with other organisations.
What does this have to do with public speaking and presentations? Well, it turns out that the way an audience feels about a presentation or speech is very similar to their feelings about an online interaction.
Consider a recent online interaction you had that went well. It might have been with a bank or travel agent transaction. Was it a success from your point of view?
If it was, this was most likely to be because you were able quickly and simply to get done what you needed get done:
- You weren’t led down any blind alleys
- You didn’t find any of the language difficult to understand
- Everything was clear, intuitive and linear
- You felt the business with was trying to help you – not simply getting you to do what they wanted
Think back to a presentation or speech you enjoyed listening to. The reasons for your enjoyment were probably much the same. Let’s look at putting these lessons into practice.
Putting your speech/presentation together
Most experts will say that when it comes to delivering a presentation, there is nothing more important than the audience. I completely agree with this.
However, we all give presentations or speech for specific reasons. This means that before we start giving all our attention to the experience of our audience, we need to be a little selfish and decide exactly what it is that we want to achieve first.
An online business might focus all their attention on creating a world-class customer experience, but you can bet they’ll have worked out what the required outcome is for themselves first.
So, before you start writing, think about what you want the outcome to be.
- Do you want your audience to purchase a product or service off the back of your speech?
- Do you want them to buy into an idea or movement?
- Do you simply want to entertain them, maybe get some laughs and have them leave the room thinking what a fantastic speaker you are?
- Maybe you want them to be inspired into making a change in themselves after hearing your speech?
Whatever your desired outcome, be sure to know it, refine it and be laser-focussed on it – before you start writing.
Once you’ve done this, everything else you do should be done with the audience experience at heart. Let’s call it, AX; audience experience.
Now, think again about some of the best features of an online journey and understand how these can be adopted when writing a speech:
Avoiding blind alleys
Now that you have a clear focus on what you want to achieve, you need to ensure that every word in your speech is geared toward that target.
When you’ve finished writing, go back through and identify any areas which feel like they go off on a tangent or don’t contribute to taking the audience exactly where you want them to go.
This doesn’t mean taking out humorous asides or anecdotes which you feel enhance your speech. But if there’s anything in there that could lead the audience down a blind alley and confuse them, remove it.
Making it easy to follow
When you’re writing a speech, it can be easy to start using elaborate language, long fancy words and complicated sentence structures. Imagine how intelligent it will make you look.
Unfortunately, your audience probably isn’t too interested in you making yourself look intelligent and they would far rather listen to a speech filled with simple language and short sentences.
This isn’t a case of ‘dumbing down’ your speech. It’s simply that the clearer the language we use, the more like an everyday conversation your speech will be. And, that’s what audiences find most engaging.
You audience wants to feel like you’re having a conversation with them, not reading a chapter from War and Peace.
Focusing on clarity, comprehension and chronology
Of course, most audiences love to be surprised during a speech, but successfully pulling off a surprise or plot twist is difficult to do if your audience feels completely lost.
When writing your speech, or at least when editing it later, be sure always to put yourself in the position of an average audience member.
Think about how they’ll be feeling at every point of their journey. Are there any points at which they could become confused with what you’re saying? If you take something out at the start of the speech, could that have a knock-on effect on something you still have in at the end of the speech?
Keep a tight focus on the clarity, comprehension and chronology of your speech.
Offering help
You’ve identified what you want to achieve from your speech but now you must place the entire focus on how you can best serve the audience, whilst remaining in pursuit of your desired outcome.
If you’re selling a product, service, idea or experience, the audience doesn’t want just to sit and listen to you telling them how great it is, how much you love it or how it has changed your life – they want to know what it can do for them.
Of course, you may want to relate a personal story or experience in a speech and there’s nothing wrong with that, but you must remember always to come back to how this will benefit your audience members.
Imagine if you went online to book a business trip and the website said things like:
“Stay at one of these hotels as we put a lot of business their way.”
“Book this particular flight to help us meet our quarterly business target.”
“When you book next trip with us, we’ll make sure you do exactly what we recommend. We’ll remove all elements of choice from your experience.”
Conclusion
Your audience members want a positive AX (Audience Experience) e.g. feeling that you are thinking about them and you care about their experience as they listen. They certainly don’t want to feel that you are pushing them to adopt your point of view. So, take the lessons from the Digital UX and create a great AX every time you speak to an audience.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dan Magill is a member of Toastmasters International, a not-for-profit organisation that has provided communication and leadership skills since 1924 through a worldwide network of clubs. There are more than 400 clubs and 10,000 members in the UK and Ireland. Members follow a structured educational programme to gain skills and confidence in public and impromptu speaking, chairing meetings and time management. To find your nearest club, visit www.toastmasters.org
Learn more about public speaking
Grace Under Pressure by Lisa Wentz
Grace Under Pressure solves this issue by unveiling three areas of training that great speakers use to develop their skills. In the first section, author Lisa Wentz shares techniques that she has developed to help anyone overcome inner obstacles so they can focus on developing their outward presence. The second section outlines how to best develop the physical aspects of speech, including posture, breathing, resonance, and articulation. And the third section centres on delivery: how to use pauses, word stress, and storytelling, among other techniques, to improve your performance from novice to master. Learn more.
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