Assignment 4: Oral Presentation

Our final solo project was an oral presentation. Similar to previous class assignments, the boundaries were loose and creative solutions welcome.

Active space is a happy place.

I continued to explore my 'urban design peeps' - Camillo Sitte, Jane Jacobs, Kevin Lynch, William Whyte, Jan Gehl, and Ann Whiston Spirn, and this 20 minute presentation allowed me to control the message a bit better than my visual presentation.

To fulfill my creative track, I used a presentation technique called Pecha Kucha, which is 20 slides on screen for 20 seconds each. Pecha Kucha (Japanese for “chatter”) was developed by two architects living in Tokyo as a creative means to prohibit PowerPoint’s inherent wordiness. Each slide consists of a photo or graphic without text. The fast pacing of slide transition and lack of ubiquitous (and loathed!) PowerPoint bullets makes for a dynamic use of the tool that places more emphasis on the presenter’s delivery. I’d successfully used this format once professionally, and looked forward to using it again.

Ahhh! This mind map captures the high points of each of the urban design thinkers.
I referred to this constantly as I created my presentation.

My intended audience was a public meeting with the goal of presenting the urban design philosophies regarding successful streetscapes, parks, or plazas. I also presented their backgrounds and observation techniques. To follow, I created a visual preference survey to inspire peers' thinking about these key design elements, then apply them to a range of images. While I loved Pecha Kucha, it does go by fast. The biggest challenge was to keep pace while covering all content. Here is the presentation with my notes (final notes are underlined - after my first dry run, I had to seriously edit!)
I'm lucky in that I have access to sophisticated hardware at work called Keypoint, which allows the audience to vote on or rank items, with immediate feedback. Each classmate had a 'remote' and voted on the images in my slides. Most of my peers hadn’t used the system before, but quickly got the hang. I found the activity high energy and the format was a good conversation starter. One helpful piece of feedback was that some of my slides seem to have a 'right' answer, but in a public meeting, there shouldn't be right or wrong, the content is truly a matter of preference. Also, the format is helpful for folks to understand where there opinion stacks up to their neighbors, and allows an anonymous forum to weigh in.  Here is the survey, with responses tallied.