Key takeaways from my first UX Design speech

Have you ever felt alive, scared, numb, confident and not confident at all at the same time?

Who’s been there — most likely knows the feeling and for those of you who didn’t get the chance, I recommend having this experience at least once in a lifetime.

Let’s start with the conclusion: “I haven’t felt so alive in a long time”.

Seven months ago I switched to UX Design from being a Front-End Developer for six years and set my goals as high as possible to push myself out of the comfort zone.

I was reading the book by Don Norman — “The Design of Everyday Things” and exactly in that period, I saw that UX Product Munich meet-up is looking for speakers so I applied without thinking, being very inspired by the chapter “Bad Design? No, human error” from the book.

All in all, got accepted, the date was set, three months ahead, plenty of time to practice and be awesome.

Five days before the speech, I get a follow-up email from the organizer with the last details, and from that moment, panic installed. — “I have nothing ready!!!”

I searched all the internet for good material regarding Bad Design VS Human Error, found some content, was happy about it, then the next day I changed it all, sent it to my UX colleague for feedback: “Strong content! — Add some colorful images and you’re good to go”.

I was so stressed to learn all the content of the slides perfectly that I had no more time to add any colorful images. But at least I knew my content and I video recorded myself like 100 times to check my diction. I felt ready.

Once I get at the location, I saw around 60 people waiting for the speakers to impress them and give them something valuable for their time.

That’s the hard part, you know you have 10 minutes from the audience time and you have to give them something worth their time. They will judge. During the speech, after the speech, they will judge and complain if they feel you’ve wasted their time.

That was probably the biggest fear together with the fear of speaking in public and the other fears.

So until now, I got:

• fear of not wasting my audience’s time
• fear of speaking in public
• fear of not forgetting the speech
• fear of not looking too much at the slide notes
• fear in general

The two speakers before me talked about their own projects and experiences, so I observed how natural everything went for them. I had a “university lecture” — how my UX colleague told me, but right before the speech. Oh-oh!

Here I am, after the 15 minutes break — longest 15 minutes of my life, in front of the audience, connecting the projector to my mac, 60 + pears of eyes on me, all ready to devour and judge.

1. The display was set wrong, so the presentation starts, but I don’t see my notes. I start talking but after a few seconds, I realize the notes are key and they are missing.
2. Even though I’m a computer geek, I had to ask for help because the notes were not showing. Someone from the audience asked: “This is part of the speech?” — great start.
3. All set, I start talking, I keep remembering what my colleagues told me “Imagine the audience is naked” … I see all those eyes on me, hungry, and all the face reactions they make. I started concentrating on what are they possibly thinking and slowly, all my confidence and words went away one by one until the point where I couldn’t even see the notes text anymore. I was there. Blank. Blind. Muted. All gone.
4. I decide to pause my speech by saying: “I’m very nervous now, it’s the first time I’m speaking in public”
5. The organizer — a very thoughtful and warm person, starts applauding and with him the whole audience.
6. I feel a little better, I continue my speech, I blank again, I say again that I’m nervous.
7. After that, I was able to go throughout the slides and not pause the speech anymore. I was robotic but made it.
8. I was more afraid of the Q&A part so I decided to move the discussion to the audience and ask for their experiences with bad designs. I was very pleasantly surprised to see that a lot of people participated and shared interesting and funny stories. That’s the moment when I finally felt confident. In the last seconds.
9. I got feedback, some people approached me and said the content was strong, and that it was very good that I said I was nervous — happens to all of us.
10. Next time I will be better! — Yes, there will be a next time!

What I learned from my speech and the other speeches from that night?!

• People who talk about their own experiences and projects are far more relaxed and confident than people who make up a speech from internet and books content.
• A lot of jokes are welcome, especially the racist ones.
• Interaction with the audience is key. If you make them part of your speech they will empathize with you and the subject more and more.
• Having interesting content on the slides will keep their eyes focused on the screen rather than on you.
• Share information that will be useful for them.
• Be ready to defend your idea, there will be at least one person trying to challenge you.
• Do not look at people’s reactions while speaking and most importantly, do no try to analyze them.
• Make your speech as a story. Engage and hook the audience from the first moments.
• Do not keep your eyes in the slide notes. Improvise and adapt on the fly.
• More jokes and funny images between the slides are more than welcome.
• Start big, end big!

Next time I will definitely start by saying how I failed the first time.

Thank you for your time, if you enjoyed, don’t forget to clap and share your first-time stories with me!

Cheers!