Presentation Feedback (Including Visual Design Tips)

James,

Thanks for getting your work in on time. Once again, I sound like a broken record, but amazing work. Keep pushing ahead. Some feedback:

INTRODUCTION

Do I think I want to enter the mini-fridge arena? First of all, who am I? Who are you? This is a weird introduction. Think of 3-4 different ways you can start the presentation. I think it's fine to say there's a lot of money in mini-fridges and college dorms, but you're really jumping into this point. You need to build up to it.

If you are addressing Best Buy, warm them up on who they are, what they sell, who their target customer is.

If spending by college students is on the rise, what are the figures? You just have a line here. It would be good to know the data.

Great transition into student living. I'm really digging this introduction. You start big and quickly focus on the student. I just think you need to do it a little less abrupt and with a bit more consideration for your audience, the client.

CATEGORY OVERVIEW

I'm a bit confused. Now we are back at looking at mini-fridges overall, not just for students. So now, you started big, focused on a user, and are now addressing the category overall. The manner in which you are addressing mini fridges overall and those for students is awkward. There's probably 2-3 ways to do this differently. Work on a high level (outline, and what each slide is about, forget the slide itself and the visuals), put them on post it notes and work through the narrative of how to focus your client's attention on mini-fridges (1) and the college student market (2).

OPPORTUNITIES

NICE FRAMEWORK! Great way to organize your thoughts and the presentation.

USE CONTEXTS

Wait... what happened to the framework? i thought this was going to organize things. hm. i'm not sure why you introduced the opportunities and then didn't explain them.

Ah. Okay, I get it. There is a common thread with opportunities and common environments. You are basically slicing it two different ways. You should somehow combine these into one. I like the idea of using opportunities, it's more to the point for your client. You need to combine these two organizing principle better. Perhaps the common environment is just an aspect of your research, another way to look at the opportunities. as such, it needs to be a subset of the opportunities (if this makes sense).

Overall, great organization to your research, nice stories, crisp and concise.

DESIGN CRITERIA

I like how you use the framework again. JAMES! You’re a natural.

CONCEPT

Great transition into your concept. This flow works really well.

I think you can combine all the features into 1 or 2 slides with callouts. Just pick the big points and highlight those.

STRATEGY

I think this is amazing, very compelling work. I would like to see you develop this, but again, I think we can condense this into 1-2 slides. I think you should think about a roadmap. Draw a diagram that has your concept as the starting point, and where the company should take that. What ideas build on each other? What are new concepts that branch off of that? Add time as a dimension to this diagram.

VISUAL DESIGN

This is probably the most undeveloped area of your presentation, and where you should focus most of your efforts for next Wednesday. Tricks to use:

+ big images that span the whole slide

+ don't be afraid to use colors to break up the whiteness

+ use shapes to organize text

+ big fonts (18pt as the minimum size, bigger for more salient points)

+ consistent layout for headlines, text

+ give the audience a sense of where they are in the presentation (research, concept, etc)

+ use visuals where possible (like features slide)

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Okay, that’s a lot of feedback, huh? Keep plugging away and if you need more feedback before next week, let me know.

You should have a version of your final presentation for next Wednesday, incorporating all this feedback and as complete as possible. You should be wrapping up your concept work in the next week. Jon and I will give you 15 minutes to present, and 15 minutes of feedback.

Thanks,

Lucas

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Hey James,

Thanks for posting up your work. It’s really, really looking great. I would say you are 97% there. Here is some feedback:

Intro

Just say Best Buy, don’t say you. Even though the audience is supposed to be Best Buy, you always just want to refer to the company name.

The transition to “meet your target users” is a bit terse, how about:

“Today we would like to focus on a very large and substantial, but often overlooked segment of electronic appliance buyers: college students.”

Again, not “you understand this”, make it “Best Buy understands this.” Make this change presentation-wide.

Reserach

This is a great quote: “"my life revolves around the mini-fridge... I'm constantly going through and reorganizing things." Put this on the slide with a talk balloon. You don’t have to have a picture of raquib on the slide (the inside fridge picture).

Mini-meals walk through. I love it. Great use of your research. Again, good quote, put it on one of the slides.

Business context

Private label slide. Introduce the notion that Best Buy is familiar with private label brands. Something like:

“This product is going to be one the first products from a new private label brand Best Buy will create. Best Buy is no stranger to private label brands in many product categories. So why mini fridges?”

I LOVE the end of the presentation. Great roadmap, visual, compelling. This is amazing work, and will be a very powerful portfolio piece for you.

Good luck!

Lucas