Tell a story. Don’t recite an Epic.

Tips for presenting your designs in an efficient manner.

1. Understand your audience.

Whether you are showing your designs to your juniors in the design team, to the leadership of your organization, or the interviewer for your next job. Understand your audience and empathize with their disposition.

When presenting to your team members, encourage them to ask you questions about your process and decision-making. In this way instead of droning on about your project as the others sit there glassy-eyed, you will have gathered their interest and given them an opportunity to learn.

While presenting to the leadership team, request them to refrain from stopping you mid-presentation. At the same time, you should keep it absolutely short and crisp. Usually, a person in the leadership team is extremely busy trying to keep informed of decisions that people across multiple functions take. A person in that position would not enjoy why #ff2324 color was chosen over #ff2434. So try to breeze through your presentation giving them time to ask those questions that they would like an answer to. Better yet, send a pre-read before the presentation.

When presenting to an interviewer, describe the process in short and then encourage them to ask you questions. Here’s an article for more tips on getting hired.

2. Respect your design, Craft your Presentation

Don’t open up your source files when presenting. You have spent a lot of energy, time, and effort on your designs (or maybe just a last-minute all-nighter) whichever be the case, create a presentation. Don't recite the entire slide and Don't put everything on the slides. This is the cardinal rule of creating presentations of any kind. Craft them with love and attention to detail.

3. Give a hint, take a hint

While presenting, always lay out the scope of the presentation. Better yet have that in your slides. Mention the topics that you will cover. Assign page numbers or progress bar on your slides. When you notice people getting edgy, or impatient, move on. Don't get stuck.

4. Keep it short

Keep it short — Seriously.