Presenting to executives isn’t always a walk in the park. You've probably been in more than your fair share of VIP meetings and asked to reveal your work in front of some of the most daunting figures within the company. It's most troubling when presenting to people who are far-removed from the creation process—people who haven’t spoken to an actual customer, in some cases, for years. Here is the full article that includes 8 recommendations for presenting your new design to company leaders: http://www.usertesting.com/blog/2014/07/28/presenting-your-work-to-executives-8-tips-for-ux-designers/

1. Presenting Your
Work to Executives:
8 Tips for UX Designers

2. 8 Tips for UX Designers
The design review

3. 8 Tips for UX Designers
All eyes are on you. Your hand trembles as
you guide your mouse to the Share Screen
button. You tap. And then it happens.

4. 8 Tips for UX Designers
Your boss, your boss’s boss, and your boss’s
boss’s boss have finally stopped staring at you.
They are silently absorbing your creation, the
project you’ve spent the last six weeks toiling
over: the new navigation.

5. 8 Tips for UX Designers
Before you can catch your breath, the CMO says,
“I thought you were going to put the
navigation on the left.”

6. 8 Tips for UX Designers
That’s it. You’re doomed. There’s no way to
dig yourself out of this one.
Or is there?

7. 8 Tips for UX Designers
8 tips
for presenting your new
design to company leaders

8. 8 Tips for UX Designers
Remind people why
they’re sitting there

9. 8 Tips for UX Designers
Take a minute to set the stage. But no more
than a minute! These are busy folks.
Before you show your work, call out:
• Who you worked with
• What the goal of the project is
• What they’re going to see
• What you need from them
(approval or feedback)

10. 8 Tips for UX Designers
Relate your work back
to business goals
+

11. 8 Tips for UX Designers
When executives make the time to review
your work, it’s most likely because they are
hoping that your project is going to help
them meet some kind of business goal.

12. 8 Tips for UX Designers
If you tie your work to solving business
problems (i.e. a loss in new business inquiries
or a decrease in repeat revenue), you’ll
definitely earn their attention.

13. 8 Tips for UX Designers
Put executives at ease by
speaking their language

14. 8 Tips for UX Designers
Remember, senior management is far more
used to staring at reports and spreadsheets
than front-end design work.
So share some statistics around number of
visits per quarter, number of bounces, and
number of sales.

15. 8 Tips for UX Designers
Build out a scenario,
and then walk them through it

16. 8 Tips for UX Designers
This may mean you share a few UserTesting
video clips that highlight the navigation issues
on your website. If this was a huge overhaul
that included a lot of usability testing, share a
glimpse of the iterations that led up to where
you are now.

17. 8 Tips for UX Designers
Highlight your intimate
knowledge of your site’s users

18. 8 Tips for UX Designers
Talk about the people who visit your site, who
your marketing team is targeting, and how
you collected input from these people.
This is a key part of great UX work, so don’t
skip it!

19. 8 Tips for UX Designers
Put your best foot forward

20. 8 Tips for UX Designers
Big, over-sized screens can degrade the
quality of your work, and that isn’t a great way
to start things off. If you’re still in prototype,
use InVision to quickly create a working
version of one section of the navigation.

21. 8 Tips for UX Designers
If this is already hosted on a demo server,
great! Walk them through the solution and
offer to send around a link afterwards so they
can explore more.

22. 8 Tips for UX Designers
Be ready to answer
questions about your work

23. 8 Tips for UX Designers
Prepare yourself for, “Why is that section
called Such-and-Such and not This Thing?”
If you used treejacking or card-sorting tools,
refer to the number of people you tested on
and the commonalities you came across.

24. 8 Tips for UX Designers
Be flexible, and be ready to defer some
questions to others in the room who might
have more expertise or involvement in
certain matters.

25. 8 Tips for UX Designers
Provide next steps

26. 8 Tips for UX Designers
Now that you’ve shown your work and put
together a solution that you feel confident in
trying out, talk the executives through the risk.

27. 8 Tips for UX Designers
Explain that you’re going to use an A/B
tool (like Optimizely) to test out your new
navigation with only a percentage of the
site’s visitors.

28. 8 Tips for UX Designers
Mention the fact that you’re documenting
all of your research in an internal blog for
future reference, and that your analyst is
working with you to monitor any fluctuation
in sales once you launch.

29. 8 Tips for UX Designers
Move forward
with confidence

30. 8 Tips for UX Designers
Understand what motivates the people you
are going to be presenting to, and hold your
own with as much vim and vigor as you can
muster.

31. 8 Tips for UX Designers
Confidence will earn you a degree of respect,
and if you’ve done your homework, you should
be able to get some valuable feedback—and
hopefully a seat at the table the next time
around.

32. www.usertesting.com