The attached narrated power point presentation explains the methods of oral and written communication which the design engineers use to communicate with the clients or the audience. The material will be useful for KTU second year B Tech students who prepare for the subject EST 200, Design and Engineering.

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Oral and Written
Communications
MEC

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Contents
• Introduction.
• Principles of Technical Writing.
• Oral Presentation.
• Presentation Outline.
• Practice Sessions.
• Design Reviews.
• Project Reports.

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Communicating Designs
• Communicate final design results through
- oral presentations.
- final reports may include design
drawings, fabrication specifications etc.
- prototypes and models.

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Principles of Technical Writing
• Know your purpose.
• Know your audience.
• Choose and organize the content around
the purpose and the audience.
• Write precisely and clearly.
• Design the pages well.
• Think visually.
• Write ethically.

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Know the Purpose.
• Understanding objectives and functions for
a designed artifact.
• Understanding what the designed object
must be and must do.
• Understand the goals of a report or
presentation.
• Design documentation seeks to inform the
client about the features of a selected
design.

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Know the Purpose
• Design team may be trying to persuade a
client that a design is the best alternative.
• Designer may wish to report how a design
operates to users.

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Know the Audience
• Design team to structure its materials to its
targeted audience.
• Understand the technical level of the
audience.
• Set the material at an appropriate level.
• Know the audience interest in the design
being presented.
• May prepare multiple documents for
different audience.

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Know the Audience
• Confine calculations or concepts that are
of limited interest to a report’s primary
audience to the specific sections of their
reports.
• Understand the target audience to ensure
that all the members appreciate the
documentation.

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Choose and Organize the Content
• Structure the presentation to best reach
the audience.
• To present the entire process by which the
design team selected an alternative.
• To organize information, may go from
general concepts to specific details
(analogous to deduction) or from specific
details to general concepts (analogous to
induction or inference), and describing
devices or systems.

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Choose and Organize the Content
• Translate organizational pattern into a
written outline.
• Team to develop a unified, coherent
document or presentation.
• Avoiding needless repetition.

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Precise and Clear Writing
• Effective use of short paragraphs that
have a single common thesis or topic.
• Short, direct sentences containing a
subject and a verb.
• Active voice and action verbs allow reader
to understand directly what is being said or
done.
• To clearly identify opinions/viewpoints.
• Goals of both technical and non-technical
communications to be the same.

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Design Your Pages Well
• Use headings and subheadings, identified
by different fonts and underlining to
support the organizational structure of the
report.
• Long section divided into several
subsections.
• Select fonts to highlight key elements or to
indicate different types of information.

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Design Your Pages Well
• Tables to be treated as a single figure, not
to be split over a page break.
• White space on a page to keep readers
alert and avoid a forbidding look in
documents.
• Utilize the characteristics of the media
wisely.

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Design Your Presentation Well
• Careful planning of presentation support
materials like slides and transparencies to
enhance and reinforce important concepts
or elements of design choices.
• Using fonts that are large enough for the
entire audience.
• Simple and direct slides to encourage
readers to listen to the speaker without
being distracted visually.

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Design Your Presentation Well
• Text on a slide to present succinct
concepts that the presenter can amplify
and describe in more detail.
• Slides not to show every relevant thought.
• Not to fill slides with so many words (or
content).
• Audiences not to choose between reading
the slide and listening to the speaker, but
both.
• Filling slides with many words dilute the
presenter’s message.

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Think Visually
• Designs often start as sketches, analyses
often begin with free-body or circuit
diagrams.
• Plans for realizing a design involve
graphics such as objectives trees and
work breakdown structures
• Judicious use of visual representation of
information help designers and audience.
• Tables help concentrate on data.

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Think Visually
• Should not allow graphics’ capabilities to
seduce design team into clouding the
slides with artistic backgrounds that make
the words illegible.
• Know the purpose and the audience, use
the medium appropriately.

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Write Ethically
• Not to get tempted to present designs or
other technical results in ways that only
show what is favourable.
• Not to suppress unfavorable data or
issues.
• Present and discuss facts fully and
accurately – even the worst favoured.
• Ethical presentations to describe honestly
and directly the limitations of a design.

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Write Ethically
• Acknowledge the originator, authors and
previous researchers.
• Mention your references.

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Oral Presentation
• Presentations may be made before the
award of a contract to do the design work.
• Focusing on the team’s ability to
understand and do the job in the hope of
winning the contract in a competitive
procurement.
• During the project, call upon the team to
present the understanding of the project.

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Oral Presentation
• Alternatives under consideration and the
team’s plan for selecting one, or simply the
progress toward completing the project to
be mentioned.
• The team to undertake a design review
before a technical audience to assess the
design, identify possible problems, and
suggest alternate solutions or approaches.

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Oral Presentation
• Design teams to report on the overall
project to the client and to other
stakeholders and interested parties.
• Variety of presentations and briefings to
make.
• May not be possible to examine each of
them in detail.

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Key Elements for Oral Presentation
• Identify the audience.
• Outline the presentation.
• Develop appropriate supporting materials.
• Review and practice the presentation.

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Audience
• Many types of audiences from different
streams and departments having individual
different concerns.
• Most attendees interested in at least some
aspect of a project.
• To identify such interests and other
dimensions.
• To consider factors such as varying levels
of interest, understanding, and technical
skill, and the available time.

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Audience
• Design team to tailor the presentation to
the required audience.
• Presentation to be properly organized and
structured.
• To articulate a rough outline to have a
clear structure.
• To formulate a detailed outline.
• To prepare proper supporting materials,
such as visual aids or physical models.

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Presentation Outline
• Rough outline for a clear structure.
• Presentation structure and organization to
be logical and understandable.
• Presentation to guide the preparation of
supporting dialogue and discussion.
• Presentation to have a title, a roadmap,
problem statement, material, objectives,
constraints, functions, the design process
involved and show prototypes if any.

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Sample Presentation Outline
• A title slide to identify the client(s), the
project, and the design team/organization
responsible for the work being presented
and company logos.
• Roadmap for the presentation to show the
audience the direction the presentation will
take.
• Problem statement includes highlights of
the revised problem statement.

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Sample Presentation Outline
• Background material on the problem, to
include relevant prior work, references and
other materials developed through team
research.
• Key objectives of the client and users.
• Key design constraints.
• Design functions, and means for achieving
those functions.

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Sample Presentation Outline
• Design alternatives including diagrams
and descriptions.
• Highlights of the evaluation procedure and
outcomes - key metrics or objectives.
• Selected design, explain why the design
was chosen.
• Features of the design, highlighting its
superiority.

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Sample Presentation Outline
• Proof-of-concept testing.
• Demonstration of the prototype, videos
and still photos.
• Conclusion(s), any future work or design
improvements.
• May exclude some of them depending on
time constraints and the level of audience.
• Detailed outline after a rough outline.

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Presentation Outline
• Review the structure and details of the
presentations, as well as detailed outline
required by the reviews.
• Try to know the setting in which the
presentation will be made including
support and availability of required visual
aids and devices, room settings, size and
capacity, lighting, seating, and other
factors.
• Bring backups.

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Tips on Visual Aids
• Limit the number of slides – 1 to 2 slides
per minute?
• Avoid rushing through the slides in the
hope of finishing.
• Finish earlier to allow more time for
interaction.
• Introduce yourself and your teammates on
the title slide.
• A brief overall description of the project
and acknowledgment of the client.

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Tips on Visual Aids
• Slides to highlight key points.
• Slides not a direct substitute for the
reasoning of the final report.
• Speaker to expand upon the points in the
slides.
• Points to be stated clearly, directly, and
simply.
• Slides not to be too flashy or clever to
avoid detraction from a presentation.

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Tips on Visual Aids
• Use color skillfully, avoid clashing colors in
professional presentations.
• Some colors hard to read.
• Use animation appropriately, animated
video informative but flying text not.
• Not to reproduce completed design tools.
• Highlight selected points of the outcomes.
• Refer the audience to a report for more
detailed information.

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Tips on Visual Aids
• Size and distance of the audience to be
considered if images of design drawings
are being shown.
• Many line drawings hard to display and
often harder still to see and interpret in
large rooms.
• Not to read or quote the slides, audience
may be doing that while hearing.
• Visual aids to reinforce the speaker, be
simple.

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Practice Makes Perfection
• Practice, practice and practice your own
part.
• Use words and phrases that are natural to
the speaker.
• Speak to the audience in their language.
• Maintain a professional tone.
• Try to quote key points in several different
ways as a means of identifying and
adopting new speech patterns.

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Practice Sessions
• Practice sessions to be timed and done
under conditions as close as possible to
the actual environment.
• Setting the right pace, slides to be used if
in actual presentation.
• Decide in advance how to handle and limit
questions that may arise – whether during
or at the end of the talk.

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Preparing for Questions
• Generating a list of questions that might
arise, and their answers.
• Preparing supporting materials for points
that are likely to arise (e.g., backup slides
that may include computer results,
statistical charts, and other data that may
be needed to answer anticipated
questions).
• Preparing to say “I don’t know,” or “We
didn’t consider that.” - very important.
• To be caught pretending to know
undermines credibility and invites severe
embarrassment.

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Choosing Speakers
• Depends on the nature of the presentation
and the project.
• Choosing a speaking order depend on the
circumstances surrounding presentation.
• A team may want to have all members
speak.
• A team may want to encourage less
experienced members to speak in order to
gain experience and confidence.
• A team may want to tap its most skilled
and confident members.

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Design Reviews
• A unique type of presentation, challenging
and useful.
• Best opportunity to get undivided attention
of professionals about the design project.
• A full and frank exploration of the design,
to expose the implications of solving the
design problem at hand or even of
creating new ones.

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Design Reviews
• Team presents its design choices in detail
to an audience of technical professionals
who are there to assess the design, raise
questions, and offer suggestions.
• A briefing by the team on the nature of the
problem being addressed, followed by an
extensive presentation of the proposed
solution.

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Design Reviews
• For artifacts, an organized set of drawings
or sketches allows the audience to
understand and question the team’s
design choices.
• A challenge and an opportunity to the
team, a chance to display technical
knowledge and skills in constructive
conflict.

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Design Reviews
• Questions and technical issues to be fully
explored in a positive, frank environment.
• Team to resist natural defensiveness that
comes from having a work questioned and
challenged.
• Team may call upon the expertise of all
participants to suggest new ways to frame
the problem or even the design itself.
• Reviews can last several hours, or even a
day or two.

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Design Reviews
• Team not to be tempted to move on
quickly if the discussion suggests that a
design must be changed in ways the team
doesn’t like.
• Team to resist the temptation to move on
quickly if the team feels that participants
have not really “heard” the team’s point of
view.

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Design Reviews
• Time management not to become a cover
for hiding from criticism or belaboring
points.
• Conflict in the realm of ideas is generally
constructive, personality-oriented criticism
is destructive.
• To continually maintain the review’s focus
on the design, and not on the designers.

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Project Reports
• To communicate with the client.
• To ensure client’s thoughtful acceptance of
a team’s design choice.
• Results in clear, understandable language.
• Highly detailed or technical materials may
be placed at the end of the report for
better clarity.
• May move technical and other supporting
materials to separate volumes.

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Project Reports
• Best managed and controlled using a
structured approach.
• Steps include:
- determining the purpose and audience of
the technical report.
- constructing a rough outline of the overall
structure of the report.
- reviewing the outline within the team and
with the team’s managers.

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Project Reports
- constructing a topic sentence outline
(TSO).
- reviewing the outline within the team.
- distributing individual writing assignments.
- assembling, writing, and editing an initial
draft.
- soliciting reviews of initial draft from the
managers and advisors.

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Topic Sentence Outline

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Project Reports
- revising and rewriting initial draft to
respond to the reviews.
- preparing final version of the report.
- presenting the final version to the client.
• A structure helps to learn how to create an
organized report of the design results.

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Rough Outline of a Project Report

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Reference
• Clive L Dim, Patrick Little and Elizabeth J
Orwin, “Engineering Design, A Project
Based Introduction”, 4th Edition, Wiley,
U.S.A, 2014.

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