the presentation problem

i’ve watched really good design work get dismissed because the person presenting it led with the solution.

not because the solution was wrong. because the room hadn’t been brought to the problem yet. by the time they got to the “why,” people had already formed a reaction to the “what” — and reactions are hard to walk back.

the work was fine. the sequencing was off.

this is the thing about presenting to people who weren’t in the research. they don’t feel the weight of what you found. you spent three weeks with users who couldn’t navigate a core feature. you watched them struggle. you know in your body why the change matters. they weren’t there.

so when you show them the redesigned screen first, they see a change. they don’t see the solution to a problem they understand. they see something unfamiliar that they now have to evaluate without context.

and “evaluate without context” almost always produces friction. what’s wrong with the current one? why now? have we considered the engineering cost? the questions aren’t unreasonable — they’re the natural response to being handed a conclusion before being walked to it.

the fix i’ve landed on is embarrassingly simple: start with what’s broken, not what you made.

not a context slide with a timeline and methodology. just: here’s the behaviour we observed, here’s the consequence, here’s what that means for the decision we’re making. two minutes, maybe three. enough that the room is oriented to the same problem.

then you show the work.

it changes the whole dynamic. instead of evaluating your output against an invisible standard, they’re evaluating whether your solution addresses a problem they now share. the question shifts from “should we do this?” to “does this solve it?” and that’s a much more useful conversation.

the harder version of this is when you’re presenting a strategic recommendation, not a design solution. the work isn’t a screen — it’s a framing, a position, a proposed direction. there’s no artefact to anchor the room.

those presentations are where i’ve seen the most otherwise-good work get lost. because without an artefact, the room defaults to debating the claim. and you can debate a claim forever, especially if the people in the room have different intuitions about the underlying problem.

what helps is to make the evidence visible before you make the argument. not as a data dump, but as a shared orientation — here’s what we know, here’s where people disagree, here’s the question we’re trying to resolve. then the recommendation lands as an answer rather than an assertion.

you’re still going to get pushback. but pushback on an answer is easier to navigate than pushback on a premise. at least you’re in the same conversation.

if you’ve got a recommendation or research outcome that needs to land in a room that isn’t already on your side, i offer synthesis — turning your evidence into a position that’s structured to be heard. $300.