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Final Poster and Presentation

You have explored a design space for your identified area of inquiry, selected a design with a set of tasks, and iterated on that design. It is now time to focus on communicating your design and your design process. This group assignment communicates your design through a poster and a pitch presentation. To support this, we will have an in-person poster session where you will be able to show off your final poster. All students are required to be there and ready to present their project.

Learning Goals

Submission Instructions

  • Please upload your poster source file (e.g., powerpoint or google slide) for our accessibility assessment. Also upload a pdf of your poster for printing.
  • Please share your poster with your group mentor as well

Presentation Logistics

When: Monday, March 17th at 2:30 - 4:30pm

Where: Microsoft Atrium (CSE1)

The course staff will print your posters and bring them to the Microsoft Atrium before the start or presentations.

Poster Templates and Requirements

Your poster will be graded on the accessible communication competency.

Tips for an accessible, effective poster design:

  1. Try to minimize text
  2. Make sure all images you include are clear and legible; Use high-resolution images or vector graphics when possible
  3. Use a relevant and consistent color scheme
  4. Follow DO-IT’s guide to creating an accessible poster. In addition,
    1. Keep in mind whether the font and color contrast will be visible when the poster is printed.
    2. Text size: Bigger is better! Ideally, the title is 158 point; Section headings are 56 point; Body text is 36 point; Figure captions & footnotes are 24 point. If you use smaller fonts, we will make a judgement call on readability.
    3. You should also provide a QR code next to each image that provides ALT text for that image. You can use a site such as qr.io to generate these QR codes.
  5. Make the poster source accessible (by following Accessible Communication Document Creation guidelines as usual; e.g. providing ALT text and so on).

Templates

Here is a CSE page with poster templates. Posters should be 36x60 in size. You may also find it helpful to review these example posters.

What to put in your poster

You should start with the template and add the following:

  1. Key basic information
    1. Project title
    2. Group members
    3. Mentor name and Class name
  2. The following content:
    1. Clients
      1. Who were you clients
      2. What did you learn from them about their access needs
      3. Include at least one quote
    2. LoFi Prototype
      1. Pictures
      2. What did you learn?
    3. Final Application
      1. Include screenshots
      2. Provide technical details. How did you achieve your goals? What software/platforms did you use? What did you implement yourself?
    4. Justice-centered Design
      1. How was this project intersectional? How did the access needs and other identities of your clients impact your approach
      2. What harms might result from this work and how did your work minimize harm?
    5. What you learned & suggested questions (“Ask me about…”)

Presentation and Demos

Prepare a pitch about your project, which conveys the need, a description of your intended users, and a description of your system. Pro tip: using tangible facts that people can relate to helps gain attention at the start.

Practice how to best pitch your project using the poster as a visual aid. Do not treat these two as separate artifacts; the poster is there to support communicating what your project is about.

Accessibility Guidelines for Presenting Posters

Presenting a poster accessibly is similar to giving an accessible talk – you need to describe images visuals you are talking about on the poster. In addition, keep in mind the following points (quoted from Rua Williams’ Guide to Making Accessible Research Posters)

  • “Conversation during poster presentation times can be difficult for people who are Deaf, Hard of Hearing, have auditory processing issues, affected speech or expressive language, or use AAC to communicate.”
  • “As a presenter, keeping a notepad on hand to pass notes back and forth with interested attendees can help.”
  • “Also, remain patient and allow people with communication disabilities equal access to your time.”
  • Finally, “don’t assume someone is uninterested in talking to you based solely on their equipment or behavior. Any person who seems to linger around your poster deserves to be asked directly if they have questions or would like you to explain the poster for them.”

Rua also recommends: “While your poster should be informational enough to be of interest even when you aren’t present, don’t expect people to read the poster while you are standing there. Present it! When you are not there, consider leaving a way for people to ask questions, such as post-it notes, a Sli.do event, or even a twitter tag.”

Demos

Bring your demo with you to the poster session (for example, your web app pulled up on a laptop next to your poster) and be prepared to show what you did in addition to talking about your poster.