So, does practice really make perfect?

Ok...well maybe not perfect, but certainly it makes you better! Yesterday morning, Matt S., Matt F., Fernando, and I met to practice our presentation. We had made some changes based on Prof. Ackley's feedback (particularly the addition of our slogan--"Help you become a better you") so now we just needed to practice. We were able to practice in the room where the final presentation will be held, which was a great opportunity for us to familiarize ourselves with the projection equipment and figure out whose laptop would work best with the projector's resolution. It was decided that we would use my laptop since the higher resolution projector plays nicely with it.

Once we got everything set up, we went through the slides about five or six times, with Matt F. and Matt S. switching parts (i.e. changing up who would talk through the demo, who would talk through the slides, etc.) to see what worked best. Fernando and I were the audience and judges. In the end, we decided that the best format was to have Matt S. talk though the slides (which, by the end, he was able to do very nicely without any notecards) and to have Matt F. talk through the demo. Since Matt F. was in charge of running the computer, it made it smoother and easier if he also talked through the demo since there would be no possibility of mixing up what was being shown versus what was being said. All in all, it was a very productive few hours and I just wish that we had actually done a lot more practice prior to our practice presentations because we would have done so much better initially. But, at least we are finally practicing now so hopefully the final presentation will go really well.

After the meeting, I started going through the slides for the presentation to make more changes that were brought up during our presentation to Prof. Ackley yesterday. I decided to include a few graphics from the app on some of the slides to break up the monotony of text. I also removed all but the necessary keywords from most of the bullet-points to reduce the overall amount of text. For the bullet-points (not the text, just the bullet-point circles themselves), I reduced the font size significantly and changed their color to green (the same green used in our website) so that they are not so prominent. I think this helped make the slides look a little less academic, which was a criticism that has been brought up during several of our practice presentations.

I still think we might be able to make a few more changes that will improve the overall look and feel of the slides, but at least we have made some significant improvements that I think will help our final presentation.