Free Game is an initiative to help designers to grow their skills and achieve greater things, as the name says is a free collection of resources I'm constantly building to give away to the community and of course to the teams I manage.

The project is a collection of processes in order to help people on how to create better stories at work, from how to develop and apply their creativity to what is the 3 act structure for presentations.

The beginning of a good narrative should have a hook. The hook is an information or visual element that makes the audience wonder, ‘What will come next?’

Many movies use a hook right at the beginning to build this thought in the viewer. In Batman, Heath Ledger’s Joker pulls off a massive heist in the first few minutes of the film to create this sense of chaos and battles to come. This moment also establishes his entire personality as a villain.

And what does this have to do with presenting a project? The beginning of your presentation should generate a sense of curiosity about what will come next in the audience, while also starting with a big question that will help establish the problem ahead.

“When we leave the hook, we have an open question that engages us enough for an event. For this event to occur, we need to create a bet with the audience. This bet is a crucial turning point to designate the challenge we will solve. At WWDC, the Apple team builds and deconstructs this event multiple times, whether by establishing a product evolution or showcasing an innovation. Try think about this narrative structure and watch this presentation again.

The second act can be divided into several events, and it begins when we reach this first climax. From here, we do not return to the first part. Again, at WWDC, the Apple team transitions the event presentation between teams that present different parts of the company’s annual roadmap.

The highlight of the presentation is where we show a glimpse of a solution or establish an engaging discovery to be addressed in the future.

At this moment, it’s important to make a visual impact to generate engagement with a concept, problem, or future solution. Here, we apply all possible solutions to our problem without technical restrictions, based on all previous learnings.

We do not provide recipes here; instead, we show a vision for the audience to dream and believe in the path to be followed in the next minutes of the presentation. The goal of this stage is to achieve a victory. It’s about vision. In the latest Airbnb Product Updates, they presented the ICONS project, where they offer iconic accommodations on the app. To show this vision, they brought a real floating house to the stage. It might seem like an exaggeration, but it was the tangible proof they needed to captivate. Think about how your concepts, even if digital, can generate the same WOW in your audience.”

Many designers I have met hate presenting things, from the most introverted to the most talkative. I believe that formally, a pressure-filled environment is created in every presentation because these narratives are built to gain approval from other leaders. This is normal. My tip is always to remember that you have spent a lot of time building that content and are presenting a possible solution or conclusion about it, so you are the expert there. There is no reason to feel that something was not done or will be rejected.

Never read slides (except for accessibility reasons). Reading slides is a VERY common habit in many companies. For the presenter, it brings the comfort of having a certain guide in the story where you don’t get lost. For the audience, when they realize it, it becomes uncomfortable because no one reads at the same pace. My suggestion is that there should always be two versions of a presentation: one with topics that the presenter uses to narrate and another with the full text body in case it needs to be sent for the audience to consume without narration (like this one here).”

Seek lightness; I often say that lightness expresses itself in various ways. For some, it can be a relaxed atmosphere during the presentation; for others, it can be interaction with the audience. Regardless of the format, lightness is an important recharge for anyone presenting any content.
Always have a protagonist and an antagonist! Good stories need these two elements as a guiding thread of the narrative. Here, we are not just talking about a character or person; it can be a product, a problem, a situation, a place… and so on. This is crucial to guide the audience.