Final Project Presentation and Demo Guidelines

I. Technicalities

You have 30 minutes. This covers set-up and take-down (a total of about 5 minutes), presentation (about 10 minutes) and demo (about 10 minutes), and exactly 5 minutes of questions and answers.

A projector will be provided.

Bring your own laptop to present slides and to demo your application.

All presentations will be video-taped.


II. What to present

Project Definition. What you have built.

Rationale for your project. Why it made sense to build your system, why it is needed. Are there similar products?

Run your application. Demonstrate what it does for its users. Show that your application functions properly.

Explain your design. Discuss design alternatives.

Computer science aspects of your project, such as algorithms, performance, choice of programming languages, software architecture, development tools, testing, etc.

Management aspects such as your project plan, GANTT charts, critical paths, means of team communication (e-mail, chat room, meetings, version control system).

You are free to choose the structure of your presentation. In particular, you do not need to follow the order of the items above. You can have your own narrative.


III. How to Present

Professional attire.

Clear and concise manner of speaking.

Professional-looking audio/visual material such as slides.

Split the presentation time about evenly among the members of your team. Rehearse the hand-off.


IV. Recommendations

Rehearse your presentation and demo, and time the duration of each part. This is critical for staying on time.

For each slide, know the points you want to make. Make them. Move to the next slide.

Give the name of your project and list everyone who is involved (team members, advisor(s), external stakeholder(s)).

At the beginning include a slide that gives an overview of what you are going to present. This prevents questions of the kind "Are you going to say something about ...?".

Number your slides (bottom right footer: "1 out of 20", "2 out of 20", etc.). This will make it easier for your audience to refer to individual slides during the questions-and-answers session.

Include your project name in the footer of each slide. This will help people who show up late for your presentation.

How to handle questions from the audience: Thank the person who asked the question. If your answer is short, reply immediately; otherwise, defer the question to the question and answer session.

If you have too much material, do not attempt to cram everything into your time slot. Instead, give a general overview and then focus on one or two highlights.