Public Speaking Prototype 1

Public Speaking Prototype 1

Project Proposal:

Public Speaking Skills (PSS)

Electronic Performance Support System

Marc Stoecker

Kim Monti

EDIT 797 – Performance Centered Design

Public Speaking Prototype 1

Project Name

Public Speaking Skills (PSS) electronic performance support system

Project Objective

What do you intend to show, prove, or develop?

The design team's Performance Centered Design project will help individuals acquire the skills and understand the techniques for successful public speaking, and remove the obstacles that are inhibiting their success. Through the development of an electronic performance support system, participants will be assessed on their public speaking skills from peer feedback. Based on this feedback, participants will have the option to use a variety of media tools, artifacts, and job aids that support their performance in public speaking situations.

Which elements of the PCD process are the focus of the project? What is the purpose, who is the customer, and what is critical to success?

All three elements of the PCD process will be explored in this project: the process model, which will mimic the Toastmasters International model that helps participants improve their speaking skills through encouragement, support, and feedback from a community of peers (“Toastmasters International”, 2007); and the content model, which will utilize content from the Toastmaster's education curriculum and additional research that identifies techniques for internalizing public speaking skills (i.e. Focusing on speech content, not audience reaction), externalizing public speaking skills (i.e. Eliminating the "ums"), and interacting with the audience (i.e. Personalizing content for audience).

The purpose of this project is the development of an online tool or electronic performance support system that will provide feedback on public speaking skills and the performance enhancement of those public speaking skills. The EPSS is being designed for any person who is interested in increasing their competence in public speaking, and will be used as a supplement to traditional face-to-face seminars and clubs, such as Toastmasters. Participants will be able to submit speeches through an online tool, and a group of peers will review their online submissions and evaluate them against successful public speaking criteria (organization, clarity, precision, inspiration, etc.). Based on peer evaluations, participants will be able to access a variety of online performance support tools (such as links to additional resources, web sites, and job aids) based on their areas of weakness.

Project Deliverable

Is the result going to be a working system? - a prototype? - a design specification? - an evaluation? Be specific!

The design team projects developing a prototype with some functionality that will allow for usability testing and effective evaluation.

Project Team

Are you going to work alone or in a group? If the latter, who are the members and what roles will each person play? Roles must be clearly delineated and measurable.

The design team consists of Kim Monti & Marc Stoecker. Our individual contributions will be determined at a later date.

Business Problem and Business Needs

State the business performance problem (or organizational performance problem if not related to business) addressed by your project. This should be a real problem that has measurable performance gaps - in business/organization and human terms. State specifically how you expect the PCD activities to contribute to filling the performance gaps.

In a survey of common phobias published in the Book of Lists, the fear of public speaking is listed at the top, even above the fear of death (Laskowski, 2007). Public speaking opportunities often appear in the workplace or social settings. People like to feel competent when they perform a task or at least like to have some ability so they aren’t embarrassed or dread the experience. The focus of the design team’s Performance Centered Design project is to help individuals acquire the skills and understand the techniques for successful public speaking, and remove the obstacles that are inhibiting their success. The design team's goal is to provide a space for Toastmasters members and other interested individuals to practice their public speaking, gather feedback, and provide access to resources that will help them improve their techniques.

Process model: Toastmasters utilizes a specific evaluation process for evaluating a speaker on their speaking skills. This process will be mimicked and translated into an onlineexperience through the EPSS. Participants will be able to post speeches and the Toastmasters community will evaluate their speech through the design team’s prototype.

Content model: For this project, the design team will focus on the critical success factors that enable successful public speaking: the speaker’s internalization of public speaking skills and techniques, the speaker’s externalization of public speaking skills and techniques, and the speaker’s interaction with the audience. By utilizing the feedback received as a part of the evaluation process, different types of supportive materials and resources will be provided to participants through different media around the three critical success factors for effective public speaking.

Project Plan Outline

Delineate how your project will proceed from its onset to its conclusion. How will you measure progress (i.e., what are the interim deliverables and what are the review and approval processes)? When will you engage each element or sub-element of the PCD process? How? If yours is a team project, what are the roles and responsibilities of each team member with respect to the project tasks and outcomes?

Developing an Action Plan:

The design team has identified three critical success factors for effective public speaking: internalization of skills, externalization of skills, and interacting with the audience.

A scan of the internal and external environment will be conducted by reviewing the Toastmasters web site (content model), examining the Toastmasters supplemental materials (content model), observing Toastmasters meetings (process model), and studying additional web-based resources and face-to-face courses or seminars outside of the Toastmasters environment (content and process models).

Members of the Manassas Toastmasters Club have volunteered to provide their insights on public speaking to assist with the development of this project. Toastmasters members will be surveyed to determine what types of feedback will help them improve their speaking skills, what specific speaking skills they would like to target for additional support, and the gaps between what is available and what is needed to supplement their public speaking skills online.

Once the gaps are established the objectives to meet the gaps can be created, then theaction steps to meet the objectives, and finally a plan to monitor the activities.

Process model: The speech review and feedback process will be modeled through flowcharting. Flowcharts will be created from information gathered from the Toastmasters meetings, the website, and other speaking resources.

Diversity Model: The personas will be created based on the two archetypal users for this prototype; Toastmasters participants and business professionals. The design team anticipates that if successful, this EPSS could also evolve into or have a separate iterationas a stand-alone tool targeting groups such as extreme introverts.

Content model: The information and resources provided to enhance public speaking around these critical success factors will be decomposed and mapped out through flowcharting. This content will be obtained through our environmental scans to identify resources that support the critical success factors.

Critical Mapping:Mapping the Content Model to the Process Model, will create a representation that will lead to the first representation of the EPSS prototype.

Evaluation: The personas will be used to evaluate and revise the first representation of this prototype. Formative evaluation for the prototype will be obtained through continual feedback from Toastmasters and other volunteers during each phase of the design process.

Usability testing: Participants will test and provide ongoing feedback on the EPSS for a predetermined time period. Based on the results of the testing, we will tweak the prototype's capability until the design team creates an effective prototype that meets the needs of the participants.

Presentation Proposal

How will you present your results to your instructor and your peers for evaluation? Who will do what (if a team)? What would be the suggested evaluation criteria to fairly assess your accomplishments?

We plan on presenting the action plan and iterations of the process, diversity, and business models in class. Additionally, we'll provide demonstrations of the different phases of our Public Speaking Skills (PSS) electronic performance support system prototype. Evaluation criteria may include whether the subjects who test the prototype feel as though the PSS electronic performance support system was effective in enhancing their speaking skills (externally, internally, and interactively).

References

Laskowski, L. (2007). Overcoming Speaking Anxiety – Presentation Skills. October 7,

2007, from

Toastmasters International: Become the Speaker & Leader You Want to Be. (2007).

Retrieved October 21, 2007, from