Communication and Creativity

 

Public speaking and verbal communication are important skill in the field of engineering.  I already recognized the necessity of being able to speak concisely in front of large groups.  All of my previous presentations required formal business attire and prepared slide presentations.  

I had never considered that there may be alternative methods when delivering professional presentations.   It may be true that in most situations the formal presentation is what is required when trying to communicate technical information, but there is a window of opportunity that should be considered.  Verbal, non-verbal, visual, and electronic forms of communication should be considered when preparing to communicate and used in situations that are acceptable when straying from the norm.

For one of my team projects we decided to break from the usual presentation of a person and a PowerPoint and try to record a motion capture using the Microsoft Kinect.  With the motion capture an animated character could be attached to the motion and placed into any environment that could be designed in 3DS Max.  Ultimately, we decided not to use this method because as a team we deemed it unacceptable for this particular presentation, but there was still an opportunity to use this new form of presentation for our next assignment.