Presenting your research

Every year, research scholars in every discipline and professional practitioners in every field present their work to each other in conferences and seminars around the world. Today, several dozen of these conference cycles take place in design research and the allied fields of research-based professional practice. For the readers of Design Research Quarterly, regular conferences include the Design Research Society, the International Association of Societies of Design Research, The Design Society, the Japanese Society for the Science of Design, and the Korean Society for Design Science. Many also attend the conferences of the Design and Emotion Society, Design Forum, the Design History Society, the Nordic Design Research Conference, the European Academy of Design. Professional association conferences in every field of design practice increasingly sponsor research streams. Research papers at these conferences cover a range of issues as wide as the different fields of design process, design research, and design education, the physical, digital, and social artifacts they create, and the social issues they influence. One virtue of a conference is the opportunity to meet colleagues from different cultures and nations, representing a wide variety of schools, scholarly disciplines, and professional practices. Because of this, however, we speak many different languages: different working languages and dialects, and the different languages of our many disciplines and professions. Sharing ideas and learning from each other requires communicating our research effectively. This article is a simple guide to the basic elements of effective conference presentation for speakers who are still mastering presentation style.