Overstock · Project Note
Helping Teams Make Their Own Presentations
Reusable slides, built-in guidance, and training gave teams a way to do the work themselves.
- Starting Point
- Teams regularly waited for design help on routine presentations.
- Design Decision
- Put the standards, instructions, and reusable slide patterns inside the tool people already used.
- Outcome
- Employees could build routine decks themselves, with design review available for higher-stakes work.
- My role
- Corporate template design and training Designed a self-service tool for colleagues who needed to create consistent presentations on their own.
- People involved
- Executive assistants, chiefs of staff, and department leads
In This Case
Repeated Requests for the Same Design Help
Executive assistants, chiefs of staff, and department leads regularly needed support preparing presentations. The existing template gave them too few starting points for the range of work they were asked to present.
Make the Standard Usable
I designed Overstock’s corporate PowerPoint library, with more than 150 slides to choose from. I paired it with classes and one-on-one coaching so teams could find the right layout and use it confidently. For high-stakes presentations, I still provided a final review.
The template had to carry the instructions into the moment someone was building a deck. A slide library helped with recurring needs. Training gave people a way to ask questions and learn when the standard needed support from a designer.
The library, guidance, and coaching solved different parts of the problem. The layouts gave someone a starting point. The instructions helped them pick and use it. A class or one-on-one session let us work through situations that did not fit the examples. Final review remained useful for executive or externally visible work.
How Teams Used the Presentation Standard
Choose
Start from an approved layout for the kind of message the presentation needs to convey.
Build
Use the slide library and the guidance in the file to create routine materials.
Review
Bring higher-stakes work to design when it requires a final pass.
What Teams Could Do Themselves
Teams had a way to create routine presentations independently while keeping a path to design support for sensitive or externally visible work. The training mattered as much as the template. It helped people understand which decisions they could make on their own.