Blog about presentations

Have you ever wished your early design mockups could come to life, so you could try out the navigation, test an interaction, or see if a button label just feels right when you click on it?

Sure, you could invest in a dedicated prototyping tool, but you can create surprisingly quick and effective prototypes with a software program that’s probably sitting on your hard drive right now. It’s PowerPoint—and no, I am not kidding.

I’ve met many designers who use PowerPoint for blocking out screens without ever discovering the interactive features for creating hyperlinks, buttons, and dynamic mouseover effects. Yes, PowerPoint can do all that. When I show people an interactive PowerPoint prototype, someone inevitably asks what I created it in. The reaction is always the same: “PowerPoint can do that?”

Overview

To see what PowerPoint can do, here’s a sample interactive prototype created in Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 for Windows. (Important: View the document in slideshow mode to see the interactivity. Links and orange buttons are clickable.)

Though there are other prototyping tools out there, here are the main reasons I lean toward PowerPoint:

• It’s fast. You can try something, hate it, and try something else—all in a matter of minutes.

• It’s low-fidelity. A PowerPoint mockup doesn’t try to look exactly like the final product, so it’s easy to work on high-level design issues and not get bogged down in details like colors or exact text. I also like being able to jot down notes in the margins of an early design, which I’ve never found a good way of doing in HTML or Flash.

• Everyone has it. One of the great things about PowerPoint is that the people on your team usually have it. You can easily email a PowerPoint prototype to people for review and feedback.

Basic Interactivity

To begin, create a simple PowerPoint mockup, each slide depicting a separate screen in your site or application. You can use shapes, text, and clipart to populate the screens. I like to leave a little space in the margins for notes and half-baked ideas.

Once your basic mockup is in place, you can add hyperlinks to text, shapes, or images. The links won’t be active in regular working mode; in slide show view, clicking on a linked object will go to a specific target screen.

Ready to give it a try? Let’s take a look at how to do it.

Note about versions: The detailed steps and screenshots in this article apply to PowerPoint 2003 for Windows. It’s possible to achieve similar results using other Windows versions of PowerPoint, but please be aware that the exact steps will vary.

Hyperlinking Text

Voila! The text is now hyperlinked. View the PowerPoint as a slideshow to see it in action.
Hint: PowerPoint automatically applies a style to text links, but only if you apply the hyperlink to the text itself, not the box around the text. You’ll probably want to change the default sea-foam green color. Here’s how:

1. Open the “Slide Design” panel from the Format menu
2. Click on “Color Schemes”
3. Click on the “Edit Color Schemes” option, which appears at the bottom of the screen.

Two settings control the color of links: The “Accent and hyperlink” color (for active links) and the “Accented and followed hyperlink” color (for visited links).

Creating Buttons and Hyperlinked Images

Follow the same basic process to create buttons and images that link to other screens.

Right-click on the image or button. (I use a simple rectangle to represent a button.)

Hint: Try giving hyperlinked buttons a different color so you (and reviewers) can tell which ones are active in the prototype.

Simulating the Back Button

PowerPoint has a “back” control, but it steps back to the previous slide in the presentation. With hyperlinks, this may not be the slide the user just viewed.
If you want a back button that lets the user get back to the screen he came from, you’ll need to build it yourself. Here’s how:

That’s it! Now, when viewed in slideshow mode, this link will take the user back to the screen he just viewed.
Hint: Even without a back button, you can go back in slideshow mode by right-clicking anywhere on a slide and selecting “Last Viewed.” However, keep in mind that other people who click through your prototype might not know this.

Advanced Interactivity

PowerPoint can go beyond basic hyperlinks and simulate dynamic behavior, such as mouseover effects for a Rich Internet Application.

Creating Mouseover Effects

Start with two slides: one “before” the mouseover effect and one “after.”

On the “before” slide, right-click on the item that will trigger the mouseover effect, and select “Action Settings…”

second dialog box will let you select the “After” slide.

Now, in slide show view, mousing over the item you selected will switch to the target slide: the one that shows the “after” mouseover effect.

Hint: There’s no “mouse out” effect in PowerPoint. The best way I’ve found to simulate it is a bit clunky, but it gets the job done:

1. On the “After” slide, draw some boxes around the item you want to apply the mouse-out effect to.
2. Apply a mouseover action to the boxes around the object. (For example, if you want to return to the previous slide when you mouse off an item, give the boxes around the item a mouseover effect that returns to the previous slide.)
3. Make the surrounding boxes transparent.

Mouseover behaviors can get out of control quickly in PowerPoint. This is partly because creating the mouse-out behavior is awkward, and partly because you need to create “after” screens for each individual mouseover effect. PowerPoint can help you try out a mouseover behavior (e.g., wire up a single example), but for prototypes with lots of dynamic effects—or many instances of the same effect—you’re probably better off with another tool.

Other Tips & Tricks

Use slide masters for persistent navigation

If your mockup uses a persistent navigation framework (tabs, left navigation items, etc.), create the navigation elements in a slide master, and apply hyperlinks that lead from the master to individual screens. This way, each slide you create will already have the navigation built in. If you need to make changes, edit the master and the changes will automatically apply throughout the prototype.

Disable standard slideshow controls

Even with interactive elements in place, PowerPoint continues to work like a slideshow: clicking a slide advances to the next one. This can be disorienting for people using your prototype. When they click on something you didn’t make interactive (which—trust me—they will), the slideshow will advance to something that doesn’t make sense.

To avoid this confusion, I suggest turning off the slideshow behavior. Your hyperlinks will still work, but clicking outside them won’t advance the slideshow.

Note: In PowerPoint 2007 for Windows Vista, this feature is under the “Action” item on the Insert ribbon.

Conclusion

It’s possible to take the interactivity a step further with the Control Toolbox and ActiveX controls in PowerPoint, but I find that the techniques outlined here are all I need for early-stage prototypes. They help me test-drive an interactive design, get feedback, and make improvements early in the process.

Of course, PowerPoint isn’t right for every project. Here are some trade-offs to keep in mind if you’re deciding whether PowerPoint is a good fit for what you’re doing:

• Sample interactions vs. all interactions. PowerPoint works well for creating a skeleton of a site or application and for testing individual interactions. But since it’s not especially object-oriented, it can be awkward to apply the same basic interaction to multiple things. For example, imagine a list where each item leads to a separate details screen. You can do this in PowerPoint, but each individual page and each individual link need to be created manually. It’s a lot of work, you wind up with a huge file, and God help you if you need to modify anything. Keep PowerPoint in mind for sample interactions, but if you’re looking to build a complete prototype where everything is truly functional, keep looking.
• Low-fidelity vs. high-fidelity. PowerPoint is great for testing interactivity, but it won’t give you a realistic sense of what any one screen will really look like. You’re not going to get a sense of exact layout from PowerPoint. Also, remember that PowerPoint screens don’t scroll, so if you’re designing for the Web, your mockups won’t necessarily get a full-size picture of any one screen.

Overall, PowerPoint can be a blessing for interaction designers who want to create interactive prototypes quickly and easily. Interactive PowerPoint mockups can give a flavor for how a site or application will feel when you move through it—which is what interaction design is all about.

Source: www.boxesandarrows.com

GMail now has an inbuilt PPT viewer that lets you view Powerpoint attachment as a Flash picture slideshow in the web browser itself without requiring Microsoft PowerPoint application.

This slideshow feature of GMail will be useful since you no longer have to download the full PPT attachment in order to view that 16th slide of the presentation.

Here are two additional situations where it may help:

1. If you have to view a presentation on some computer that has no copy of PowerPoint, gmail yourself the PPT file and watch the slides inside the web browser. [similar to converting PDF to text using GMail]

2. GMail converts every slide of your Powerpoint presentation to a Flash (swf) file - if you manually advance the entire PPT slideshow using the arrows, all the slides will become available as Flash files in your browser’s temp folder.

Just a quick way of transforming Powerpoint slides into SWF documents without using any desktop conversion software. The swf files may then be embedded in your blog for sharing with readers. Nothing great since Scribd can also convert your PPT to Flash paper.

Do you know if GMail Powerpoint viewer can read PPS (Powerpoint Show) formats.

Source: www.labnol.blogspot.com

BECOME A MULTI-MEDIA GURU BY ADOPTING SEVEN SIMPLE PRACTICES

The problem with PowerPoint is that you need to become a multi-media guru to use it effectively! From flashing text to animated images, it’s great if you have hours to indulge your creative passion, but on the most part, if you don’t’ know what you are doing, it can turn into a dot point disaster. To take the stress out of your learning process, let me illustrate seven key ideas to ensure your PowerPoint presentation is not an invitation to switch off!

1. TRY NOT TO USE ALL THE BELLS AND WHISTLES IN THE ONE PRESENTATION.

Use the KISS principle - Keep it Simple Sweetheart. A master of anything knows that less is always best. You need action BUT you also need inaction.

2. TRY TO BE CONSISTENT IN YOUR STYLING AND CHOICE OF IMAGES.

A sloppy presentation will give the impression that you don’t really know what you are doing. Different background colours on each page, different sized headers, different size text and inconsistency in the colour of texts and style of images all point to a lack of skill. A PowerPoint presentation is like creating a book or a magazine. People are conditioned to expect that each page will have the relevant information located in the same places. They also want to be visually stimulated by interesting imagery. You can get some great free images online at places like http://www.sxc.hu, so don’t just rely on Microsoft for your images.

3. TRY TO AVOID USING THE PRESET SOUNDS

Its lovely that PowerPoint has some preset sounds like applause, bells and typewriter but for most these are just plain annoying noise. If you want to add some sounds, find professional sound library and select sounds that add rather than take away from your presentation. Also, avoid the trap of sending people off to sleep with the beautiful piano or peace themed background music.

4. BE CAREFUL WITH YOUR CHOICE OF COLORS.

Remember that some colors are hard to read on different colored backgrounds, especially if you are presenting to older people who find text on the dark shades difficult to interpret.

5. PRACTICE THE PRESENTATION USING THE TIMING FEATURE

If you practice first, you will know that you are going to be able to get through the presentation in the set time frame. Don’t forget to allow time for interruptions and questions. Real people use up time. Unlike using notes and winging it, you can’t easily jump ahead a slide or two if you are running out of time, so bear this in mind when creating your presentation.

6. INTERSPERSE YOUR PRESENTATION WITH ACTIVITIES.

Get people actively engaged in discussions and in activities as at the end of the session you will find they are far more satisfied if they have been able to participate. With modern media containing flashing images and fast changing visual stimulus, people are conditioned to a flashy visual feast. If you put them in front of a dot pointed PowerPoint for hours on end, they are going to switch off. Mix it up for their sake.

7. VIEW THE POWERPOINT AS A SUPPORT, NOT THE MAIN SHOW

Try not to just read each slide out aloud as you don’t have to be a subject specialist to read dot points. You may as well give them a print out of the slide show and send them away. While we are on the dot points, PowerPoint exists for summarised information. If you type big blocks of text you will have to use a number of successive pages to fit it all in, so try to avoid long blocks of text. A simple handout can help you to overcome the need for more detailed information. Use dot points to effect by choosing your words carefully

I remember how joyful I was when I first started using PowerPoint back in the early 1990’s. Unfortunately, since then I have sat through too many boring PowerPoint presentations where the presenter had limited imagination and no creativity. I still believe that PowerPoint can be a powerful tool for creating animated presentations if you but it requires the user to take the time to investigate what the program can do.

As a Business Trainer that often gets rated at the top end of the scale, my advice is: be creative if you want, but remember that at the end of the day, artwork is subjective and people’s tastes often differ! You don’t need to be a multi-media guru to put on a great presentation, however, following the seven rules presented will start you on the process and ensure your presentation does become a dot point disaster!
Source: www.helium.com

If you have ever given a conference talk, led a seminar group, or even hosted a meeting with accompanying PowerPoint presentation on WebEx, you have probably hear the request “can we get a copy of your slides?” Sending a large PowerPoint file via email and ensuring you have locked editing rights can be a bit of a pain, and not everyone has access to a web expert to upload your presentations directly to your website. You will be happy to know that someone else has already solved this problem for you.

SlideShare is a great online application that lets you upload and share PowerPoint presentations (or Keystone for Mac users and OpenOffice presentations for those of you who are open source minded). Back when the company launched in October 2006, Techcrunch hailed them as Powerpoint and YouTube combined. PowerPoint presentations showcased in a YouTube interface, a perfect solution to sharing with or showing to a group.

Presentations are hosted online and you can provide a unique URL for each of your slide shows. You can tag your presentation for others to find it online, and choose favourites or get inspired by other members. SlideShare also allows you to imbed your uploaded presentation into another website or blog, so that you can host your presentation on their site, but make it available anywhere.

One possible drawback is that all files have to be made public and are searchable by the SlideShare network. Not a huge deal by and large, but it may make you think twice before you add any slides with financials or confidential company data.

SlideShare recently added a new feature to make their application even more powerful. Slidecasting allows users to sync a PowerPoint presentation with an mp3 file.

Slidecasting is a new multimedia format for viewing slide decks synchronized with an audio file. It is for conference talks, musical slideshows, audio picture books or whatever else you can imagine.

Slidecasting is like a PowerPoint presentation crossed with a podcast, and it provides an excellent free option for online demos - without large scale, expensive (and often clunky) applications. Best of all it’s free, and doesn’t require plugins or players like Java and Flash. Slidecasting takes Slideshare even further down the PowerPoint + YouTube path, and offering a versatile tool for sharing ideas.
Source: www,webnamesblog.ca

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