Zooming around with pptPlex and Prezi

I wrote about pptPlex and Prezi before, but for the first time I actually spend some real time to get into the details with 2 tools to let you design presentations on a big canvas, which you can mover around during a presentation, and you can zoom in and out of.

• pptPlex is a PowerPoint plugin developed by Microsoft as part of their Office labs.
• Prezi is a web-based tool with its own user interface, independent of PowerPoint or Keynote.

An introduction video about pptPlex: An introduction video about Prezi:

Both of these tools have a learning curve, and I would be curious to see whether any of you have tried them out as well. Some of my observations below could simply be because I am ignorant of some of the features of the software.

My overall comment is that I really like the ability to freely move around, zoom in and out in presentation content. For example in fund raising presentations (small smart audience with little time), questions from the audience might take over the pre-set order in which slides are presented. But this also brings me to the main "negative" feedback of these tools: both are basically "frameworks" that link a series of slides or objects. I am missing the ability to design a presentation really as just one infinite canvas. The effect you get in Google Earth: zooming into ever more detail.

• In pptPlex the canvas cannot be controlled 100%. Charts get placed in the grid, but it is impossible to create links between, make them flow over into each other. Also, the PowerPoint editor has natural limitations of zooming into a slide (the building block of the canvas)
• In Prezi it is possible to create one perpetual zooming canvas, but the drawing tools are a bit more basic: it is harder to position shapes exactly, and connect them with other shapes and lines exactly.

Now for some more specific impresseions.

pptPlex

• Installation is a bit tricky, you need to install the latest .net framework. I am a computer science engineer and have reasonable IT skills, but failed to get it to work on a first try. After some time (and probably some Microsoft software updates) I saw the pptPlex plugin somehow pop up in my PowerPoint. Don't really know how.
• pptPlex presentations can only be shown on a PowerPoint installation that has the plugin installed. So given the technical difficulties of doing this, you are bound to running things of your own laptop. Things cannot be shared via email.
• Per my previous comment: the canvas' editing options are a bit limited

Prezi

• The big issue with Prezi is that you have to learn a new user interface. It is straightforward, but still it requires effort. This will make it hard to use this software for group collaborations.
• As a cloud-based tool, presentations get stored in your own web-based storage space. You can export presentations to a Flash player for offline viewing/presenting.
• The graphics capabilities of Prezi are (still) limited. Colors, shapes, fonts, lines, you are restricted to a limited number of pre-set options. You could work around this by using images (that can be imported. In the extreme case you could edit diagrams in another software, save them as JPG and import them into Prezi. But this would make the editing and maintenance process of a presentation very cumbersome.
• Data visualization tools in Prezi are non-existent
• Per my general comment: it is hard to position objects exactly. Prezi is more a freehand object positioning tool than a precise technical drawing utility.
• You can upload PDF files (including converted PPT documents) to Prezi, which will put the slides on the grid (slightly randomly). You can add a path between the slides. But when you now run the presentation it almost becomes like a regular PPT presentation with incredibly spectacular slide transition effects, which I am not a fan of.

On balance, I like the functionality provided by Prezi better. Ultimately, it would be great to have the Prezi functionality completely integrated in the regular PowerPoint environment.

This was some feedback based on an hour of trying things out. I need to take the plung and try to create a real, full presentation in one of these tools to push them to the edge.

Did any of you try these tools out?

Prezi not a PowerPoint killer?

I stumbled on this post on the Dutch Presentatie Blog: 3 reasons why Prezi is not a PowerPoint killer. In short (and in English):

1. Non-linearity is great for conveying information, it is poor for building up the suspense of a story
2. Dramatic zooming effects take away attention from the speaker to the screen (the blog speaks jokingly about "Prezi motion sickness")
3. The graphical capabilities of Prezi are (still) poor (colors, fonts, shapes, data charts) when compared to other applications

I must say, I tend to agree with the assessment for the traditional stand-up presentation. Does that mean Prezi should be written off? I am not sure either. Where it could be useful:

• In the hands of highly specialized designers, rather than the mass market. It could be the basis for a great way to let people discover a product or service interactively on a web site. It would be expensive and time consuming to develop, but once it's there it should provide a great return on investment.
• For the mass market, maybe the product should be simplified to create a basic web-based presentation tool with great ability to embed things into web sites and blogs. With the advent of HTML5, I think we are going to see a dramatic shift in how web sites look. And there will be a huge market for a simple tool that can create great web content. Obviously here it is open to competition from Sliderocket, Google Docs, and others (a PC World review of PowerPoint alternatives via Tony Ramos).

I have been trying hard to get Prezi to work (see an earlier posts about Prezi and my first attempt at making one myself), and I really want Prezi to succeed against the dominant and sometimes ugly PowerPoint monster, but I have not succeeded yet. Hopefully one of you will prove me wrong in the comments.

It is still hard to do it right in Prezi

Here is a Prezi-presentation (see earlier posts) with some facts about the growth of data sent over mobile networks. Praise for Byte Mobile to experiment with different presentation formats. Here: Prezi is used in the following way:

1. Animated slide transition
2. Zoom in on the title with the message of the chart
3. Zoom in on the data in the chart
4. Zoom in on the foot note with more detailed explanations

Bytemobile Mobile Minute Metrics - Feb 2010 on Prezi

For me, this is not yet the best way to use the power of Prezi. But if you ask me what is the right way, I must admit I do not have an answer yet. 

Using Prezi sensibly

For people bored with PowerPoint, Prezi can be an alternative presentation design platform. It is web-based, has powerful zoom effects and enables non-linear presentations. I would suggest to keep the following in mind when using Prezi for a business presentation:

1. Stick to a linear story line, especially for larger audiences. If you have 20 minutes in front of 500 people, it has hard to get your message across using a random and unpredictable flow.
2. Use the Prezi zooming and moving effects where you really need it, and not just for spectacular slide transitions. The audience will get motion sickness, or worse, will start giggling when you discuss your very serious business topic.
3. Try to bring the look and feel of your Prezi in line with your regular PowerPoint colours. You will not have time to design Prezis for every presentation you do.

Look - my first zooming Prezi creation

After a first review of Prezi and pptPlex I started to get into a more detail with Prezi. One of the applications of these zooming tools is to create an effect of a perpetually zooming canvas. (There is a series of children books that uses this effect brilliantly.)

You can see my Prezi creation here (put together very quickly). Zoom out with your mouse to get the full picture. All images were taken from iStockphoto.

First thoughts on the Apple iPad and presentations

Apple launched the iPad yesterday (watch Steve Jobs present here): a device positioned in between a smart phone and a laptop computer. The big differentiator is a very large screen and a user interface that can be manipulated using the touch of a finger, exactly the same way you interact with an iPhone.

Would could this new device mean for presentations? My first thoughts:

• The iPad runs the iPhone operating system, which means that you cannot simply port PC or Mac applications on it. Apple announced a version of iWorks (including Keynote) for the iPad, but for now it is impossible to run Microsoft PowerPoint on it.
• The devices seems like a great presentation tool for one-on-one meetings. A bright, big screen and an informal user interface enable a dialogue-style presentation.
• The need for an application like Prezi becomes more urgent. Prezi seems made for the iPad: easy zooming in and out of slides, and a non-linear way to move between slides. I have not seen the details of iWorks for iPad, but I assume that Apple is going down the track of creating a Prezi-style user interface for office productivity applications.
• It would be great if you could use a virtual marker during your iPad presentation: drawing circles to emphasize elements, adding comments, pretty much in the style of the napkin presentation I talked about a while ago.

I am very excited about the iPad. The geek reviews might have found technical imperfections (no multi-tasking for example), but the fundamental revolution is the big touch-based user interface that have brought computing in general and presentations specifically a bit closer to a natural human interaction.

Khan Academy: Prezi in action at TED?

You should watch this TED talk by Salman Khan, a former hedge fund analyst who is now fully devoted to turning the education system upside down (see his Khan Academy). His key concept is to humanize the class room using technology: have kids watch videos at home at their own pace and use the time of the teacher in the class room to provide individual support instead of one-size-fits-all lectures.



Now to Prezi. I think Salman is using it as his presentation engine. I am still not convinced that it is a good large audience presentation tool (see an earlier discussion on whether Prezi is a PowerPoint killer). However, the tool does a good job in visualizing the enormous video library Salman has constructed, and the carefully thought-through construction of the curriculum he is proposing. What do you think?

Prezi as an attention grabber

Sometimes, making the effort to communicate well is almost as good as doing the real thing. Effort gives you instant audience credit.

My wife is a venture capitalist and received her first Prezi investor pitch last week. “This movements make you a bit dizzy, but I must say that the team got points for trying something different”.

For this very short introduction presentation that was competing with an overloaded inbox full of other pitch decks, she was OK with some motion sickness. For a second, longer interaction this is probably not the case.

Zooming without Prezi

If you save your PowerPoint or Keynote file as a PDF and use an iPad with a PDF viewer to project your presentation, you can pinch and zoom into slides without sophisticated slide design techniques or special tools such as Prezi.

PowerPoint for iPad does not support it (yet).

iPad, Prezi, and remotes

The iPad could be the ultimate device for presenting on-stage, solving many problems I have blogged about before:

• It can create a dual-screen view: the presenter sees a different screen than the audience (timer, next slide coming up etc.). Now only PowerPoint and Keynote support this with dual monitors. The iPad can create it instantly for any application, including Adobe Reader, enabling presenting from PDFs
• It can create a non-lineair presentation interface (like Prezi). On your iPad are all the slides in thumbnail view, and you can pick them on the spot without disturbing the audience screen.

There is a real jungle out there of iPhone/iPad presentation apps and none of them get it right. None of them have the thumbnail slide mode, and no one has found a good way to work around the iPad's font limitations (images instead of text?).

This last point is essential if the iPhone/iPad moves from being a remote control directing a computer to becoming the device that powers the project itself.

Has anyone found the ideal iPad presentation app?

Do not overdo it

A VC complained a about a Prezi presentation today: a combination of motion sickness and impatience (using 30 slides to make a totally obvious point that could be made in 1).

There is nothing wrong with Prezi if it is used right:

• Use zooming effects to support your story: zoom in on a technical diagram for example, hop in and out of a time sequence, focus on parts of your product, highlight different areas of a map. Zooming for the sake of zooming is not helping anyone.
• If you are in a small meeting, leverage the non-linear navigation to have a good interactive discussion. Random story sequence shifts for a big audience makes everyone miss the plot.

Everyone knows that 30 slides with 1 message is better than 1 slide with 30 bullet points. However, obvious points can still be made in 1 slide. I see a lot of presentations on Slideshare that use one spectacular photograph after another to [click] make [click] a [click] totally [click] obvious point (especially social media and/or mobile cliches).

HTML5 and presentations

HTML5 is a major revision of the HTML language that powers web pages (Wikipedia link for the details). You can find an example of a presentation designed entirely in HTML5 here. Use the cursor left and right keys to navigate between slides. The presentation does not have a good design, but it gives a flavor of the capabilities of HTML5.

Could HTML5 become the default file format for all presentations, decoupling software that creates presentations, environments that display them, and sites that build a social infrastructure for sharing on the web?

• As file sizes become larger, and internet connections become always available, a "in the cloud" file format for presentations becomes more likely
• I expect the position of Microsoft PowerPoint to go down somewhat, as smaller niche presentation design tools make inroads (Prezi, etc.)
• New devices with touch interfaces will add a whole new dimension to animations in presentations, HTML5 seems very well suited to deal with those.

I am curious to hear the perspectives of readers which a stronger technical background than mine.

Thank you Eyal Sela for suggesting this link.

Microsoft Office web apps are going live

Microsoft is quietly rolling out its office applications in the cloud. They announced that the web-version of major Office applications are live, at least in a number of countries/languages. In Israel I could get it to work. Try for yourself here.

I have been following these in-the-cloud initiatives closely, and must conclude that Microsoft stands a good chance to be the winner. I chose Microsoft over Google docs for a recent project that involved collaboration in multiple countries.

It looks like the world is dividing into 2:

1. Consumers and freelancers using Google Docs, iPhones, prezi, SlideShare, Windows 7 or Apple OS, gmail, freely sharing stuff over social networks and insecure internet connections
2. Corporate workers using Blackberry, Microsoft Office 2003, Windows XP as a result of strict security guidelines and cost cutting in IT budgets (i.e., delaying upgrades of software). These people are struggling to find stuff in their bulging Outlook 2003 inbox.

The learning curve of switching user interfaces of Office applications is huge (read: costing a lot of money in downtime and helpdesk support), and for a big corporate to switch means that everyone is required to change habits: the 25-year old tech savvy analyst, the 60 year old secretary of the CEO, the CEO herself, to name a few. It's just hard to move them out of the Microsoft world.

Ultimately, the big corporates will move Office applications/data into the cloud, there are significant benefits to collaboration and simply finding stuff. They will go with Office Live though, and not with Google Docs...

There is another potential direction where this could go: the corporate equivalent of a facebook-style social network. Microsoft might well be the player who can pull this off. Not a place to share jokes and family pictures, but a tool for collaboration and information sharing in the enterprise.

The sort of animations we need in slideware: zooming

Most of the animations and slide transition effects currently available in PowerPoint do more damage than good to a presentation (an earlier post on the subject). The video below is guilty of some of these mistakes, but it also contains some effects that would be very useful to have in PowerPoint 2010 (preview in an earlier post):

• Very slow moving zoom
• Extreme image zooming
• Image blurring
• Zooming inside data charts

See how often I used the word "zoom" here. In the current version of PowerPoint you cannot control zooming enough: effects are blunt. Either via devices like the iPad, or via a breakthrough by software innovators like Prezi, or via improvements in Microsoft's/Apple's slideware, eventually we will get to advanced zooming capabilities in presentation software.

Video credit: Dan Meyer's 2009 Annual Report from Dan Meyer on Vimeo. Found via Fubiz

Further reading: an excellent post by Garr Reynolds about slow zooming and photographer Ken Burns.

iPad "books"

Whenever there is an innovation in visual communication, people initially struggle how to use it best. Hand-written text scrolls did not have page numbers, spaces between words, or sentences. The first ads were either paintings or primitive, poorly designed pamphlets. Color and photography took some time to be used properly. It took 10 years or so after the arrival of PowerPoint before Garr Reynolds had his insight and write Presentation Zen, and he is still busy convincing the world to kill the bullet points as I am writing this.

So here we have this iPad and the iBooks writing platform that enables anyone to create apps that incorporate touch and can be read away from the office chair. I have started to write an app on this platform myself and am constantly changing my approach. I started with the concept of a book in my mind (pages of text with images), but then discovered all this other things you can do: Prezi-like zooming diagrams, embedded slideshows, videos, Keynote presentations, questions. This is not a book writing tool, it is a software development tool. All these visual tools were available before on the web: zooming images, videos, data visualization. But somehow they never made it as the basis for the development of visual stories. I think the fact that an iPad can be used away from the office chair/screen will change that.

Nancy Duarte recently ported her book Resonate over to the iBook platform and the result is beautiful. And it gives some good examples of how new visual techniques are more than just making content prettier or more spectacular. Many of the effects in the Wired magazine iPad edition are just like poorly used animations in PowerPoint or Keynote: interesting, but they do not add to the story. When Nancy analyzes a speech by Ronald Reagan, it is just very useful to be able to watch the actual thing alongside.

This app development platform has great potential beyond books. I can see uses in combined investor presentations and business plans, on-premise sales applications, product demos. But still I feel that I have the text scroll perspective, and the real innovative application will be discovered sometime in the near future.

Presentations versus spreadsheets in the cloud

I am making radical shifts to the way I work with my IT infrastructure. Over the past week, I have moved many of the software tools I use "in the cloud".

1. I stopped using Outlook and are now managing email through gmail with a custom domain (tagging, search, excellent spam management and the Outlook PST files simply became to big to manage locally)
2. My client invoicing is now run via Freshbooks (affiliate link), enabling clients to log in directly into my system
3. I am experimenting with Google Docs and Microsoft Office Live to set up shared workspaces with clients
4. And last but not least, I started to experiment with spreadsheet and presentation software in the cloud.

I am learning a lot here, and get lots of inspiration for new blog posts, but let's talk about one thing at a time: how likely is it that presentation software such as PowerPoint will move into the cloud. Unlike spreadsheets and databases, I am not that optimistic.

At first sight, it seems like the benefits of going into the cloud should apply to presentation software as well: access from anywhere, group collaboration, easy sharing, no more file size issues with storage and email.

There are two aspects to cloud processing: online storage and collaborating with shared files using online tools. Online storage is incredibly useful for presentations, files get increasingly big/harder to email. It is the online collaboration that is the problem.

• Unlike a spreadsheet, the design and look and feel of a presentation are paramount. If the fonts are a bit off, if you cannot position the object exactly as you want it, if you cannot use all the colors you would like to use, you are in trouble. Moving back and forth between PowerPoint and online editing tools will drop a few formats here and there.
• Collaboration on presentations is different than collaboration on a spreadsheet. Presentations are very personal. Having someone else edit my slide, add a bullet here and there, change the title disrupts the design process. I welcome input, but like to keep control of the pen. (To contradict myself: the one exception might be the slideument, where slideware is used as a vehicle to write a document rather than prepare graphics for a presentation.
• The number of toolbars, shortcuts, functions you use in a presentation program is far greater than you use in a spreadsheet tool. At least, that's the case for me. I have created incredibly large and complex Excel files basically using "+" "-" "*" "/""sum" and some basic formating. A presentation design interface is more complex, and people will find it more difficult to migrate. This is why Prezi is having trouble taking off.
• After a presentation, the slide document often starts to live its second life, becoming a source for "Frankensteined" follow-on presentations. 99.9% of people who Frankenstein use PowerPoint.
• The sharing element is different for presentations and spreadsheets. Some presentations are aimed at getting the widest possible audience, just uploading them to a tool like SlideShare (without group editing capabilities) is enough, while this is almost never the case with a spreadsheet, that needs to be edited in a small group that can access the confidential data.

To make a long story short: I see databases and spreadsheets going into the cloud, but presentation design software staying on our PCs, with some tools to help them reach a wide audience (SlideShare) for viewing only.

Here is a list of more online slide design tools.

Video-preview of PowerPoint 2010 - my thoughts

Robert Scoble posted a number of videos with previews of the upcoming Microsoft Office 2010 release. Here is the one about PowerPoint 2010 (speaking is Chris Bryant, product manager on the Office 2010 team):

Here are the main points covered in this video (which does not mean that these are the major new features in PowerPoint 2010)

1. More "cinematic" transitions. More spectacular slide transitions. I never use any form of slide transition, they distract the audience, or worst case: makes them laugh while you are presenting a very serious subject
2. Animation painter. Copy and paste animation effects from one object to another, not essential
3. Better video integration. I like this, I think that video will be used increasingly in presentations. Today, integrating rich media into your presentation is a high-risk activity that is likely to result in things going wrong (technically) in the middle of your presentation. PowerPoint 2010 allows you edit videos and sync them with animations
4. Backstage view: an elaborate screen to control file protection, compression, etc.

Here is my (partial) wish list of features for a new PowerPoint release. Some of them are probably impossible to implement for the moment...

• A powerful 3D engine to control where to put shapes on a surface, where to put light sources, pretty much like professional design programs like AutoCAD. The third dimension is only used to add some effects to a PowerPoint slide, it could be so much more. It would literally open a whole new design dimension to slide design
• Fully integrated canvas zooming a la PowerPoint plex or Prezi, enabling you to work on one big interactive slide that you can zoom in and out of
• A powerful animation control engine, not more flashy effects, but a clear sequence editor to move objects across a slide to exact locations, including a good solution to deal with and edit layers of overlapping objects.
• Tight cloud integration. Files are getting bigger, collaboration changes. This video about PowerPoint 2010 did not address these "workflow" issues, but I think they are being addressed in the overal Microsoft Office 2010 release.

You can sign up for the technical preview of Office 2010 here. The product will ship in early 2010.

Zooming in down to cell-level

I really like zooming presentation formats such as Prezi, but I am still struggling to find useful application areas. Steve Johnson pointed me to one: to put proportions in perspective. Have a look at this amazing visualization of the relative size of biological cells.

1st experiment with the iPad as a 1-on-1 presentation tool

OK, I did my first presentation in a 1-on-1 meeting using an iPad. It was a bit improvised, as I made a last minute decision to drop a paper copy for the new gadget. My experiences.

• It still is a bit of a hassle to get your file presentable on an iPad. I installed the Keynote app, but this is an iPad-specific piece of software that does not import regular Keynote files and I have not (yet) designed presentations specifically for the iPad. So I went for PDF. 

• In order to get the file on the iPad I had to upload it to Google docs, and then I used the GoodReader app to get it down on the device.

• PDF was a bit tricky too. The PDF I created on my Windows PC did not render well on the iPad (custom fonts were invisible). It turned out, that it did not show well on a Mac either. So: import the Windows PowerPoint file into PowerPoint 2008 on the Mac, have the Mac convert it to PDF.

• The PDF conversion was not ideal. The Mac decided to give my slides a white frame, and keep the parts of the pictures that were outside the slide borders in the page render. So I went back into PowerPoint to delete these (compress pictures) and start the process again.

• I presented outside and the bright Tel Aviv sun light was too strong for the display of the iPad, so it was a bit hard to see. I already use big fonts om my slides, but my advice when designing for an iPad: go even bigger. The presentation view you have at a coffee table is one of an audience member in the back of the presentation venue.

• I love the sophisticated screen controls of the iPad: scrolling, zooming, etc., but these are not useful when presenting. "Oops, let me zoom that back, oh, that's the next page, let me back up". There needs to be a way to switch to very simple page controls in a presentation mode. Ultimately I can see how zooming can be an interesting part of the iPad presentation experience (Prezi-like) though.

So, not a perfect experience, but I am learning.