In today’s business and academic circles it’s difficult to imagine a presentation that doesn’t

involve PowerPoint (or its Mac cousin, Keynote). For better or for worse, we’ve grown

accustomed to the visual cueing and pacing functions that these tools provide both as audience

members and as presenters. This mode of presenting has become so entrenched that all manner of

problems have been ascribed to over-reliance on these kinds of presentations.

Thus its interesting to see attempts at innovation in this space. In particular, I am thinking

of Prezi, a recent startup that is pushing a more interactive, hierarchical presentation model

in which you can move from overview to details and back in smooth transitions, and rather than

structuring your presentation around a single narrative, you can define multiple aspects that

can be explored interactively. In addition, Prezi has neat-o animated transitions among the

views you define.

So does this mean that Microsoft’s strangehold on presentation software?

—

I see several challenges that Prezi needs to overcome to reach widespread adoption. These

include: inventing effective presentation genres that leverage the capabilities of the tool,

solving training issues around presentation design, and understanding how best to deal with

interaction complexity during presentations. How the company solves these problems will not

only determine its overall success, but may also impact the kinds of tasks the software will

ultimately be effective at solving.

Presentation genres

PowerPoint leveraged established workpractice in augmenting presentations with slides or with

pre-printed overhead transparencies. The ability to edit and adapt older presentations, to

include pretty pictures and legible fonts, and relative immunity from dropping the slide deck

onto the floor just prior to the presentation made its success easy to explain, and perhaps

even to predict. But it should be pointed out that these presentations bore a much strong

resemblance to slides shown through a slide projector rather than to overheads on which the

presenter could write, draw, and improvise in response to the audience’s questions. While

later versions of PowerPoint allow the presenter to scribble on the slides

The Prezi model calls for defining a hierachy of descriptions through which the presenter can

move, descending as far down as the demands of a particular presentation require. This may

make the presentation more flexible, but also poses challenges for authoring this content to

anticipate these possible paths or details. Thus authoring these “prezis” may call for skills

akin to creating hypertexts rather than those geared to linear exposition. Unfortunately,

neither the typical presenter nor the typical audience has enough experience with these kinds

of materials to understand how to communicate effectively through them.

New mediua go through growing pains that take time for authors and audiences to understand

(think of the famous movie clip of the locomotive moving toward the audience or of the “War of

the Worlds” radio broadcast, for example), and the more different from PowerPoint Prezi tries

to be, the more effort will be required to establish appropriate conventions for effective

expression. Without such conventions, the tool is unlikely to become broadly accepted.

Training issues

Related to the media conventions issue is the question of how effective authoring techniques

can be taught in a viral manner. Successful adoption will require effective examples that are

easy to pick up and modify; a library of design patterns may be one way to provide this

training. The challenges here remind me of learning new programming languages or paradigms.

The goal is not just to learn the syntax, but also to learn appropriate idiomatic expression.

Having people create Prezi presentations with a heavy PowerPoint accent will not increase its

adoption.

Interaction during presentation

Given a talk is a performance, the goal of which is to communicate. Actions that interfere

with this performance are likely to detract from the perceived attractiveness of the tool. The

PowerPoint model requires considerable interaction to create presentations, but only

occasional clicks (or even no clicks if slide transitions are timed) during the presentation.

This light-weight interaction allows the presenter to focus on the message and on the

audience, rather than on the interface, during a presentation.

Prezi’s more dynamic interface shifts the balance somewhat, requiring the presenter to

interact with the tool during the presentation. Thus being effective at presenting with this

tool will raise the bar for the presenter. While some will undoubtedly master the new medium,

others may find it more challenging. The question is whether the Prezi interface can reduce

the interaction complexity to an acceptable level while still providing an effective dynamic

experience.

Other opportunities

In some ways, it seems to me that the dynamic, interactive presentation style created by Prezi

is better suited for interactive data visualization than for scripted presentations. Thus if

it were possible to import and manipulate structured datasets without having to manually craft

all the slides, Prezi might be useful as an exploratory tool for visualizing data. Think of

multiple different Many Eyes visualizations, with hierarchically-organized data subsets

through which the user can zoom and pivot in natural ways. Think of combining Pivot with

PowerPoint to explore a set of ideas with your peers. I think in the end that will be an

easier market to penetrate at scale than that of elaborately crafted presentations that

anticipate the dept of audience interest while requiring the presenter to pilot his or her way

through this complex space while keeping the audience’s attention.

Disclaimer: I first met Peter Arvai, Prezi’s CEO, when he was an intern at Fuji Xerox in

Japan.In today’s business and academic circles it’s difficult to imagine a presentation that doesn’t

involve PowerPoint (or its Mac cousin, Keynote). For better or for worse, we’ve grown

accustomed to the visual cueing and pacing functions that these tools provide both as audience

members and as presenters. This mode of presenting has become so entrenched that all manner of

problems have been ascribed to over-reliance on these kinds of presentations.

Thus its interesting to see attempts at innovation in this space. In particular, I am thinking

of Prezi, a recent startup that is pushing a more interactive, hierarchical presentation model

in which you can move from overview to details and back in smooth transitions, and rather than

structuring your presentation around a single narrative, you can define multiple aspects that

can be explored interactively. In addition, Prezi has neat-o animated transitions among the

views you define.

So does this mean that Microsoft’s strangehold on presentation software?

—

I see several challenges that Prezi needs to overcome to reach widespread adoption. These

include: inventing effective presentation genres that leverage the capabilities of the tool,

solving training issues around presentation design, and understanding how best to deal with

interaction complexity during presentations. How the company solves these problems will not

only determine its overall success, but may also impact the kinds of tasks the software will

ultimately be effective at solving.

Presentation genres

PowerPoint leveraged established workpractice in augmenting presentations with slides or with

pre-printed overhead transparencies. The ability to edit and adapt older presentations, to

include pretty pictures and legible fonts, and relative immunity from dropping the slide deck

onto the floor just prior to the presentation made its success easy to explain, and perhaps

even to predict. But it should be pointed out that these presentations bore a much strong

resemblance to slides shown through a slide projector rather than to overheads on which the

presenter could write, draw, and improvise in response to the audience’s questions. While

later versions of PowerPoint allow the presenter to scribble on the slides

The Prezi model calls for defining a hierachy of descriptions through which the presenter can

move, descending as far down as the demands of a particular presentation require. This may

make the presentation more flexible, but also poses challenges for authoring this content to

anticipate these possible paths or details. Thus authoring these “prezis” may call for skills

akin to creating hypertexts rather than those geared to linear exposition. Unfortunately,

neither the typical presenter nor the typical audience has enough experience with these kinds

of materials to understand how to communicate effectively through them.

New mediua go through growing pains that take time for authors and audiences to understand

(think of the famous movie clip of the locomotive moving toward the audience or of the “War of

the Worlds” radio broadcast, for example), and the more different from PowerPoint Prezi tries

to be, the more effort will be required to establish appropriate conventions for effective

expression. Without such conventions, the tool is unlikely to become broadly accepted.

Training issues

Related to the media conventions issue is the question of how effective authoring techniques

can be taught in a viral manner. Successful adoption will require effective examples that are

easy to pick up and modify; a library of design patterns may be one way to provide this

training. The challenges here remind me of learning new programming languages or paradigms.

The goal is not just to learn the syntax, but also to learn appropriate idiomatic expression.

Having people create Prezi presentations with a heavy PowerPoint accent will not increase its

adoption.

Interaction during presentation

Given a talk is a performance, the goal of which is to communicate. Actions that interfere

with this performance are likely to detract from the perceived attractiveness of the tool. The

PowerPoint model requires considerable interaction to create presentations, but only

occasional clicks (or even no clicks if slide transitions are timed) during the presentation.

This light-weight interaction allows the presenter to focus on the message and on the

audience, rather than on the interface, during a presentation.

Prezi’s more dynamic interface shifts the balance somewhat, requiring the presenter to

interact with the tool during the presentation. Thus being effective at presenting with this

tool will raise the bar for the presenter. While some will undoubtedly master the new medium,

others may find it more challenging. The question is whether the Prezi interface can reduce

the interaction complexity to an acceptable level while still providing an effective dynamic

experience.

Other opportunities

In some ways, it seems to me that the dynamic, interactive presentation style created by Prezi

is better suited for interactive data visualization than for scripted presentations. Thus if

it were possible to import and manipulate structured datasets without having to manually craft

all the slides, Prezi might be useful as an exploratory tool for visualizing data. Think of

multiple different Many Eyes visualizations, with hierarchically-organized data subsets

through which the user can zoom and pivot in natural ways. Think of combining Pivot with

PowerPoint to explore a set of ideas with your peers. I think in the end that will be an

easier market to penetrate at scale than that of elaborately crafted presentations that

anticipate the dept of audience interest while requiring the presenter to pilot his or her way

through this complex space while keeping the audience’s attention.

Disclaimer: I first met Peter Arvai, Prezi’s CEO, when he was an intern at Fuji Xerox in

Japan.