Presenting Challenges Presents Challenges

Following a meeting with a group of other interns within the Iliad at Southampton University, where we discussed a range of different presentation tools, it’s time for another reflection on how to present the outcome of this review.

It’s not easy to make an effective presentation, despite the range of tools available. The software isn’t everything, and the challenge of engaging an audience remains. When presenting the challenges overcome for a particular project, or detailing the targets for the next one, the presentation of information to an audience is key.

What’s Out There?

The interactive session, delivered by Fiona Harvey (@FionaJHarvey) covers all sorts of ways that presentations, discussions, and announcements can be made far more interesting through the use of software. Starting with some pretty basic tools, and then covering increasingly complex and capable pieces of software, and supplemented with demonstrations, seven different presentation methods were covered.

• ThingLink – a resource for making images interactive. Hotspots are added to any old background image, which when hovered over, display links and text to add further context. It’s a great way of adding extra detail to an image without covering parts of it up, and a quick and easy way of labelling a picture without delving into complex editing software.
• Sway – a new Microsoft Office app which tells a story. It’s a bit like PowerPoint, but it’s not slide based. Instead, images flash across the screen, accompanied by text, embedded tweets, videos, and interactive charts. Being part of the new Office suite, it’s cloud based and can be shared simply by copying a link, but it can also be embedded within pages.
• Adobe Slate – the adobe offering to compete with Sway. Based as an IoS app, it allows a gallery to be accompanied by captions, comments, and animations to make the transition smoother. It can be used as the background to an on-stage presentation, but is far more effective at demonstrating things to small groups on a mobile device.
• Emaze – purpose-build presentation software. It’s slide based, but shows the slides in a totally different way to PowerPoint. Instead of sliding through a screen, they are displayed on walls in a gallery to be viewed as the audience walks through, or passed down by the Hands of God. Something novel, and fresh, but with all of the content formatting tools necessary to present information.
• Prezi – everyone’s favourite alternative to PowerPoint. The classic open canvas, with slides of all sizes and orientations swept out by the flying camera, is ideal for infographics and presentations with a bit of structure. ‘Seeing the bigger picture’ comes to mind, which is probably exactly what it was concieved for.
• HaikuDeck – a tool for creating dynamic, animated presentations very quickly. It has a resource of stock images, which accompany any text added to the slides. Aside from helping you spot the unfortunate double-entendres, this gives the presentation a professional backdrop. If only the animations, transitions, and themes gave the same feel.
• VideoScribe – this draws the presentation on-screen in real time. Like all of those marketing campaigns where the on-scree text is written out by a hand as it goes, images and text are coloured in to produce a video to accompany this presentation. It’s slow to present the content, but does make it memorable. A resource of images makes the presentation very quick to put together. It is designed to tell a story, so the open canvas has a flow to it – something not obvious at first but very subtle and powerfull if used correctly.
• PowToon – another video creator… but this time it’s free. Stock animations, pictures, and characters accompany customised text to get the point across with added emphasis. In addition, music accompanies the video, generating an immersive presentation experience. The best stuff is available in the paid version, but it is easy enough to get started for free.

Making Effective Presentations

It’s not all about the software, unfortunately. The content is still key, and it still has to be interesting and engaging otherwise no amount of furious animated drawing is going to convince an audience. In some cases the software can paper over cracks, but in others it is makes them glaringly obvious.

The presentation software also needs to be used appropriately. In a formal setting, it needs to be formal. In an upbeat setting, the music can’t be from the Titanic. And so it goes on – choosing the right tool is vital.

This means there is no clear best option. When a presentation has been concieved, the information collected, and the structure decided upon, the best tool for the job can be chosen. The trouble with the software available is that it tends to force the structure of the presentation too much, getting in the way of a clear, well presented delivery. If the presentation is designed to have distinct sections with different themes, but they merge together, there is a lack of clarity in the content being presented, which makes the presentation less effective than it should be.

Once the structure has been determined, there is almost certainly something available which can accentuate the structure, bring it out, and make the content the focus, while maintaining interest and keeping the audience engaged. This is the key to a good presentation. In summary, make sure the tool isn’t driving the presentation.

What’s Changed?

A few years ago, even animating the text entry on a PowerPoint made it look unprofessional. Viewers would tut quietly as a title came in letter by letter – but that’s exactly the effect generated in many of the above options.

Nowadays, PowerPoint is seen as the old-age approach. In the days of Web 2.0, software as a service is a popular, and growing, concept. The explosion of available software has also provided many different alternatives, and in a generation where standing out from the crowd is so important, PowerPoint has had its day. To an extent, anyway.

There are some times where the data just has to be presented, and PowerPoint is still number one for interacting with other office products, which makes it invaluable for linking data to spreadsheets and showing statistics. However, increasingly, making something seem a bit different, new, and otherwise unusual is a great way to make it memorable.

The animations, transitions, and new themes available in these different presentation media covers that exact specification. New, different, and a little bit quirky – all designed to grab an audience.

Impress.js: a html presentation tool.

But if PowerPoint got boring, so might these. There will be a time when everyone has seen a PowToon, everyone has made a Sway, and they are no longer new, or different. Perhaps things will take another step forward, maybe to HTML based presentations like impress.js. Or perhaps PowerPoint will come to the fore again, seeming new and different because nobody has seen one in the last five years.

It’s a tricky one to stay on top of, keeping up to date and relevant, choosing the right tool for the job, and ensuring that something new, fresh, and previously unseen comes in to everything. It’s well worth it though, because presenting information is the interface through which people know you, and know your brand, and your business. Getting the information across is critical to ensuring the success of whatever is being presented.