worst prezi presentations

Presentation Guru

The problem for prezi – most prezis look rubbish and don’t work.

In this article, Jim Harvey looks at Prezi as an innovation, and tries to see a bright future for this once shining, now slightly faded star.

Most Prezis look rubbish and don’t work. That’s a bit harsh isn’t it? Particularly from someone who’s been supporting Prezi and advocating its use for years. And from the guy who wrote the first ‘how to manual’ now in it’s 7th edition and dowloaded 50,000 times.

Why would I say this? Well I guess because the honeymoon is over. 5 years ago, Prezi was still new. Just using Prezi, even in its earliest, most limited form, could help you stand out from the PowerPoint crowd. Not anymore. Most people in advertising, marketing and media circles in Europe, US, Asia, and all around the world have heard of Prezi, and many have already formed an opinion about it. For many it’s become a zooming, spinning, sick-making cliché; something that works against the presenter before they’ve even started speaking. How has this happened? What can we do about it?

My team at The Message Business were probably some of the first people to use it as a pitching tool for ourselves and then for our clients. We even wrote the first book about it and how to use it to best effect. We loved Prezi, but not unconditionally. We recommend Prezi still, but only sometimes, and we use Prezi, but less and less now as we, and our clients see other tools like PowerPoint. Keynote, SlideBean, Zeetings and many others close the gap.

The Diffusion of Innovation- innovators and early adopters

Using Everett Rogers’ ‘Diffusion of Innovation’ theory we can see why we are where we are with Prezi today.

Everett Rogers Diffusion of Innovation Curve

Prezi was a new product back in 2009, breaking into a static market dominated by one product, PowerPoint. The innovative tool gained traction with a few ‘innovators’ and ‘early adopters’, and a cult was formed. We loved the possibilities of the tool, if not the tool itself, and we felt like we were part of a team. The geeks at Prezi and ‘us’, the users, bonding together to find a voice, a space and a use for Prezi in this slide-dominated, Microsoft world.

And we did succeed, didn’t we? We experimented, made mistakes, had great triumphs and made Prezis, sometimes creaky, and limited presentation toy, a real option for business presenters. But our enthusiasm made us blind, sometimes, to the weaknesses in Prezi.

Prezi vs PowerPoint

Prezi had no built-in visual structure – templates, slides, layouts, paths, fonts, font regulation and sizing. That came as a standard part of PowerPoint. There was almost no such structure provided in Prezi. You got the canvas, and that was that. Everything else you had to create; frame by frustrating frame; path-point by agonizing path-point. Prezi was also (in my view) less intuitive than PowerPoint and harder to learn to use well.

But Prezi caught something in the imagination of students, academics, creative types, innovators and people who were looking for an alternative. It was an instant hit with a very small slice of the population.

I first blogged about it in 2009 , and used it for my first pitch in the real world in October of that year.

Jim-harvey.com Prezi blog post screenshot

My thoughts then, can be summarised as follows:

Obviously, Prezi is not as broad, flexible, integrated or widely used as Bill’s much derided PowerPoint tool, so it’s nowhere near PowerPoint as the default option for corporates, but as an expert user of PowerPoint, I could do some things much more easily and powerfully with this little gem, and there are times that I’d choose to use it, without question, simply because Prezi’s starting position is so different.

But I was not uncritical. I thought the tool was unsophisticated, glitchy and full of challenges for the would-be advocate. By 2010 I was saying this ,

‘’…It is good and offers a new way of thinking about presenting ideas in work and life.

It’s not Microsoft – and as we know that’s enough for some people to go crazy about something that is not yet proven technology. But it does have promise.

People confuse the medium with the message- i.e. most presentations at work are crap, most presenters use PowerPoint, therefore PowerPoint is crap and anything new must be better… Logic flawed all through. Though it’s logic that Prezi is still using today. Their latest campaign is as follows:

Will Prezi help you make a better presentation next time I get up to speak?

Answer: No. Crap presenters will still present badly with Prezi, maybe even worse because there’s less structure to follow than in a PPT template. But if you’re good at building and telling stories, if you have a clear point to make, if you loathe bullet slides, then maybe it will help a little. For you creative types, thought leaders, designers, poets, CEOs who want to woo investors, show-offs, me, and people with a little bit of flair for the new and dangerous you will want to have a go anyway. So enjoy the experience…’’

Over the next three and a half years Prezi has worked incredibly hard to stay ahead of the chasing critics and behind the existing users and fans. They’ve listened to all kinds of people, even me, and they’ve created a much more rounded, usable and commercial presentation application. So well done to them and in trying to make a sustainable business from a brilliant idea, they’ve added all of this functionality and continue to do so .

Where does Prezi stand today? At a crossing in the road

Today, Prezi is better, stronger, more user-friendly than we could ever have imagined that it could have been. It has apps for mobile presenters on Apple and android products. It’s used much more widely than most of use expected, 75 million users, apparently and rising, But where are we really? Is Prezi a ground-breaking new product or a quirky craze that only students really love?

Hundreds of thousands of young, intelligent, enthusiastic people (your typical early adopters), all over the world, are using Prezi. There are literally tens of millions of Prezis out there for people to see and use. And most of them are rubbish. They aren’t visual aids: they’re tools for supervised reading. Little different to the vast majority of PowerPoint slides that we’ve all panned for years.

That rapid proliferation has been part of the problem. In the ‘early days of Prezi’ we were all trying to find a way to use the tool, I made mistakes with it; we all did. But in the innovation and adoption stage, that’s what happens. Prezi still might fail to take hold, and with all of that inexpert experimentation we were helping to brand an innocent piece of software as a geek’s presentation trick.

You only have to take a look at Prezi’s website to see that many of the ‘highly recommended’ Prezis, the ones with lots of views and hundreds of ‘likes’ often look good at a glance, but fail when looked at more closely. The same is true, even for the ‘staff picks’. Prezi’s site is clogged up with lots of sincerely meant, fundamentally flawed examples of what Prezi can do.

The good news

The idea of Prezi is still alive, and clinging on with a chance of reaching the mainstream.

The second wave – Convincing the early majority

In Europe, at least, we’re entering the second wave for Prezi. Opinion Leaders have adopted it and/or rejected it vociferously. We’ve seen it used at conferences, at TED and in business presentations, and some senior people in some pretty big corporations are starting to demand it in their lives.

If Prezi is going to be around in 5 years, we have to make sure that we use it, show it and talk about it in a way that makes sense to the (rightly) sceptical ‘next generation’ of users who will try it once, and discard it if it doesn’t do what it promised. What are the challenges that must be faced if we’re to make a success of this product? To convince the ‘early majority’ of business users, 2 things have to happen:

We have to move away from describing Prezi as a presenting tool and understand that we can use it more much more broadly in business, because it may just be that Prezi’s success will lie in the fact that it has many potential uses, not just one use as a rather limited presenting package.
We have to make sure that we use Prezi to it’s best advantage, for its few real strengths, and minimise its many potential weaknesses, or the impatient, change-averse corporate crowd will reject Prezi out of hand, and Prezi will probably fail to recover.

Establishing the wider business case for Prezi

Prezi is a good tool for presenting, but it may have even better, unimagined uses for many businesses – though the principles of creating a good Prezi presentation remains the same. Have you thought about using Prezi in the following ways?

As self-running presentations on a stand-alone monitor as a part of your next conference stand or marketing event.
As a touch-screen presentation for customers to learn about your products and services in your public areas at your business premises.
As an easy way to create and share online learning modules hosted on your intranet as a part of your knowledge sharing offering for employees and clients.
As embedded content on your website for your users to see your ideas, products and services in more detail. With or without narration.
As a remote meeting and brainstorming tool to bring teams together all over the world and build ideas collaboratively.
As a tablet/iPad tool for ‘sit-down’ discussions in business, where Prezi’s ‘off-path’ ability would allow us to use it as a discussion aid.

Here’s a really interesting Prezi from Jacco vanderKooij that shares his ideas, and expands on mine, or how you can use Prezi more widely in your business life.

Use Prezi with Skill

So if you want to make the most of your hard-won experience in using this, potentially, brilliant tool, you have to be better than the Prezi norm. You have to bring a structured, rational and business-like approach to your design of Prezis and use of the tool.

Let’s look at the fundamentals of creating and using Prezi in the best, most professional way, to help you stand out from your competitive crowd. And for each element we’ll show you best and worst practice examples from the ever-expanding Prezi world.

The opinions expressed here are all ours. You don’t have to agree with our opinions, but we believe that an opinion helps others to form theirs, and so it is with this in mind that we’ll cover the following.

Using the big picture possibilities of Prezi to make a great impression.
Remove sickness from the Prezi ‘vocabulary’ by reducing spinning, zooming and panning.
Understand visual structure and layout- staking & layering

Use templates to help you hit the ground running.

Use prezi’s ‘big picture’ possibilities to make a great impression.

The thing I love most about Prezi is the big, blank canvas: a place where you can create simple, visual aids to help you tell your story. The problem with a big, blank canvas is hinted at in the name. It’s big and it’s blank. So there’s a great challenge for non-designers. Two questions they need answering:

What do I fill it with?
How do I use it?

The answers :

What do I fill it with? A big picture that frames or outlines your subject and acts as a ‘reinforcer’ of your presentation’s ‘big idea’. See our “Six presentation structures” download for examples.
How do I use it? As an emphatic tool to help you see the big picture and how it all fits together, and then to zoom in and pan for detail, before zooming out again to allow the audience to ‘see’ how it all fits together.

Remove sickness from the Prezi vocabulary by reducing spinning, zooming and panning

There are a few things to understand about using Prezi’s ‘tricks’ well. Essentially Prezi only allows you to do 3 things with content:

Use Layering to create interesting ‘unveiling’ effects.
Zoom in and out for emphasis and expansion of an idea.
Make things appear to help build an argument, progression or an idea.

In order to get the best from the tool when presenting we need to be careful when we’re putting things onto the canvas. There are 3 concepts that we need to understand in order to do a great job. We need to pay attention to:

Working with Proximity, Rotation & Zooming

The amount of spinning and zooming in your Prezi depends on how you arrange and align your path elements on the canvas, because Prezi looks at your path and decides for itself, the best way to move (‘transition’) from path-point to path point.

So if your next path point is a long way from the previous one, Prezi has to zoom quickly and directly between the 2 points, which can mean a very distracting and disorienting journey for the viewer. So pay attention to the following three issues when arranging assets on your canvas and joining them with the path tool. Be aware of:

Proximity – the closer things are to the previous path point, the smoother the transition will be.
Rotation – Be aware of greater than 60 degree rotations from path-point to path-point and use 180-360 rotations very carefully, for deliberate reasons; for example, to zoom out to your ‘big picture’ in order to move to the next act or major part of your story.
Scale and zoom – Zooming in deeply and zooming out strongly can be very effective ways of emphasising a key point (zooming in), and giving context, but don’t combine a big zoom with a long, lateral transition, or a greater than 60 degree rotation, or the audience will be at best confused, or at worst, sick.

Here’s a really good example of how to use Prezi’s panning and zooming to best effect – from Prezi’s excellent collection of ‘how-to’ videos, available free from Prezi.com.

Understand visual structure and layout

One of the next hardest things to do as we build real, high-end Prezi skills, is to understand how we can best arrange all of our assets on the canvas and then build the path through our Prezi to make the most of the strengths (layering, zooming, the large canvas etc.) and minimise the weaknesses (excessive zooming, spinning and lateral motion). There are a few simple rules that we can follow, as a start and these include –

Understanding basic ‘framing and layout principles’.
Remembering to zoom in and out vertically before panning across.
Using the screen ratio tool to make sure that what you see in a frame is what you see on the screen when presenting.
Using simple layout ‘grid thinking’ for every frame you show, so that there’s a professional and coherent visual structure to every path point view in your presentation.
Linking your visual structure to your story structure and have ‘chunks’ of your Prezi for each part – Prologue, Act 1, Act 2, Act 3, Epilogue – and consider the layering of the ‘chunks’ to allow you to develop an ‘In-Out’ or an ‘Out-In’ structure to help you tell that story.

Using that same Prezi again, that shows how you can use simple visual structure to help you tell your story. Notice how we use the ‘chunks’ of the story as stages of our Prezi path. Starting off with the Prologue ‘chunk’ zoomed into grab the audience’s attention…

Then zooming out to tell the main ‘3 Acts of the story’…

And moving between the 3 Acts with short, lateral transitions, after showing the audience the ‘Big Picture’ to make sure they see the point…

Jim Harvey Prezi Design and training screenshot

Then zooming out for the last time to emphasis the real value of Prezi (and our services) which is to help the viewer stand out every time they stand up to speak.

Use a stacking strategy – ‘In-Out’ or an ‘Out-In’

In my publication ‘ 6 Speech Structures ’ we show you how to use classic story structure to write your speech. In short there should be the 3 ‘Acts’ that audiences expect in any well written story. Three acts, and an attention grabbing first 30 seconds, then a confident, concise closing 30 seconds. Represented graphically as follows:

If you follow a similar structure in creating your presentations, you’ll find that you have 5 ‘chunks’ of content that you can create as 5, distinct parts of your Prezi visuals. Each chunk will have a path of its own (though, obviously, the path is continuous from section to section). To make the most of Prezi’s abilities, you can then arrange your content using scaling, layering and animation, to help you tell the story in a visually interesting way, while avoiding excessive zooming, panning and all those lateral transitions.

NB. In each of the examples below, the red element is where you would start the presentation; blue is the 3-act story structure; green is the rousing end of the presentation.

An ‘in-out-out’ approach –

Start zoomed in for the prologue

Zoom out for the 3 Acts of the story

Zoom out again showing the whole story in the context of what you want them to do

An ‘out-in-out’ approach –

Start zoomed half-way in for the prologue

Zoom in for the 3 Acts of the story

Zoom out all the way for the epilogue, showing the whole story in the context of what you want them to do

An ‘out-out-in’ approach –

Start zoomed half-out for the prologue

Zoom out again for the 3 acts of the story

Zoom in all the way for the hard-hitting epilogue

Step-by-step to stacking and layering

Step by step guide to stacking and layering in Prezi

Many of the challenges we face in creating Prezis that work well, can be solved by developing your own, trusted templates with the right fonts, colours, frames, layouts and paths already made, so all you need to do is fill the empty spaces with your content and ‘tweak’ the formatting, alignment and sizing before you present.

You can use Prezis bank of templates and ‘tweak’ them with different fonts, colour schemes, backgrounds and lines, and then save them as your own template for use again and again.

This is probably a good place for you to start if you don’t have the budget to go further. But the Prezi templates don’t really use stacking and layering as we’ve discussed here. They go for the easy method of an eye-catching background and a linear progression. Pretty basic, but pretty good too.

Prezi has made a lot of movement in the right direction over the last 2 years, adding tens of new templates to the choices on offer to the new user, they’ve even used some of our thinking on 6 common story structures for business presentations .

But Prezi’s templates are still:

Visually clichéd already and well on the way to becoming like Microsoft clipart in the 1990s.
More ‘arty’ than practical for serious business users.
Reliant on circular frames – which is simply mad because it wastes 50% of the screen on a 16×6 or 4×3 monitor when presented.

And they’ll become even more clichéd as this year progresses and Prezi moves towards 20 million users.

3 reasons why you should buy or make your own Prezi templates

They’ll help you stand out – they’ll be uniquely suited to you, your organisation and your brand. They won’t be the ones that everyone is using.
They’ll save you time – because all of the time-consuming ‘background work’: like creating layouts, paths, transitions, and scaling and zooming will be done for you, so all you have to do is add your content to the empty frames.
They’ll save you money – because if you’re a professional, your hourly rate is probably well above $100 an hour. It’ll take you at least 3 hours to do all of that thinking and planning to layout your Prezi. And if a template costs you $15.00…

Get started on shaping the second wave of Prezi

Our job is to help you make the most of your next presentation opportunity. To help you stand out from the crowd, for all the right reasons. Prezi is outstanding, if used well. And if you want to learn to be the best in the business here are 3 things you could do right now to help:

Download our free Prezi for Professionals eBook
Download hundreds of our free Prezi templates here
Look at some great Prezis done by the guys at Presentation Studio, who are setting a pretty high bar when using Prezi with their clients.
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Bad Presentations: How To Avoid Common Presentation Pitfalls In 2023

Table of contents.

It’s easy to make a presentation, but it’s difficult to make a good presentation.

There are simple mistakes that are made when it comes to the fine art of designing and performing a presentation if you haven’t been doing it for the past 15 years, over and over, like we have!

In this article we explore the common pitfalls most presentation designers/presenters make , and how you can avoid them.

What Impact Can A Bad Presentation Have?

Bad presentations and good presentations have something in common, they’re memorable. Whether it’s a speech at a wedding, or pitching to investors, if it’s bad, it stands out.

The impact a bad presentation can have on your, your business or your brand is profound. It’s more than just the performance on the day. In today’s world, everyone is connected and people talk. It’s difficult to shift your image if you make the wrong impression.

Below are just a few hurdles you can expect to face if your presentation bombs.

Loss Of Confidence In You Or Your Company

When you have or give a bad presentation, it’s easy for your audience to lose confidence in you. After all, at that moment in time, you’re the face of the company and a direct representation of who you represent.

If you drop the ball, that’s what your audience is going to expect you to do if they decide to partner with you. How can they do business or trust in you if they don’t have confidence in you.

Fortunately, we understand how much hard work, time, and dedication it takes just to get the opportunity to deliver a presentation to your audience, your clients, your investors, or your own company. Which is why our presentation design services will help take care of the visual and organizational side of your slides.

We Can Make You Look Goood!

You Can Develop A Negative Reputation

Ineffective presentations are a waste of time, and as we all know, time is valuable. Simple things like unpreparedness, lack of audience engagement, talking too much, a poorly structured or visual presentation design.

These things DO NOT go unnoticed and you will develop a reputation that will most certainly work against you professionally. It takes a lot more work to repair damage that it does to put your best foot forward in the first place.

Slower Business Growth

If your presentation misses out on the key points and the words you’ve chosen for your slides are poor, you will experience slower business growth as there is less information for your audience about your brand. If they are missing out on the key idea because your slides are too simple, they won’t want to buy into your brand.

Here Are The Most Common Mistakes You Can Make With Your Presentation

There’s common mistakes that are both easy to make and easy to avoid if you know what you are looking for. There are common mistakes presenters make because most presentations have too much information, pictures and the information that you as the presenter are trying to communicate gets lost in the jumble of the presentation.

A man with his head in his hands reflecting on a bad presentation he just gave.

Talking Too Much About Yourself

Presenters who spend too much time speaking about themselves while they present is one example of a common mistake. The audience members want the informative information about your brand, not the informative information about you as the speaker.

Focusing Too Much On Facts And Not Storytelling

You want to engage your audience by using both facts and storytelling to sell them on your brand. If you focus too much on facts, it’s the worst thing you can do for your presentation because you’ll quickly lose your audience’s attention.

Poorly Designed Visual Aids

Visual aids are important to making a great presentation, but not if they are poorly designed. It’s important to have engaging visual aids, dark text on white background is a great way to focus the audience’s attention. Make your presentation your own by choosing well designed visual aids that add to your presentation as a whole.

Disorganized Information (No Logic Or Order)

Are your slides all over the place? Your examples don’t make sense to your brand? The worst presentations are hard to follow, confusing and distracting from the main points. An audience wants to sit through an engaging presentation, and by having order and logic to your slides with words that point back to your idea, you will capture their attention and keep them captivated.

Multiple maps of Germany spread out on a table.

Too Much Information

If you have too many points on your slides, or paragraphs that you’ll be reading off during your presentation, you have too much information. Have less on the slides, keep to the point and spend more time talking directly to your audience rather than reading to them.

No Engagement Or Interaction

A common pitfall that is easy to fall into, is not interacting with the audience members, by making eye contact, allowing time for questions or asking questions to the audience. They are sitting right in front of you (Physically or Virtually) so interact with them right from the beginning so they expect it throughout the presentation. If you need some tips on how to make a presentation interactive , we’ve got you covered.

If you’re looking for a few tips on, this article on being a better presenter can help.

Reading Directly From Your PowerPoint Presentation

When you read directly from the PowerPoint Presentation, your body language is not open to the audience, and it means that you aren’t engaging with either the material or your listeners. If you spend time in preparation and writing out what you will be saying, you can speak directly to the audience and portray confidence in your brand. By purposefully making eye contact, you are connecting with those who are listening to you.

Ending The Presentation Abruptly

When you finish your talk and forget to allow time for questions, you are sending a message that you don’t care about the audience’s understanding of the material you have presented. All it takes is one slide to finish a presentation well and leave space for the audience to ask questions.

A road with the words 'start' and 'finish' written on it.

Animation Overload

When you overload on animation, you make your presentation look cheap and distracting from your important points. It’s an easy way to make ineffective presentations, as it’s distracting to the main goal of your presentation. Keep animations to a minimum and bullet points on your slides instead to create engaging presentations.

So Is A Bad Presentation Worth The Risk?

Don’t talk too much about yourself, but tell stories about your brand so the audience can connect with you as the presenter and your company. You want to engage with the audience through well chosen visual aids, and keep order to your information both in your slides and your speech. Don’t overload in cheap looking animations and always leave room for your audience to ask questions at the end.

It’s best to be prepared, put our best foot forward and invest the time/money in making sure you’re well rehearsed and have some kick ass slides to back you up. Effort and intent are noticed, as long as they’ve been put it.

Are You In Need Of A Good Presentation To Give The Right Impression?

Your slides are more than just beautiful graphics, they’re opportunities for you to share your stories/ideas. Leave the PowerPoint, Prezi, Google Slides to us and focus on nailing the public speaking part!

Just click the button below and get the conversation started today! We’re here to support you, so connect with a Presentation Geek and take the first step towards a presentation that blows your competition out of the water.

Author: Content Team

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Presentation

Why Prezi failed at revolutionizing presentations

by Pierre Morsa — Tuesday 28 May 2019

In 2009, the year when TED decided to launch its TEDx license program, Prezi was born out of the desire to overcome the limitations of tools like PowerPoint and Keynote. With its dramatic zooming and panning effects, it certainly did catch the eye of audiences worldwide when it was introduced. But its over-reliance on movement effects quickly became a visual nuisance, making the audience feel as if they had been on a boat caught in a category 10 hurricane. During the first three years after its launch we got requests for Prezi presentations regularly, but it’s not the case anymore. So what went wrong with Prezi? The core problem of Prezi is simple: it does not address the real problem of PowerPoint. Audiences are not bored because of PowerPoint, but because of how PowerPoint is misused by presenters, and adding more zooming in and out ad nauseam is not going to solve anything. The true remedy to bad PowerPoint presentations lies somewhere else:

Teaching speakers how to build a compelling narrative for their presentations before opening PowerPoint.
Designing slides that effectively reinforce or clarify the speaker’s story.

Don’t be mistaken. With the right skills, it is possible to use Prezi to create a great visual story, but for most use cases PowerPoint will be as good or better.

The Best and Worst of Presentations in 2019

It goes without saying that we always have our finger on the pulse of presentations — the good, the bad, and the ugly. In order to contribute to the industry, we like to be in the know of what’s new, what’s trending, and what’s missing when it comes to both creating a deck and presenting it. The beauty of technology is that things are always evolving and changing, and as such presentations and public speaking are always improving.

So, as the year (and decade) comes to a close, we’re looking back at the highs and lows in the world of presentations. A year in review of sorts, in case you missed any noteworthy presentations or cringe-worthy decks in the past 12 months.

Without further ado, here is a round-up of the best and worst of presentations in 2019.

2019 Had Some Really Great Presentations

1. Srinivas Rao and The Unmistakable Creative — This year, Srinivas Rao, the popular author, host of the podcast, The Unmistakable Creative, and constant (and accomplished) keynote speaker shared his presentation hack with us. You guessed it: Beautiful.ai’s Smart Slides. In fact, he created his own Unmistakable Creative media kit in Beautiful.ai. Srinivas says, “Everyone said the media kit was breathtaking. Beautiful.ai is leaps and bounds better than the other products. I’ve even done online courses and slides in Beautiful.ai. It’s instinctive, it’s fast, and it’s nearly impossible to make a presentation hideous.” We do have to admit, his presentation style (and deck) is pretty impressive, earning a spot on our best of 2019 list.

2. Siqi Chen on Presentations — Siqi Chen, investor and CEO of Sandbox VR, knows presentations. He’s likely given and received his fair share of Pitch Decks. And while Pitch Decks are great (and wildly important for entrepreneurs), our favorite presentation from Siqi Chen is his presentation on presentations . Yep, you read that right. This year he created a 58-slide presentation sharing everything he knows about crushing presentations. It was great. He talks about the importance of storytelling, and how to provoke action from a presentation. It’s helpful to presenters of all levels, and visually appealing, which counts as a win in our book.

3. Meghan Markle in Cape Town, South Africa — It’s no secret that Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, steals hearts worldwide every time she takes the podium. In fact, her speeches always seem to go viral from unwavering fans. But what makes her speeches so royally good ? Sure, what you have to say matters, but how you say it (and how well you connect with your audience) matters more. Meghan Markle isn’t afraid to get personal, she embraces local cultures and languages, and always makes eye contact with a smile on her face. Earlier this year she gave a heartfelt speech at a charity event in Cape Town, South Africa where she said. “I’m here as a member of the royal family, and as a wife, a mother, a woman of color. As your sister.” The crowd (and internet) melted.

And, Some Really Bad Ones, Too

1. Car and Technology — Okay, we have to admit, this presentation deck technically isn’t from 2019, but we discovered it in 2019, so that counts right? It’s the perfect example of what not to do, so we had to include it. This entire presentation screams “fail” from the lengthy paragraphs to the questionable image placements. Luckily, it’s virtually impossible to create a presentation this ugly in Beautiful.ai.

2. Kshivets O. Lung Cancer Surgery — Again, not a 2019 design, but cringe-worthy nonetheless. We’ll give these slides the benefit of the doubt considering they were created nearly 10 years ago, but all of the graphs and charts are a disaster. Your audience should be able to digest your data without getting a migraine, so overly-complicated charts are a no for us. And this presentation is nothing but complicated.

3. The Oscars Acceptance Speech — True, not a traditional presentation, but this acceptance speech has been pegged as one of the worst of all time. Why? When Greg Cannom, Kate Biscoe, and Patricia Dehaney-Le May accepted their award for the film Vice they took turns reading their speech off of a notecard. This sounds awkward, right? It gets worse. At one point, they got confused where one left off and where the other was supposed to pick up and as a result the speech got all jumbled. The key takeaways from this? Don’t read straight off of a card (or presentation slide), and don’t pass the microphone every other word.

All that to say, a lot has changed since 1987, including presentation software and stale public speaking styles. PowerPoint is so 2000 late. What looked good then certainly doesn’t look good now, and it shows. Kate McKinnon said it best on Saturday Night Live— in our favorite skit of the year— when she poked fun at PowerPoint’s pain points.

Cheers to another year of presentations, we’re excited to see what 2020 will bring.

Jordan Turner

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Does a presentation’s medium affect its message? PowerPoint, Prezi, and oral presentations

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliations Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America, Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America

Affiliation Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America

Affiliation Minerva Schools at the Keck Graduate Institute, San Francisco, California, United States of America

Samuel T. Moulton,
Selen Türkay,
Stephen M. Kosslyn

Published: July 5, 2017
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774
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12 Oct 2017: The PLOS ONE Staff (2017) Correction: Does a presentation's medium affect its message? PowerPoint, Prezi, and oral presentations. PLOS ONE 12(10): e0186673. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186673 View correction

Despite the prevalence of PowerPoint in professional and educational presentations, surprisingly little is known about how effective such presentations are. All else being equal, are PowerPoint presentations better than purely oral presentations or those that use alternative software tools? To address this question we recreated a real-world business scenario in which individuals presented to a corporate board. Participants (playing the role of the presenter) were randomly assigned to create PowerPoint, Prezi, or oral presentations, and then actually delivered the presentation live to other participants (playing the role of corporate executives). Across two experiments and on a variety of dimensions, participants evaluated PowerPoint presentations comparably to oral presentations, but evaluated Prezi presentations more favorably than both PowerPoint and oral presentations. There was some evidence that participants who viewed different types of presentations came to different conclusions about the business scenario, but no evidence that they remembered or comprehended the scenario differently. We conclude that the observed effects of presentation format are not merely the result of novelty, bias, experimenter-, or software-specific characteristics, but instead reveal a communication preference for using the panning-and-zooming animations that characterize Prezi presentations.

Citation: Moulton ST, Türkay S, Kosslyn SM (2017) Does a presentation’s medium affect its message? PowerPoint, Prezi, and oral presentations. PLoS ONE 12(7): e0178774. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774

Editor: Philip Allen, University of Akron, UNITED STATES

Received: November 2, 2016; Accepted: May 18, 2017; Published: July 5, 2017

Copyright: © 2017 Moulton et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All data files are available from the Open Science Framework https://osf.io/fgf7c/ .

Funding: This research was supported by a grant from Prezi ( http://www.prezi.com ) to SMK. In the sponsored research agreement (which we are happy to provide) and in our conversations with Prezi leadership, they agreed to let us conduct the study as we wished and publish it no matter what the results revealed. Aside from funding the research, the only role that any employees of Prezi played was (as documented in the manuscript) 1) to provide us with a distribution list of Boston-area Prezi customers (8 of whom participated in the first experiment) and 2) as experts in Prezi, review the background questionnaire to ensure that we were accurately describing Prezi’s purported benefits and features (just as PowerPoint and oral presentation experts did the same). No employees at Prezi had any role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. None of the authors have any professional or financial connection to Prezi or personal relationships with any Prezi employees. We do not plan to conduct any follow-up research on this topic or obtain future funding from Prezi. As evident in the manuscript, we took special care not to allow bias or demand characteristics to influence this research.

Competing interests: This research was supported by a grant to SMK from Prezi ( http://www.prezi.com ), a commercial funder. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Introduction

How do the characteristics of a communication medium affect its messages? This question has been the subject of much philosophical and empirical inquiry, with some (e.g., [ 1 ]) claiming that the medium determines the message (“the medium is the message”), others (e.g., [ 2 ]) claiming that characteristics of a medium affect the message, and others claiming that the medium and message are separable (e.g.,[ 3 , 4 ]). As psychologists, we ask: What mental mechanisms underlie effective communication and how can presenters leverage these mechanisms to communicate better? These questions—at the intersection of psychology and communication practice—motivate this research.

That said, the relative efficacy of different communication media or technologies informs the primary questions of interest. If we can demonstrate that oral presentations are less or more effective than those that rely on presentation software—or that presenters who use one type of presentation software tend to be more effective than those who use another—then we advance our psychological and practical understanding of effective communication. Thus, in the tradition of use-inspired basic research [ 5 ]—and as a means to an end, rather than an end unto itself—we compare the effectiveness of three commonly-used formats for communication: oral, PowerPoint, and Prezi presentations.

We focused on presentations because they populate our academic, professional, and even personal lives in the form of public speeches, academic lectures, webinars, class presentations, wedding toasts, courtroom arguments, sermons, product demonstrations, and business presentations [ 6 – 8 ], and because basic questions remain about how to present effectively. Should we present with or without presentation software? If we should present with software, which software? We examined PowerPoint and Prezi because they are popular and psychologically interesting alternatives: Whereas PowerPoint’s linear slide format might reduce cognitive load, focus attention, and promote logical analysis, Prezi’s map-like canvas format and heavy reliance on animation (see the Background section and https://prezi.com for examples) might facilitate visuospatial processing, conceptual understanding, and narrative storytelling.

To inform the present research, we explore the methodological challenges of media research and review past research on presentation formats.

Methodological challenges of media research

To research the efficacy of different communication formats fairly and accurately, one must overcome two stubborn methodological challenges. First, because correlation is not causation and the variables that underlie media usage are heavily confounded, such research requires true experimentation. To study whether a blended learning “flipped classroom” is a more effective instructional medium than traditional lecturing, for example, researchers gain little insight by comparing outcomes for students who enroll in one type of course versus the other. To control for audience (in this case, student) self-selection effects, researchers need to 1) randomly assign audience members to different communication conditions (in this case, pedagogies) or 2) manipulate format within participants. Moreover, the same methodological controls need to be applied to presenters (in this case, instructors). Instructors who choose to teach with emerging, innovative methods probably differ in numerous other respects (e.g., motivation) from those who teach with more traditional methods. If students assigned randomly to a flipped classroom format perform better than those assigned randomly to a traditional classroom format, we risk drawing inferences about confounds instead of causes unless instructors are also assigned randomly to instructional media. To make strong, accurate inferences, therefore, researchers interested in communication must control for audience and presenter self-selection effects. Such control introduces new complexities; when randomly assigning presenters to formats, for example, one must ensure that all presenters receive sufficient training in the relevant format. Moreover, such control is often cumbersome, sometimes impractical, and occasionally unethical (e.g., randomly assigning students in actual courses to hypothetically worse instructional conditions). But there are no adequate methodological substitutes for proper experimental control.

A second thorny methodological challenge inherent in conducting media research concerns how to draw general inferences about formats instead of specific inferences about exemplars of those formats. For example, if one advertising expert is assigned randomly to design a print ad and another expert a television ad—and a hundred consumers are assigned randomly to view the television or print ad—can we actually infer anything about print versus television ads in general when the two groups of consumers behave differently? Arguably not, because such a finding is just as easily explained by other (confounding) differences between the ads or their creators (e.g., ratio of print to graphics, which sorts of people—if any—are shown, and so forth). In other words, even with proper random assignment, researchers who intend to study different forms of communication risk merely studying different instances of communication. Statistically speaking, one should assume a random not fixed effect of the communication objects of interest (e.g., presentations, lectures, advertisements). To overcome this challenge and draw generalizable inferences, one must (at the very least) sample a sufficiently large set of examples within each medium.

Research on presentation software

Methodological shortcomings..

Considerable research has been conducted on how different presentation formats (particularly PowerPoint) convey information (for review, see [ 9 ]). However, much of this research is anecdotal or based on case studies. For example, Tufte [ 10 ] claims that PowerPoint’s default settings lead presenters to create bulleted lists and vacuous graphs that abbreviate arguments and fragment thought. And Kjeldsen [ 11 ] used Al Gore’s TED talk on climate change as a positive example of how visuals can be used to effectively convey evidence and enhance verbal communication.

Research that goes beyond mere anecdote or case study is plagued by the aforementioned methodological shortcomings: failure to control for audience self-selection effects (71% of studies), failure to control for presenter self-selection effects (100% of studies), and a problematic assumption of fixed effects across content and presenters (91% of studies). As is evident in Table 1 , no studies overcame two of these shortcomings, let alone all three. For example, in one of the most heavily-cited publications on this topic Szabo and Hasting [ 12 ] investigated the efficacy of PowerPoint in undergraduate education. In the first study, they examined whether students who received lectures with PowerPoint performed better on a test than students who received traditional lectures. Students were not assigned randomly to lecture conditions, however; rather, the comparison was across time, between two cohorts of students enrolled in different iterations of the same course. Any observed outcome difference could have been caused by student or instructor variables (e.g., preparedness), not lecture format. The fact that no such differences were found does not obviate this concern: Such differences may in fact have been present, but were overshadowed by confounding characteristics of students or instructors. In the second study, the authors varied presentation format within the same cohort of students, but confounded format with order, time, content, and performance measure: student performance was compared between lectures on different days, on different topics, and using different tests. As the authors themselves note, the observed differences may have had nothing to do with PowerPoint. In the third study, they counterbalanced lecture order and content; some students received a PowerPoint lecture first and others a traditional lecture first, and the same topics were presented in both formats. However, students were assigned to conditions based on their course enrollment, not randomly, but more importantly the study included only four presentations, all by one presenter. Any advantages of the two PowerPoint lectures (none were found) might have been particular to those instances or that presenter and not representative of the format more generally.

PPT PowerPoint slide
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TIFF original image

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.t001

Most studies—even those that control experimentally for audience self-selection—relied on only a single self-selected presenter, and some relied on only one presentation per format. In one study ([ 13 ]: Experiment 1), for example, one of the authors varied the format of his lecture instruction randomly across the semester, using transparences or PowerPoint slides. In another study [ 14 ], students who were enrolled in one of the authors’ courses were assigned randomly to a PowerPoint or Prezi e-lecture that contained identical audio narration and written text. In a third study [ 15 ], one of the researchers gave the same lecture over the course of the year to rotating medical students, using PowerPoint on odd months and overhead slides on even months. What reason is there to think that we can make general claims about presentation format based on studies of single lectures or single presenters? That is, how can we reasonably assume fixed as opposed to random effects? If the use of presentation software does meaningfully influence student learning or experience, surely that effect is not constant across all presenters or presentations—some instructors use it more effectively than others, and within any format some presentations are more effective than others (see [ 16 ]). And how can we assume that presenters who select both the content and format of their presentations are not designing them in ways that favor one format over another?

Research on the efficacy of presentation software has numerous other flaws, most notably the failure to control for experimenter effects or demand characteristics. In 82% of studies we identified, for example, the researchers investigated their own instruction and studied their own students. It is difficult to imagine that one would make these instructional and research efforts (e.g., creating new course material, conducting a field experiment) without a strong belief in the efficacy of one format over the other, and it is plausible (if not likely) that such beliefs would influence students or confound instructional format with instructional effort and enthusiasm.

Another common issue is the confounding of lecture format with access to study materials—in studies that contrast PowerPoint with traditional lecturing (e.g., [ 17 – 19 ]), students in the PowerPoint condition (but not the control condition) sometimes have access to PowerPoint slides as study material. This access could bias student motivation, behavior (e.g., attendance), course satisfaction, and performance (see [ 20 ]).

PowerPoint: Performance, perception, and persuasion.

Despite their methodological shortcomings, what are the findings of this research literature? The majority of studies examined the use of PowerPoint in higher education and measured both objective and subjective outcomes (see Table 1 ). They typically involved students enrolled in one or more of the researchers’ courses, and contrasted the efficacy of lectures (or whole lecture courses) that used PowerPoint with those that used a more traditional technology (e.g., blackboards, overhead projectors). In terms of student performance, their findings were notably mixed: Of the 28 studies we identified, 17 found no effect of PowerPoint lectures relative to traditional lectures ([ 12 ]: Experiments 1,3; [ 13 , 15 , 21 – 33 ]), 9 found a performance benefit of PowerPoint over traditional instruction ([ 12 ]: Experiment 2; [ 17 – 19 , 34 – 38 ]), and 2 found a performance benefit of traditional over PowerPoint instruction [ 39 , 40 ].

There is near consensus in the literature, however, when it comes student perception: Of the 26 studies we identified, 21 found that students preferred PowerPoint over traditional instruction ([ 12 ]: Experiment 1; [ 13 , 17 – 19 , 21 , 23 , 25 , 26 , 28 , 29 , 31 – 33 , 35 , 39 , 41 – 45 ]), 2 found that students preferred traditional over PowerPoint instruction [ 40 , 46 ], and 3 other studies found no preference for one or the other formats [ 15 , 22 , 37 ]. As one example, Tang and Austin [ 45 ] surveyed 215 undergraduates in business courses about their general perceptions of different lecture formats; on measures of enjoyment, learning, motivation, and career relevance, they found that students rated lectures with PowerPoint slides more favorably than lectures with overheads or without visual aids. An additional 7 studies did not contrast student perceptions of PowerPoint with another technology—they simply surveyed students about PowerPoint; these studies all found that students had, on average, favorable impressions of PowerPoint-based instruction [ 36 , 47 – 52 ].

In addition to these studies of how presentation software impacts student performance and perception, two studies examined PowerPoint‘s impact on audience persuasion. Guadagno, Sundie, Hardison, and Cialdini [ 53 ] argue that we heuristically use a presentation’s format to evaluate its content, particularly when we lack the expertise to evaluate the content on its merits. To test this hypothesis, they presented undergraduates with key statistics about a university football recruit and asked them to evaluate the recruit’s career prospects. The same statistics were presented in one of three formats: a written summary, a graphical summary via printed-out PowerPoint slides, or a graphical summary via animated PowerPoint slides (self-advanced by the participant). Participants shown the computer-based PowerPoint presentation tended to rate the recruit more positively than other participants, and there was some evidence that this effect was more pronounced for football novices than for experts. The findings of this study suggest that some presentation formats may be more persuasive than others, perhaps because audience members conflate a sophisticated medium with a sophisticated message.

In the second study to examine the impact of PowerPoint on persuasion, Park and Feigenson [ 54 ] examined the impact of video-recorded presentations on mock juror decision-making. Participants were more persuaded by attorneys on either side of a liability case when the attorney used PowerPoint slides as opposed to merely oral argument. They also remembered more details from PowerPoint than oral presentations, and evaluated both attorneys as more persuasive, competent, credible, and prepared when they presented with PowerPoint. Based on mediation analyses, the researchers argue that the decision-making benefit of PowerPoint results from both deliberative and heuristic processing (“slow” and “fast” thinking, respectively, see [ 55 ]).

Both of these studies, however, share the methodological limitations of the educational research on PowerPoint. The first study [ 53 ] used only one PowerPoint presentation, and the second [ 54 ] used only two. The presentations used were not selected at random from a larger stimulus pool but instead were created by researchers who hypothesized that PowerPoint would enhance presentations. But even if the presentations had been sampled randomly, the sample is too small to allow one to generalize to a broader population. In studying performance, perception, or persuasion, one cannot reasonably assume that all presentation effects are equal.

Prezi: A zoomable user interface.

Released in 2009, Prezi has received generally favorable reviews by researchers, educators, and professional critics [ 56 – 60 ]. With a purported 75 million users worldwide, it is increasingly popular but still an order of magnitude less so than PowerPoint (with as many as one billion users; [ 61 ]). Like PowerPoint and other slideware, Prezi allows users to arrange images, graphics, text, audio, video and animations, and to present them alongside aural narration to an in-person or remote audience. In contrast to PowerPoint and other slideware in which users create presentations as a deck of slides, Prezi users create presentations on a single visuospatial canvas. In this regard, Prezi is much like a blackboard and chalk. But unlike a physical blackboard, the Prezi canvas is infinite (cf. [ 62 ]) and zoomable: in designing presentations, users can infinitely expand the size of their canvas and can zoom in or out. When presenting, users define paths to navigate their audience through the map-like presentation, zooming and panning from a fixed-angle overhead view.

Like Google Maps or modern touchscreens, Prezi is an example of what scholars of human-computer interaction label a zoomable user interface (ZUI). These interfaces are defined by two features: They present information in a theoretically infinite two-dimensional space (i.e., an infinite canvas) and they enable users to animate this virtual space through panning and zooming. Some of the original ZUIs were used to visualize history, navigate file systems, browse images, and—in the Prezi predecessor CounterPoint—create presentations [ 63 , 64 ].

As communication and visualization tools, ZUIs in general and Prezi in particular are interesting psychologically for several reasons. First, they may take advantage of our mental and neural architecture, specifically the fact that we process information through dissociable visual and spatial systems. Whereas the so-called “ventral” visual system in the brain processes information such as shape and color, the “dorsal” spatial system processes information such as location and distance [ 65 – 68 ]. When working in concert, these systems result in vastly better memory and comprehension than when they work in isolation. For example, in the classic “method of loci” individuals visualize objects in specific locations; when later trying to recall the objects, they visualize navigating through the space, “seeing” each object in turn. This method typically doubles retention, compared to other ways of trying to memorize objects [ 69 , 70 ]. Similarly, in research on note-taking, students learned more when they used spatial methods than when they used linear methods (e.g., [ 71 ]). Mayer’s multimedia learning principles and evidence in their favor also highlight the importance of spatial contiguity [ 72 ].

Thus, by encouraging users to visualize and process information spatially, ZUIs such as Prezi may confer an advantage over traditional tools such as PowerPoint that do not encourage such visuospatial integration. As Good and Bederson [ 64 ] write: “Because they employ a metaphor based on physical space and navigation, ZUIs offer an additional avenue for exploring the utilization of human spatial abilities during a presentation.”

Furthermore, ZUIs may encourage a particularly efficacious type of spatial processing, namely graphical processing. In graphical processing, digital objects (or groups of objects) are not just arranged in space, they are arranged or connected in a way makes their interrelationships explicit. Randomly placing animal stickers on a blank page, for example, engages mere spatial processing; drawing connecting lines between animals of the same genus or arranging the animals into a phylogenetic tree, however, engages graphical processing. Because ZUIs force users to “see the big picture,” they may prompt deeper processing than software that segments content into separate spatial canvases. By facilitating such processing, ZUIs may leverage the same learning benefits of concept maps and other graphical organizers, which have been studied extensively. For example, in their meta-analysis of the use of concept maps in education, Nesbit and Adesope [ 73 ] found that these graphical representations (especially when animated) were more effective than texts, lists, and outlines. By requiring one to organize the whole presentation on a single canvas instead of a slide deck, therefore, Prezi may prompt presenters (and their audiences) to connect component ideas with each other, contextualize them in a larger narrative, and remember, understand, and appreciate this larger narrative. Slideware, on the other hand, may do just the opposite:

PowerPoint favours information that can be displayed on a single projected 4:3 rectangle. Knowledge that requires more space is disadvantaged … How to include a story on a slide? Distributing the associated text over several slides literally breaks it into fragments, disturbing its natural cohesion and thus coherence … PowerPoint renders obsolete some complex narrative and data forms in favour of those that are easily abbreviated or otherwise lend themselves to display on a series of slides [ 74 ] (p399)

Of course these arguments are speculative, and one can also speculate on the psychological costs of ZUI or benefits of standard slideware. Perhaps PowerPoint does confer some of same spatial processing benefits of Prezi—after all, slides are spatial canvases, and they must be arranged to form a narrative—but in a way that better manages the limited attentional resources of the presenter or audience. Our point here is simply that Prezi, as a ZUI presentation tool, offers a psychologically interesting alternative to standard deck-based slideware, with a range of possible advantages that could be explored empirically to discover the psychological mechanisms of effective communication.

Like the PowerPoint literature, most of the published literature on Prezi is limited to observational reports or case studies. Brock and Brodahl [ 75 ] evaluated Prezi favorably based on their review and students’ ratings of course presentations. Conboy, Fletcher, Russell, and Wilson [ 76 ] interviewed 6 undergraduates and 3 staff members about their experiences with Prezi in lecture instruction and reported generally positive experiences. Masood and Othman [ 77 ] measured the eye movements and subjective judgments of ten participants who viewed a single Prezi presentation; participants attended to the presentation’s text more than to its other components (e.g., images, headings), and favorably judged the presentation. Ballentine [ 78 ] assigned students to use Prezi to design text adventure games and reported benefits of using the medium. Two other studies [ 79 , 80 ] surveyed college students about their course experiences with Prezi, and both reported similarly positive perceptions.

All of these studies, however, suffer from major demand characteristics, due to the fact that the researchers observed or asked leading questions of their own students about their own instruction (e.g., “Do you find lectures delivered with Prezi more engaging then[sic] other lectures?”, from [ 79 ]). Moreover, all suffer from the methodological limitations discussed earlier.

Other literature that addresses Prezi is purely theoretical and speculative: In discussing the pedagogical implications of various presentation software, Harris [ 81 ] mostly just describes Prezi’s features, but does suggest that some of these features provide useful visual metaphors (e.g., zooming in to demonstrate otherwise hidden realities). Bean [ 82 ] offers a particularly compelling analysis of PowerPoint and Prezi’s histories, user interfaces, and visual metaphors, and argues that Prezi is the optimal tool for presenting certain types of information (e.g., wireflow diagrams).

The experimental literature on Prezi is limited to three published studies. Castelyn, Mottart and Valcke [ 14 ] investigated whether a Prezi e-lecture with graphic organizers (e.g., concepts maps) was more effective than a PowerPoint e-lecture without graphic organizers. Claiming that Prezi encourages the use of graphic organizers, they purposefully confounded the type of presentation software with the presence of graphic organizers. Undergraduates randomly assigned to the different e-lectures did not differ in their knowledge or self-efficacy gains, but did prefer the graphically-organized Prezi lecture over the PowerPoint control lecture. In a follow-up study [ 83 ], the same researchers assigned undergraduates to create Prezi presentations that did or did not use graphic organizers, and found no effects of this manipulation on students’ self-reported motivation or self-efficacy. Chou, Chang, and Lu [ 24 ] compared the effects of Prezi, PowerPoint and traditional blackboard instruction on 5 th graders’ learning of geography. Whereas the Prezi group performed better than the control group (which received blackboard instruction) in formative quizzes and a summative test, the PowerPoint group did not; however, on a delayed summative test, both Prezi and PowerPoint students performed better than those in the control group. In direct comparisons of PowerPoint and Prezi, there were no differences in any of the learning measures. Taken together, the studies are not just limited in number: They present uncompelling findings and suffer from the same methodological shortcomings of the PowerPoint research.

The current study

In short, the extant literature does not clarify whether presenters should present with or without visual aids—and, if the latter, whether they should use standard deck-based slideware such as PowerPoint or a ZUI such as Prezi. One of the reasons why these basic questions remain unanswered is the methodological challenges inherent in comparing different presentation formats. We designed the current study to overcome these challenges.

To control for individual differences among presenters, we randomly assigned presenters to different presentation conditions. To control for individual differences among audience members, we used a counterbalanced, within-participants design for the first experiment, and between-participants random assignment in the second experiment. And to draw general inferences about the impact of presentation format—instead of specific inferences about particular presenters or presentations—we sampled from a large number of presentations, each created by a different presenter. Our methods have their own challenges, such as recruiting participants sufficiently trained in all presentation methods, allowing presenters adequate preparation time and context, approximating the psychological conditions of real-world presentations, and measuring the “signal” of presentation format among the added “noise” of so many presenters and presentations. In addition, the studies had to be double-blind: Neither presenters nor audience members could be aware of any hypotheses, and had to be free from any sorts of confirmation bias conveyed by the investigators.

To focus on presentations as a form of presenter-audience communication and limit the number of confounded variables, we purposefully controlled for other possible impacts of presentation software on professional practices or outcomes, including 1) the use of presentation artifacts (e.g., PowerPoint files, printed-out slides, online Prezis), and 2) facilitated collaboration among presentation designers. Unlike other research (e.g., [ 32 , 33 ]) we did allow for the possibility that presentation format not only affects how audiences perceive presentations, but also how presenters design or deliver them (e.g., by increasing their conceptual understanding of the topic, or decreasing their cognitive load during live narration; cf. [ 84 ]). In other words, presentation technologies might affect the cognition of both the audience and the presenter, so we designed the present studies to accommodate both sets of mechanisms.

To maximize the real-world relevance of this research, we relied on multimedia case materials from Harvard Business School [ 85 ]; these materials recreate the actual professional circumstances in which presentations are typically used. Because presentations are designed commonly both to inform and convince audiences, we examine outcome measures of learning as well as persuasion. And to minimize demand characteristics, we avoided the typical flaws of existing research (e.g., researcher-designed presentations, the researchers’ students as research participants) and adopted several countermeasures (e.g., recruitment language and participant instructions that obscured the research hypotheses, between-participant manipulation).

We adopted a two-phased approach in this research. In the first phase, participants with sufficient experience in oral, PowerPoint, and Prezi presentation formats were randomly assigned to create a presentation in one of those formats. We provided the necessary context, instruction, and time to create a short but realistic presentation. Participants then presented live to an actual audience, who judged each presentation’s efficacy. In the second phase, recorded versions of these presentations were presented to a larger online audience, affording us greater statistical power and allowing us to measure the impact of presentation format on decision-making and learning.

Experiment 1

Participants..

We recruited presenter participants via online postings (on Craigslist, the Harvard Psychology Study Pool, the Harvard Decision Science Lab Study Pool), email solicitations to the local Prezi community, and campus flyers. To create the fairest comparison between PowerPoint and Prezi, we recruited individuals who “have expertise in using both PowerPoint and Prezi presentation software.” Interested individuals were directed to a prescreening survey in which they reported their experience with and preference for giving different types of presentations. Only individuals who reported that they were “not at all experienced” with PowerPoint, Prezi or giving oral presentations were excluded from research participation. Out of the 681 respondents who completed the prescreening survey, 456 of them were eligible and invited to sign up for an available timeslot. Out of this group, 146 individuals—105 from the Harvard study pools, 33 from Craigslist, and 8 from the Prezi community—participated as presenters in the study and were compensated $40 for approximately two hours of their time. There were no significant differences between the three presentation groups on any demographics variables.

We also recruited 153 audience participants from the Harvard Decision Science Lab Study Pool and Craigslist using the following announcement:

Do you use Skype? Does your computer have a large screen (13 inches or larger)? If so, you may be eligible to participate in a 45 minute long online study. In this study, you will watch professional presentations over Skype from home on your personal computer.

Anyone who responded to the recruitment notice was eligible, provided that they were available during one of the prescheduled testing sessions. Audience participants were compensated $10 for approximately 45 minutes of their time. Table 2 presents demographic information for the presenter and audience participants. This study was approved by the Harvard Committee on the Use of Human Subjects (Study #IRB14-1427), and all participants in both experiments provided written consent.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.t002

Presenter procedure.

Presenter participants completed a survey remotely before attending the in-person, group sessions with other participants. In the online pre-survey, presenters first answered basic demographic questions (gender, age, education level, English fluency, and occupation). Next, they answered questions about their prior experience with, opinions about, and understanding of the different presentation formats (oral, Prezi, and PowerPoint). This section was prefaced with the following note:

A note on language: When we use the term "presentation," we mean a formal, planned, and oral presentation of any duration, including a public speech, an academic lecture, a webinar, a class presentation, a wedding toast, a sermon, a product demonstration, a business presentation, and so on. Examples of things we do NOT mean are: a theatrical performance, an impromptu toast at dinner, and any presentation with no audience. When we say PowerPoint presentations, we mean presentations that were made using Microsoft PowerPoint, not other software such as Apple's Keynote. When we say Prezi presentations, we mean presentations that were made using Prezi presentation software. Also, when we refer to "oral presentation", we mean a presentation that is only spoken and does not include any visual aids or the use of presentation software.

Participants were asked the following questions for each type of presentation:

How experienced are you at making the following types of presentations? [5-level rating]
When you give a presentation, how effective are the following types of presentations for you? [5-level rating, with “not applicable” option]
When somebody else gives a presentation, how effective are the following types of presentations for you? [5-level rating, with “not applicable” option]
How difficult is it for you to make the following types of presentations? [5-level rating, with “not applicable” option]
In the last year, approximately how many of the following types of presentations did you make? [free response]
In your lifetime, approximately how many of the following types of presentations have you made? [free response]
For approximately how many years have you been making the following types of presentations? [free response]

As part of the expertise-related measures, we also asked the participants to identify the purported advantages and disadvantages of each presentation format, according to its proponents and critics, respectively. For PowerPoint and Prezi, we asked participants to identify whether or not it had particular functionalities (e.g., the capacity to record narration, create custom backgrounds, print handouts). Finally, participants viewed three sets of four short Prezi presentations and rank-ordered them from best to worst. In each set we manipulated a key dimension of Prezi effectiveness, according to its designers: the use of zooming, the connection of ideas, and the use of visual metaphor.

Presenter participants were tested in person at the Harvard Decision Science Lab, and randomly assigned to one of the three groups: Prezi, PowerPoint, or oral presentation. A total of 50 data collection sessions were held. In each session, there were typically three presenter participants (one for each presentation format); as a result of participants who failed to arrive or overbooking, there were ten sessions with only two presenters and six sessions with four presenters.

After providing informed consent, participants completed an online survey (in the lab) in which they rank-ordered three sets of recorded example PowerPoint and oral presentations. Identical in form to the example Prezi presentations they judged in the pre-survey, these short presentations were designed to assess their understanding of effective presentation design by manipulating a key aspect specific to each format. For PowerPoint presentations, we manipulated the use of text, use of extraneous “bells and whistles,” and graph design; for oral presentations, the three dimensions were verbal behavior, nonverbal behavior (other than eye contact), and eye contact. In selecting these dimensions (and those for Prezi), we consulted with a variety of experts, including software designers, speaking coaches, and researchers.

Next, presenters were shown material from a multimedia case created for and used by the Harvard Business School. Specifically, they were told the following (the company featured in the business case will be referred to anonymously here as “Company X” to respect their contractual agreement with the school):

For the next two hours, you are going to pretend to be the chief marketing officer of i-Mart, a large chain of retail stores. i-Mart recently made an offer to [Company X] to sell their products in i-Mart stores. Your boss, the CEO of i-Mart, has asked you to make a presentation to [Company X]’s leadership that persuades them to accept i-Mart’s offer. In your presentation, you will need to argue that accepting i-Mart’s offer is in [Company X]’s strategic interests, and address any concerns they may have about how accepting the offer might affect their corporate identity.

As a participant in this study, your primary job today is to prepare and then deliver this presentation. The presentation will be very short (less than 5 minutes) and made live (via Skype) to an audience of participants who are playing the part of [Company X] executives. Before you start planning your presentation, you will first learn more about [Company X] and how they’re thinking about i-Mart’s offer.

On their own computer workstation, participants studied the multimedia case for 30 minutes and were invited to take notes on blank paper provided for them. The multimedia case material included video and textual descriptions of Company’s X’s corporate culture, business model, and constituent communities.

Following this study period, participants were given 45 minutes to create a presentation in one of three randomly assigned presentation formats: PowerPoint, Prezi, or oral. To assist participants in the PowerPoint and Prezi conditions, we provided them with a set of digital artifacts including text, data, and graphics related to the case. Participants were not told that other participants were asked to present in different formats, and the workstations were separated from each other to prevent participants from discovering this manipulation.

After this preparation period, participants were taken individually (in a counterbalanced order) to another room to present to a live audience via Skype. For PowerPoint and Prezi presentations, we shared each participant’s presentation with the audience via screen sharing; thus they viewed both the presenter and the presentation. For those presenters who consented, we also recorded their presentations for future research purposes. After making their presentations, presenters completed a final survey about their presentation (e.g., “How convincing do you think your presentation will be to [Company X’s] board members”), the corporate scenario (e.g., What do you think [Company X] should do?”), and their presentation format (e.g., “How likely are you to recommend the presentation tool or presentation format you used to others to make professional presentations?”).

Audience procedure.

Audience participants completed the entire experiment remotely and online. Their participation was scheduled for the end of the presenter sessions so that the in-lab presenters could present live to a remote audience via Skype. We recruited between three and six audience participants per session, although participants who failed to arrive or Skype connectivity issues resulted in some sessions with only one or two audience participants: Five sessions had one participant, twelve sessions had two participants, sixteen sessions had three participants, eleven sessions had four participants, four sessions had five participants, and two sessions had six participants.

Individuals who responded to the recruitment notice completed a consent form and three online surveys prior to their scheduled Skype session. The first survey was a slightly modified form of the presenter pre-survey (demographics, background on presentation formats, rank-ordering of example Prezis) in which they also scheduled their Skype session. In the second survey, audience participants were told that they were “going to play the role of a corporate executive listening to several short business presentations,” and that their task was “to evaluate the quality of these presentations, each made by another participant engaged in a similar role-playing scenario.” They were then shown a brief video and textual description of the fictionalized corporate scenario (an abridged version of what presenter participants studied), and told the following:

You are a board member for [Company X], an innovative clothing company. Another company, i-Mart, wants to sell [Company Y’s products] in its stores. You and your fellow board members must decide whether or not to accept i-Mart's offer.

And in the third survey they rank-ordered the three sets of recorded example PowerPoint and oral presentations.

At the time of the scheduled session, the audience participants logged into Skype using a generic account provided by the research team, and were instructed to turn on their webcams and put on headphones. Once the first presenter participant was ready to present, the experimenter initiated the group Skype call, confirmed that the software was functioning properly, invited the presenter into the room to begin, left the room before the start of the presentation, monitored the presentation remotely via a closed-circuit video feed, and re-entered the room at the presentation’s conclusion. For Prezi and PowerPoint presentations, Skype’s built-in screen-sharing function was used to share the visual component of the presentation; audience participants viewing these presentations were instructed to use the split-screen view, with windows of equal size showing the presenter and the accompanying visuals.

Immediately after viewing each presentation, participants evaluated it via an online survey. They rated each presentation on how organized, engaging, realistic, persuasive, and effective it was using a five-level scale with response options of not at all , slightly , somewhat , very , and extremely . They were also invited to offer feedback to the presenter on how the presentation could be improved. After the final presentation, participants rank-ordered the presentations on the same dimensions (e.g., effectiveness, persuasiveness). Halfway through the experiment we added a final question in which we asked participants to rank-order PowerPoint, Prezi, and oral presentation formats “in terms of their general effectiveness, ignoring how well individual presenters (including today's) use that format,” and to explain their rank-ordering.

Prior experience and pre-existing beliefs.

Participants’ prior experience with and pre-existing beliefs about each presentation format provide a baseline that informs the research findings. If presenter participants had more experience with and more positive beliefs about one format than the others—and those assigned to that format induced more positive assessments from the audience members than did those assigned to the other formats—then the results are less compelling than if there was no correlation between these baseline measures and the experimental outcomes. The same applies to audience participants: Are they merely judging presentations according to their initial biases? Conversely, the results are most compelling if there is a negative association between the baseline measures and the experimental findings. For this reason—and to check that presenters assigned to the different formats did not happen to differ in these baseline measures—we analyzed participants’ prior experience with and pre-existing beliefs about PowerPoint, Prezi, and oral presentation formats.

Both audience and presenter participants were least experienced with Prezi and most experienced with oral presentations. At the outset, they rated PowerPoint as the most effective and easiest to use to present material and Prezi as the least effective and most difficult to use to present. For watching presentations, audience participants rated PowerPoint most effective and oral presentations least effective, but rated Prezi as more enjoyable than other formats. For watching presentations, presenter participants did not find any format more effective than the others. Table 3 presents full descriptive and inferential statistics for all self-reported measures of prior experience with and preexisting beliefs about Prezi, PowerPoint, and oral presentations.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.t003

Presenters assigned to different formats did not differ in their experience with or pre-existing beliefs about presentations formats. They also did not differ in how well they identified the purported advantages and disadvantages of each presentation format, how well they identified the software features of PowerPoint and Prezi, or how accurately they could identify effective presentations of each format.

Audience ratings.

In term of their prior experience with and pre-existing beliefs about presentation formats, both audience and presenter participants were biased in favor of oral and PowerPoint presentations and against Prezi. After presenters were randomly assigned to these different formats, how did the audience evaluate their presentations?

In examining how presentation format affected the audience’s ratings of the presentations, two complications arose. First, sessions with two presentations were missing one presentation format, and sessions with four presentations had two presentations of the same format. To address this complexity we only conducted pairwise comparisons of different formats (e.g., PPT versus oral) instead of omnibus tests, and—for those sessions with four presentations—we averaged ratings for the two same-format presentations. To be certain that the differing number of presentations per session did not somehow bias the results even after adopting these measures, we also conducted an analysis on the subset of sessions that had exactly three presentations.

Second, the number of audience participants per session ranged from one to six. In calculating descriptive statistics, some sessions would be weighted more heavily than others unless ratings were first averaged across participants within the same session, then averaged across sessions. In calculating inferential statistics, averaging across ratings from different participants within the same session who received presentations in the same format was necessary to ensure that the sampling units were independent of each other, an assumption of all parametric and most nonparametric tests. In other words, for both descriptive and inferential statistics, we treated session (instead of participant) as the sampling unit.

As an empirical matter, this multi-step averaging—within participants across identical presentation formats, then across participants within the same session—had little impact on the condition means (i.e., the average ratings of PowerPoint, Prezi, or oral presentations on each dimension). Compared to the simplest, raw averaging of all ratings in one step, the maximum absolute difference between these two sets of means was .07 (on a 1–5 scale) and the mean absolute difference was .04.

To test whether the presentations’ format affected their ratings, therefore, we conducted paired t -tests for each rating dimension, with presentation format as the repeated measure and mean session rating as the dependent variable. Because we conducted three tests for each dimension—pairing each format with every other—we controlled for multiple comparisons by dividing our significance threshold by the same factor (i.e., α = .05/3 = .017). Results revealed that presentation format influenced audience ratings. In particular, the audience rated Prezi presentations as significantly more organized, engaging, persuasive, and effective than both PowerPoint and oral presentations; on a five-level scale, the average participant rated Prezi presentations over half a level higher than other presentations. The audience did not rate PowerPoint presentations differently than oral presentations on any dimension. Table 4 and Fig 1 present these results.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.t004

Audience members rated presentations on each dimension on a 5-level scale (1 = “not at all,” 5 = “extremely”). The figure shows session-level means from all available data, including those from sessions with two or four presentations.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.g001

By limiting the analysis to the 34 sessions with exactly three presentations (one of each format), we could ensure that the sessions with two or four presentations did not somehow bias the results. Moreover, this procedure enabled us to conduct omnibus tests of presentation format for each rating dimension. These omnibus tests revealed significant effects for organization, F (2,66) = 12.9, p < .0001, engagement, F (2,66) = 4.6, p = .01, persuasion, F (2,66) = 3.9, p = .03, and effectiveness, F (2,66) = 7.2, p = .001. The results from post-hoc tests (Fisher’s LSD) aligned with the original pairwise comparisons: On all dimensions, the audience rated Prezi presentations higher than PowerPoint and oral presentations, p s < .05; PowerPoint and oral presentations were not rated differently on any dimension, p s>.05. (Note: All p -values for pairwise tests here and elsewhere are two-tailed.)

To explore whether the obtained results were somehow the result of demand characteristics, we analyzed ratings from only the first presentation in each session. This analysis yielded the same pattern of findings, with a to-be-expected reduction in statistical significance due to the loss of power. On all four dimensions, a one-way, independent-measures ANOVA yielded significant or marginally-significant results: organized, F (2,49) = 5.1, p = .01; engaging, F (2,49) = 2.5, p = .09; persuasive, F (2,49) = 2.6, p = .09; and effective, F (2,49) = 5.8, p = .006. In all cases, Prezi was rated higher than oral and PowerPoint presentations (post-hoc LSD p s ≤.08).

On average, the audience rated the presentations as realistic, with a modal rating of “very realistic.” Our intent in including this rating dimension was merely to verify that our experimental protocol resulted in realistic rather than contrived presentations; we therefore did not test for differences in these ratings as a function of group differences.

Audience rankings.

As just noted, participants randomly assigned to present using Prezi were rated as giving more organized, engaging, persuasive, and effective presentations compared to those randomly assigned to the PowerPoint or oral presentation conditions. In addition, at the end of each session audience participants rank-ordered each type of presentation on the same dimensions used for the ratings. Here we ask: Did the audiences’ rank-orderings align with the ratings?

The same complexities with the ratings data—the variable number of conditions and audience participants per session—applied as well to the ranking data. We therefore adopted a similar analytic strategy, with one exception: we conducted non-parametric rather than parametric pairwise tests, given the rank-ordered nature of the raw data and distributional assumptions that underlie parametric tests.

Using the session-level mean ranks, we tested the effect of presentation format with three sets of Wilcoxon signed-rank tests. The results had the identical pattern as those from the ratings data: the audience rated Prezi presentations as significantly more organized, engaging, persuasive, and effective than both PowerPoint and oral presentation (all p s ≤ .006); the audience did not rate PowerPoint presentations differently than oral presentations on any dimension. Table 5 and Fig 2 present these results.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.t005

Audience members ranked the presentations from best to worst, with lower ranks indicating better presentations. The figure shows session-level means from all available data, including those from sessions with two or four presentations.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.g002

As with the ratings data, we also conducted omnibus tests of only those sessions with exactly three presentations to validate that unbalanced sessions did not somehow bias the results. These tests (Friedman ANOVAs) revealed significant effects for organization, exact p = .0005, engagement, exact p = .04, and effectiveness, exact p = .003; we found only a marginally significant effect for persuasion, exact p = .08. Post-hoc tests (Fisher’s LSD) showed that the audience ranked Prezi presentations higher than PowerPoint and oral presentations on all dimensions, p s < .05; PowerPoint and oral presentations were not ranked differently on engagement, persuasion, or effectiveness, p s>.05, but the audience did rank PowerPoint presentations as more organized than oral presentations, p = .04.

Audience omnibus judgments of effectiveness.

Before and after the experimental session, audience participants judged the general effectiveness of the three presentation formats. In the pre-survey, they rated each format on its effectiveness for them as presenters and audience members. In the post-survey, they rank-ordered the formats on their “general effectiveness” and were instructed to ignore “how well individual presenters (including today's) use that format.” Although the pre- and post-questions differed in their phrasing and response formats, they nonetheless afford us an opportunity to investigate if and how their judgments changed over the course of the experiment.

As already described (see Table 3 ), the audience began the experiment judging PowerPoint presentations as most effective for presenters and audiences. They ended the experiment, however, with different judgments of efficacy: A majority (52%) ranked Prezi presentations as the most effective, a majority (57%) ranked oral presentations as least effective, and a plurality (49%) ranked PowerPoint presentations second in effectiveness. A Friedman’s ANOVA test (on the mean rankings) confirmed that participants rated presentation formats differently, exact p = .00007. Post hoc analysis with Wilcoxon signed-rank tests revealed that the audience ranked both Prezi and PowerPoint presentations as more effective than oral presentations, ps ≤.003). They did not rank Prezi and PowerPoint presentations significantly differently ( p = .15). Fig 3 presents these results.

Note: Means shown from pre-survey items are calculated based on responses from all participants (as opposed to only those who had experience with all presentation formats).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.g003

In the pre-survey, some audience participants reported prior experience viewing Prezi presentations but others did not (i.e., those who selected the “not applicable” response option). Compared to participants with no prior experience watching Prezi presentations ( n = 34), participants with prior Prezi experience ( n = 117) rated PowerPoint presentations (but not oral presentations) as less effective, t (149) = 2.7, p = .007, mean difference = .47, and less enjoyable for them, t (149) = 2.9, p = .004, mean difference = .53. Thus, prior experience with Prezi was associated with negative pre-existing judgments of PowerPoint.

Audience correlates of presentation ratings and rankings.

What, if any, individual-level variables—demographics and baseline survey responses—correlated with the audience’s judgments of the presentations? If, for example, the more experience the audience had with Prezi, the worse they evaluated those presentations, such a correlation would suggest that the current findings reflect a novelty effect.

We did not find any significant relationships between the audiences’ prior experience with a given presentation format (presenter experience rating, number of years, number of presentations watched last year or lifetime) and their ratings or rank-orderings of that presentation format on any dimensions, all | r| s < .16. The only pre-existing audience beliefs about the presentation formats (presenter effectiveness, presenter difficulty, audience effectiveness, audience enjoyableness) that correlated with their ratings or rankings were for oral presentations: the more effective participants rated oral presentations for them as audience members before the experiment, the more effective they rated and ranked oral presentations in the experiment as engaging, r = .22 and .26, respectively, p s < .01.

Among demographic variables, only age showed reliable correlations with the audiences’ evaluations of presentations: the older the participant, the more effective they rated PowerPoint presentations, r = .23, p = .007, the more persuasive they ranked PowerPoint presentations, r = .24, p = .006, and the less organized and persuasive they rated oral presentations, r = -.32, p = .001, and r = -.21, p = .01, respectively.

Audience participants’ success in distinguishing better from worse presentations of each format (i.e., their rank-ordering of short expert-created examples) did not correlate with their evaluations of the experimental presentations, nor did it correlate with the audiences’ self-reported experience with each format.

Audience free response.

Although we cannot assume that participants understood the reasons behind their rank-orderings (cf. [ 86 ]), their explanations may nonetheless offer some insight into how they perceived different presentation formats. In explaining their rank-ordering of the presentation formats in terms of their general effectiveness, 8% of participants who preferred Prezi mentioned that it was new or different or that PowerPoint presentations were old or outdated . More commonly, they described Prezi as more engaging or interactive (49%), organized (18%), visually interesting , visually compelling , visually pleasing , sleek , or vivid (15%), or creative (13%). Of participants who preferred PowerPoint, 38% described it as more concise , clear , easy to follow , familiar , professional , or organized than the other presentation formats. An equal percentage explained their choice in terms of negative judgments of Prezi, including comments that Prezi was disorienting , busy , crowded , amateurish , or overwhelming . Participants who rank-ordered oral presentations as most effective remarked that they felt more engaged or connected with the presenter, could better give their undivided attention to the presentation (29%), valued the eye contact or face-to-face interaction with the presenter (14%), or found presentation software distracting (14%).

Presenter outcomes and correlates of success.

A series of one-way ANOVAs revealed that presentation format did not affect the presenters’ judgments about the business scenario (e.g., “What do you think [Company X] should do?”), self-reported comprehension of the business scenario (“How much do you think you understand the situation with [Company X] and i-Mart?”), or ratings of their own motivation (e.g., “This activity was fun to do”), self-efficacy (e.g., “I think I am pretty good at this activity”), effort (e.g., “I tried very hard on this activity), and effectiveness as presenters (“How convincing do you think your presentation will be to [Company X]’s board members?”); participants using different presentation formats also did not differ in their performance on the multiple-choice test about the business scenario, all p s >.05.

The presenter groups did differ in how inclined they were to recommend their presentation format to others (“How likely are you to recommend the presentation tool or presentation format you used to others to make professional presentations?”), F (2,144) = 4.2, p = .02, with presenters who used Prezi or PowerPoint being more likely to recommend their format than those who made oral presentations, LSD p = .03 and p = .007, respectively.

Presenter variables—including demographic characteristics and experience with their assigned format—generally did not predict their presentation success, either in terms of audience ratings or rankings. The one exception was that Prezi presenters who were better able to identify effective Prezi presentations were rated and ranked as giving more effective and engaging presentations, .008 < p s < .04.

Participants who were randomly assigned to present using Prezi were judged as giving more effective, organized, engaging, and persuasive presentations than those who were randomly assigned to present orally or with PowerPoint. This was true despite the fact that both audience and presenter participants were initially predisposed against Prezi. What might explain these findings?

One explanation is a novelty effect: Perhaps the audience preferred Prezi simply because it is relatively new to them. It appears that this was not the case, however: Only 8% of participants claimed that they preferred Prezi because it was new or different, and there was no significant relationship between the audiences’ experience with Prezi and their ratings or rank-orderings.

Another explanation for these results is that the presenters or audience members were somehow biased towards the Prezi presentations. Again, however, this appears not to be the case. The presenters were least experienced in Prezi, judged themselves least effective presenting with Prezi, and found Prezi presentations hardest to create. We recruited only a small minority (8%) of presenters based on their prior association with Prezi, and used the most conservative exclusion criteria feasible: only individuals without any experience with Prezi or PowerPoint were excluded from participating. All presenters were randomly assigned to their presentation format and were blind to the experimental manipulation. In recruiting audience participants, we did not mention Prezi or PowerPoint, and selected participants only based on their access to Skype and a sufficiently large computer screen. In addition, we minimized contact between the investigator and research participants, and presentations were never identified based on their format; at the end of the experiment, in fact, some participants did not even realize that they had seen a Prezi presentation (as evidenced by their free responses). Data were collected through standardized, online surveys, the investigator was not in the room with the presenter during his or her presentation, and the investigator interacted with the audience only briefly to set up their Skype session. Finally, an analysis of ratings from only the first presentations yielded the same results as the full analysis, making implausible an interpretation based on audience demand characteristics.

Thus, the most likely explanation is that individuals do, in fact, perceive Prezi presentations more favorably than PowerPoint or oral presentation. Experiment 1 has several limitations, however. First, because each audience participant in Experiment 1 was exposed to multiple presentations, we were unable to evaluate presentations on their ultimate goal: to convince the audience (role-playing Company X board members) to accept i-Mart’s business offer. In other words, Experiment 1 demonstrated that Prezi presentations are more effective than other formats in terms of audience perceptions but not decision-making outcomes. Second, we asked the audience about their pre-existing beliefs and prior experiences with PowerPoint, Prezi, and oral presentations at the beginning of the Experiment 1; although it is difficult to imagine how this questioning could have produced the obtained results—particularly given the nature of their pre-existing beliefs and prior experiments—it is a remote possibility. Third, just like the results from any single experiment, the findings of Experiment 1 should be treated cautiously until replicated. We designed a second experiment to address these limitations and extend the findings from the first experiment.

Experiment 2

In Experiment 2 we showed online participants a single presentation from Experiment 1, and varied randomly which type of presentation (Prezi, PowerPoint, or oral) they viewed. We also randomly assigned some participants to view a presentation on material that was not related to the case material; this control condition served as a baseline that allowed us to estimate the impact of each presentation format. To minimize demand characteristics, we asked participants about their experiences with different presentation formats at the conclusion of the experiment (instead of the beginning), and did not expose participants to multiple presentation formats. Finally, to investigate better the nature of participants’ perceptions about presentation effectiveness, we distinguished between perceptions about the presentation, the presenter, and the audiovisual component of the presentation.

We recruited native-English speaking participants via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk using the following language: “In this study, you will read a business case, watch presentations, assume a role, and make a decision.” They were compensated $4 for approximately one hour of their time. Excluding pilot participants who offered us initial feedback on the survey and protocol, 1398 individuals consented to and began the experiment. Of these, 16 participants were excluded because of evidence that they didn’t complete the task properly (e.g., answering a long series of questions identically, incorrectly answering a “trap” question), and 305 were excluded because they dropped out before completing all of the outcome measures, leaving 1069 participants in the final dataset: 272 in the Prezi group, 261 in the PowerPoint group, 275 in the oral presentation group, and 261 in the control group. The number of excluded participants did not covary with group assignment or demographic variables. Table 6 presents demographic information on the included participants.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.t006

The main stimuli for this experiment consisted of recorded presentations from Experiment 1. For Prezi and PowerPoint presentations, these were split-screen videos showing the presenter on one side of the screen and the visuals on the other side. For the oral presentations, these were simply audiovisual recordings of the presenter.

Of the 146 presenter participants from Experiment 1, 33 either did not consent to being video-recorded or were not recorded due to technical difficulties. We therefore had a pool of 113 presentation videos to use for Experiment 2: 41 from the Prezi condition (out of a possible 50), 40 from the PowerPoint condition (out of possible 49), and 32 from the oral presentation condition (out of a possible 47). The proportion of presentations that were video-recorded did not vary with their format, exact p = .61.

Some of the recorded presentations from Experiment 1 were unusable because of intractable quality issues (e.g., inaudible speech, incomplete video, partially occluded presenter), leaving a total of 89 usable videos (34 Prezi, 28 PowerPoint, 27 oral). The proportion of videos removed because of quality issues did not vary with presentation format, exact p = .57.

We randomly selected 25 videos in each format, resulting in a total pool of 75 videos. Because of a URL typo that was not detected until after testing, one PowerPoint video was not presented and participants assigned that video were not able to complete the experiment. Video length varied by format, F (2, 71) = 4.2, p = .02, with PowerPoint and Prezi presentations lasted longer than oral presentations ( M = 5.9, 6.0, and 4.6 minutes, respectively).

We were concerned that we could have, perhaps unconsciously, selected better stimuli in the Prezi condition, which would have biased the results. To ensure that our judgments of major audiovisual problems and subsequent exclusion of some videos were not biased, we recruited a separate group of participants to rate the audiovisual quality of the 113 presentation videos. Using the following language, we recruited 455 individuals from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to serve as judges:

In this study you will judge the technical quality of three short videos. To participate you must have a high-speed Internet connection. We will compensate you $2 for 15–20 minutes of your time.

These participants were totally blind to the experimental hypotheses and manipulation. They completed the audiovisual rating task completely online via the Qualtrics survey platform, and were given the following instructions:

We need your help in determining the audiovisual quality of some Skype presentations we recorded. We want to know which presentations we can use for additional research, and which need to be eliminated due to major technical problems with the recordings. The sorts of technical problems that might exist in some of the videos are: incomplete recordings (the recording starts late or stops early), cropped recordings (the camera isn’t positioned properly), choppy or blurry video, and absent or inaudible audio.

You will watch a single presentation video. Please ignore any aspect of the recording other than its audiovisual quality. In particular, do not base your judgments on the presentation itself, including the presenter’s argument, appearance, or the nature of the accompanying slides. The only thing we care about is whether the audio and video were recorded properly.

Finally, please keep in mind that because these videos were recorded through Skype, even the best recordings are not very high quality.

These judge participants then watched a presentation video (selected at random), rated the quality of its audio and video (on a five-level scale from “very bad” to “very good”), and indicated whether or not there were “any major technical problems with the presentations audio or video”; those who reported major technical problems were asked to identify them.

To address any possibility of experimenter bias—which seemed unlikely, given that we designed the procedure from the outset to guard against such effects—we conducted a series of Presentation Format (Prezi, PowerPoint, oral) x Quality Judgment (inclusion, exclusion) ANOVAs to test 1) whether audiovisual quality was for any reason confounded with presentation format (i.e., the main effect of Presentation Format), 2) whether the excluded videos were indeed lower quality than the included videos (i.e., the main effect of Quality Judgment), and 3) whether our exclusion of videos was biased based on their format (i.e., the interaction between Presentation Format and Audiovisual Quality). We conducted the ANOVAs on the three measures of audiovisual quality collected from the independent judges: ratings of audio quality, ratings of video quality, and judgments of major audiovisual problems.

The results were straightforward: For all three dependent variables, there were no main effects of Presentation Format, p s > .13, but we did find a significant main effect of Quality Judgment (with included videos being judged better quality than excluded videos), all p s < .002, and did not find any interaction effects, all p s > .31. In other words, presentation format was not confounded with audiovisual quality, our judgments of quality corresponded to those of blind judges, and our exclusion of videos was unrelated to presentation format.

Participants completed the experiment entirely online through Qualtrics. After providing informed consent, and answering preliminary demographic and background questions (e.g., about their familiarity with business concepts and practices) they were told the following:

In this part of the study, you are going to play the role of a corporate executive for [Company X], an innovative clothing company. Another company, i-Mart, wants to sell [Company X’s] t-shirts in its many retail stores. You must decide whether or not to accept i-Mart's offer.

To help you make your decision, we will first provide you with some background on [Company X] and the i-Mart offer. You will see a series of short videos and text that describe relevant aspects of [Company X’s] origins, business model, practices, culture, and community. Please review this background material carefully.

Participants were then shown a series of brief video and textual descriptions of the fictionalized corporate scenario, including information on Company X’s business model, business processes, community, and culture. This material was an abridged version of what Experiment 1 presenter participants studied, but an expanded version of what Experiment 1 audience participants studied.

After viewing the multimedia case material, the participants were asked to identify what product Company X sells (a “trap” question to exclude non-serious participants) and to rate the background material on how engaging it was, how much they enjoyed it, how much they paid attention to it, and how difficult it was to understand.

Participants randomly assigned to the Prezi, PowerPoint, and Oral Presentation conditions were then told the following:

Now that you know a little bit about the company, you will watch a video presentation from another research participant. Just as you are playing the role of a [Company X] executive, the other participant is playing the role of i-Mart's Chief Marketing Office (CMO). In this presentation, he or she will try to convince you and your fellow [Company X] executives to accept i-Mart's offer.

Because this presentation is from another research participant playing the role of an i-Mart executive--and not an actual i-Mart executive--please disregard the presenter's appearance (clothing, age, etc). And because we did not professionally videorecord the presentation, please also try to disregard the relatively poor quality of the video compared to the videos you just viewed.

The purpose of this research is to understand what makes presentations effective. So please listen carefully and do your best to imagine that this is "real".

Identically to Experiment 1, participants rated the presentation on how organized, engaging, realistic, persuasive, and effective it was on a five-level scale from “not at all” to “extremely.” Using the same scale, these participants also rated the presenter on how organized, engaging, persuasive, effective, confident, enthusiastic, knowledgeable, professional, nervous, and boring he or she was.

Participants in the Prezi and PowerPoint groups were asked three additional questions. First, they were asked to rate the visual component of the presentation (i.e., the Prezi or the PowerPoint slides) on how organized, engaging, persuasive, effective, dynamic, visually compelling, distracting, informative, distinctive, and boring it was. Second, they were asked to rate whether the presentation had “not enough”, “too much” or an “about right” amount of text, graphs, images, and animations. And finally, there were asked to comment on the visual component of the presentations, including ways in which it could be improved.

All participants then summarized the presentation in their own words, with a minimum acceptable length of 50 characters. Participants were asked to rate how well they understood the “situation with [Company X] and I-Mart,” and to decide whether [Company X] should accept or reject i-Mart’s offer (on a 6-level scale, with the modifiers “definitely,” “probably,” and “possibly”).

In addition, we asked participants a series of recall and comprehension questions about the case. An example recall question is “According to the background materials and the presentation, approximately how many members does [Company X] have?”, with four possible answers ranging from 500,000 to 1.5 million. An example comprehension question is “According to the background materials, what is the biggest challenge [Company X] is facing?”, with possible answers ranging from “marketing” to “logistics.” These comprehension questions were based on the instructor’s guide to the business case material, and included open-ended questions (“Why do you think [Company X] should accept or reject i-Mart's offer?”). At this point we also asked another trap question (“What is 84 plus 27?”).

Finally, and after answering all questions about the business case and presentation, participants answered background questions about their experience with, knowledge of, and general preference for different presentation formats. They also rank-ordered the mini examples of Prezi, PowerPoint, and oral presentations in terms of their effectiveness. These background questions and tasks were the same as those used in Experiment 1.

Participants in the control condition completed the same protocol, with a few exceptions: First, instead of being shown presentations from Experiment 1, they viewed one of three instructional videos (matched for length with the Experiment 1 presentations). Before they viewed these videos they were told “Before you decide what to do about i-Mart's offer to [Company X], we would like you to watch an unrelated presentation and briefly answer some questions about it.” Second, they did not rate how realistic the presentation was, nor did they rate the visual component on how organized, engaging, persuasive, effective, dynamic, visually compelling, distracting, informative, distinctive, and boring it was. And finally, they did not complete the final set of background questions on the different presentation formats or rank-order the example presentations.

At the outset, participants rated oral and PowerPoint presentations as equally effective in general, and Prezi presentations as less effective than the other two formats. Just as we found in Experiment 1, participants rated themselves as more experienced and effective in making and oral and PowerPoint presentations compared to Prezi presentations. They also rated oral and PowerPoint presentations as more enjoyable and effective for them than viewing Prezi presentations. When asked how difficult it was to make the different types of presentations, they rated Prezi as more difficult than oral and PowerPoint presentations, and oral presentations as more difficult than PowerPoint ones. In terms of the number of presentations watched in the last year and in their lifetime—as well as the number of years of experience—they reported more experience watching oral compared to PowerPoint presentations, and more experience watching PowerPoint than watching Prezi presentations. The same pattern was true for their reported experience in making presentations, with one exception: They reported making more PowerPoint than oral presentations in their lifetime. Table 7 presents full descriptive and inference statistics for all self-reported measures of prior experience with and preexisting beliefs about Prezi, PowerPoint, and oral presentations. The experimental groups did not differ significantly on any of these variables.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.t007

Most participants (78%) were either “not at all familiar” or “slightly familiar” with Company X, and the modal participant reported being “somewhat experienced” with “concepts and practices from the business world, such as strategy, innovation, product development, sales, and marketing.” The groups did not differ significantly on these variables, nor did they differ on demographic variables such as age, gender, or education.

For overall judgments of the presentations, participants rated Prezi as more organized, effective, engaging, and persuasive than PowerPoint and oral presentations, and rated PowerPoint no differently than oral presentations. They also rated Prezi presenters as more organized, knowledgeable, effective, and professional than PowerPoint presenters and oral presenters; Prezi presenters were not rated differently from other presentations on how nervous, boring, enthusiastic, confident, persuasive, or engaging they were, and PowerPoint presenters were rated no differently than oral presenters on all dimensions. In judging the visual components of the Prezi and PowerPoint presentations, the audience rated Prezi presentations as more dynamic, visually compelling, and distinctive than PowerPoint slides, and marginally more effective and persuasive.

Examining the magnitude of mean differences, some effects are clearly larger than others. Most notably, Prezi presentations are rated as most organized and visually dynamic, and Prezi presenters are rated as most organized. Fig 4 and Table 8 present the descriptive and inferential statistics, respectively, for these audience ratings.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.t008

Note: rating dimensions are ordered by the magnitude of the difference between Prezi and the other presentation formats; for dimensions with no significant differences between presentation formats, only the overall mean is displayed.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.g004

The modal participant rated the background case material on Company X as “very engaging” and “completely enjoyable,” reported “mostly” understanding the situation with i-Mart and Company X, and rated the presentations as “very realistic.” Seventy percent of participants expected to do “somewhat well” or “very well” when quizzed about the case. There were no significant group differences on any of these variables.

Audience decision-making.

Did the presentations actually influence participants’ core judgment of the business scenario and, if so, was one presentation format more effective than others?

Participants who received a Prezi presentation accepted i-Mart’s offer 53.7% of the time, participants who received a PowerPoint presentation accepted the offer 49.8% of the time, participants exposed to an oral presentation accepted it 45.5% of the time, and participants exposed to the control presentation accepted it 37.5% of the time (see Fig 5 ). In an omnibus test, these differences were significant, exact p = .002. Specific comparisons revealed that Prezi presentations were significantly more influential than control presentations, exact p = 0003, marginally more influential than oral presentations, exact p = .06, and no more influential than PowerPoint presentations, exact p = .39; PowerPoint presentations were significantly more influential than control presentations, exact p = .006, but not oral presentations, exact p = .34; oral presentations were marginally more influential than control presentations, exact p = .07. In order to investigate the impact of presentation software on decision-making, we contrasted the Prezi and PowerPoint groups with the oral presentation groups. We found a marginally significant effect, exact p = .06.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.g005

On the whole, therefore, the participants’ decision-making results were concordant descriptively (if not always inferentially) with the rating results.

If participants’ perceptions of the presentations and decisions about the case were both influenced by presentation format, then we would expect them to be associated with each other. And this is indeed what we found. Excluding participants in the control group (who did not make judgments about comparable presentations), those who rejected the i-Mart offer rated presentations as worse than those who accepted the i-Mart offer. This was true for 23 of the 24 rating dimensions (“visually boring” was the exception), with the largest effects for ratings of effectiveness and persuasiveness. Those who rejected the offer rated the overall presentation, visual aids, and presenter as less effective than those who accepted the offer, with effect sizes (Cohen’s d ) of .93, .83, and .78, respectively. These effects were consistent across formats, all interaction p s > .05.

We conducted an analogous set of analyses that preserved the original 6-level scale of the decision variable (“possibly accept,” “probably accept,” “definitely accept,” “possibly reject,” “probably reject,” “definitely reject”). These analyses produced qualitatively identical results, both in terms of decision-making as a function of group assignment and the correlation between decision-making and presentation ratings.

Memory and comprehension.

Participants’ performance on the four rote memory questions did not vary across conditions, nor did their correct identification (according to the case designers) of reasons to accept or reject the offer, with one exception: Compared to those in the treatment groups, control participants were more likely to identify Company X’s ability to meet production demand as a reason to reject the i-Mart, omnibus exact p = .00004.

Correlates of presentation outcomes.

There were no notable correlations between demographic variables and participants’ ratings or decisions. In particular, participants’ experience with or preexisting beliefs about each presentation format did not correlate with their ratings of the experimental presentations, mirroring the results from Experiment 1 (but with much greater statistical power). Presentation length or recording quality (as assessed by the independent judges) did not correlate with presentation outcomes.

Participants’ success in distinguishing better from worse presentations of each format—that is, their rank-ordering of short expert-created examples—correlated slightly with their evaluations of the presentations. Most notably, the better participants did on the rank-ordering PowerPoint task, the worse they rated PowerPoint (but not Prezi) presentations on visual dimensions; the same was true for the Prezi task and presentations. For example, participants’ performance in the PowerPoint task correlated negatively with their judgments of how “visually dynamic” PowerPoint presentations were, r = -.22, p = .0005, and participants’ performance on the Prezi task correlated negatively with their judgments of how “visually dynamic” Prezi presentations were, r = -.16, p = .009. Thus, individuals with more expertise in PowerPoint and Prezi were more critical of PowerPoint and Prezi presentations, respectively.

Audiovisual attributes of Prezi and PowerPoint presentations.

To understand the media attributes and psychological mechanisms that underlie the observed effects of format, we examined how participants’ judgments about amount of text, graphs, animations, and images in the presentations correlated with their judgments of the presentations, the visual component of the presentations, and the presenters themselves. To examine these relationships, we conducted one-way ANOVAs with the various ratings as the dependent variables, and participants’ judgments (“not enough,” “about right,” “too much”) about the amount of text, graphs, animations, and images in the PowerPoint and Prezi presentations as the independent variable. For nearly all (80 of 96) of these ANOVAs, the results were highly significant, p s < .001. In judging the amount of text, participants typically rated “too much” or “not enough” text as worse than an “about right” amount; in judging graphs, images, and animations, participants typically rated “too much” and “just right” both as equally better than “not enough.” Averaging across all rating dimensions, the text and graph effects were over twice as large as the animation and image effects; averaging across all attributes, the effects for visual ratings was over twice as large as the effects for presenter and overall ratings. Participants’ judgments about the media attributes of presentations did, therefore, relate to their overall assessments of the presenters and presentations.

Summing across PowerPoint and Prezi presentations, the modal participant indicated that there was the “about right” amount of text, graphs, animations, and images. Only 21% of participants thought there was not enough or too much text; for the other dimensions, this percentage ranged from 42–51%. More participants indicated that there was not enough text, graphs, and animations in PowerPoint presentations than Prezi presentations, with animation as the most distinguishing attribute. Table 9 presents the descriptive and inferential statistics for these variables.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.t009

As shown in Table 10 , participants’ judgments about the audiovisual attributes of the Prezi and PowerPoint presentations were associated with the decision about the business scenario. Individuals who reported that there was not enough text, graph, animation, or images tended to reject the offer for i-Mart, whereas those who reported that there was the “about right” amount of those attributes tended to accept the offer. This effect was particularly pronounced for judgments of graphs and text. Participants who reported too much text also tended to reject the offer.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.t010

In sum, participants’ perceptions of presenters and the presentations correlated with their evaluations of the amount of text, graphs, images, and animations that were included in the presentations. Presenters and presentations were rated worse if they had too much or not enough text, and not enough graphs, images, and animations; in terms of audience decision-making, presentations were less effective if they contained too much or not enough text, or not enough graphs, animations, and images. PowerPoint presentations were judged to have too little of all attributes, particularly animation.

Replicating results from Experiment 1, participants rated presentations made with Prezi as more organized, engaging, persuasive, and effective than both PowerPoint and oral presentations. This remained true despite participants’ preexisting bias against Prezi and the different context of Experiment 2: the audience did not view multiple presentations of different formats and presentations were prerecorded instead of live. Extending the Experiment 1 results, participants also judged Prezi presentations as better in various ways (e.g., more visually compelling, more dynamic) than PowerPoint presentations; participants even rated Prezi presenters more highly (e.g., more knowledgeable, more professional) than PowerPoint presenters.

In making decisions as corporate executives, participants were persuaded by the presentations. Compared to the baseline decisions of the control group, those in the treatment group shifted their decisions by 16.2%, 12.3%, and 8.0% depending on whether they viewed Prezi, PowerPoint, or oral presentations, respectively. The non- or marginal significance of some between-format comparisons (e.g., PowerPoint versus Prezi) is difficult to interpret. We hesitate to dismiss these differences as statistical noise given their general alignment with rating results, as well as the correlation between business decisions and presentation ratings (which do vary significantly with format). For the more objective outcome of decision-making, we can, at the very least, provisionally conclude that Prezi presentations are more effective than oral presentations, and that software-aided presentations are more effective than oral presentations.

We did not find any evidence that the presentations affected participants’ memory or understanding of the case, nor did we find evidence that certain presentation formats impacted learning more than others. Given the goals of the presentations and design of the experiment, however, we hesitate to draw any conclusions from these null results.

General discussion

The most important finding across the two experiments is easy to summarize: Participants evaluated Prezi presentations as more organized, engaging, persuasive, and effective than both PowerPoint and oral presentations. This finding was true for both live and prerecorded presentations, when participants rated or ranked presentations, and when participants judged multiple presentations of different formats or only one presentation in isolation. Results from Experiment 2 demonstrate that these presentations influenced participants’ core judgments about a business decision, and suggest that Prezi may benefit both behavioral and experiential outcomes. We have no evidence, however, that Prezi (or PowerPoint or oral presentations) facilitate learning in either presenters or their audience.

Several uninteresting explanations exist for the observed Prezi effects, none of which posit any specific efficacy of Prezi or ZUIs in general: namely, novelty, bias, and experimenter effects. We consider each in turn.

Novelty heavily influences both attention and memory [ 87 , 88 ], and the benefits of new media have sometimes dissipated over time—just as one would expect with novelty effects [ 3 ]. However, we found no evidence that novelty explains the observed benefits of Prezi: Participants who were less familiar with Prezi did not evaluate Prezi presentations more favorably, and only a small fraction of participants who favored Prezi explained their preference in terms of novelty. We therefore are skeptical that mere novelty can explain the observed effects.

We also considered the possibility that participants had a pre-existing bias for Prezi. This seems unlikely because presenter participants were selected based only on minimal experience with both PowerPoint and Prezi and were assigned randomly to the experimental groups; audience participants from both experiments were selected based merely on high-speed internet access, and the words “Prezi” and “PowerPoint” were not used in any audience recruitment material. In fact, both sets of participants entered the research with biases against Prezi, not for Prezi: They reported more experience with PowerPoint and oral presentations than Prezi, and perceived PowerPoint and oral presentations as more (not less) efficacious than Prezi. Thus, we reject the idea that the results simply reflect pre-existing media biases.

For many reasons, we also find it unlikely that experimenter effects—including demand characteristics (i.e., when participants conform to the experimenters’ expectations)—can explain the observed effects. First, at the outset we did not have strong hypotheses about the benefits of one format over the others. Second, the results are subtle in ways that neither we nor a demand characteristics hypothesis would predict: the effects on subjective experience diverged somewhat from the effects on decision-making, and there were no memory or comprehension effects. Third, the between-participants design of Experiment 2 (and between-participants analysis of Experiment 1 ) limited participants’ exposure to a single presentation format, thereby minimizing their ability to discern the experimental manipulation or research hypotheses. Fourth, we ensured that the presentations were equally high-quality; we did not unconsciously select Prezi presentations that happened to be higher quality than presentations in the other formats. Fifth, the random assignment of presenters to format limits the possible confounding of presenter variables with presentation formats or qualities; and no confounding with format was observed in presenters’ preexisting beliefs, prior experience, or demographics. And finally, in Experiment 2 we only explicitly mentioned or asked participants questions about Prezi, PowerPoint, and oral presentations at the conclusion of the experiment, after collecting all key outcome data.

We therefore conclude that the observed effects are not confounds or biases, but instead reflect a true and specific benefit of Prezi over PowerPoint or, more generally, ZUIs over slideware. If, however, these experimental effects merely reveal that Prezi is more user-friendly than PowerPoint—or that PowerPoint’s default templates encourage shallow processing by “[fetishizing] the outline at the expense of the content” [ 89 ] (pB26)—then we have learned little about the practice or psychology of communication. But if these effects instead reflect intrinsic properties of ZUIs or slideware, then they reveal more interesting and general insights about effective communication.

It is difficult to understand Prezi’s benefits in terms of user-friendliness because the odds were so clearly stacked in PowerPoint’s favor. Presenters were much more experienced in using PowerPoint than Prezi and rated PowerPoint as easier to use than Prezi. Especially given the task constraints—participants only had 45 minutes to prepare for a 5-minute presentation on a relatively new, unfamiliar topic—Prezi’s user interface would have to be improbably superior to PowerPoint’s interface to overcome these handicaps. Moreover, participants’ prior experience with PowerPoint or Prezi did not correlate with their success as presenters, as one would expect under an ease-of-use explanation. Finally, audience participants did not simply favor the Prezi presentations in an even, omnibus sense—they evaluated Prezi as better in particular ways that align with the purported advantages of ZUIs over slideware. This pattern of finding makes most sense if the mechanism were at the level of media, not software.

Participants’ evaluations of Prezi were particularly telling in three ways. First, in participants’ own words (from Experiment 1 ), they frequently described Prezi as engaging , interactive , visually compelling , visually pleasing , or vivid , and PowerPoint as concise , clear , easy to follow , familiar , professional , or organized . Second, in participants’ ratings (from Experiment 2 ), the visuals from Prezi presentations were evaluated as significantly more dynamic, visually compelling, and distinctive than those from PowerPoint presentations. And third, in judging the audiovisual attributes of presentations, participants’ identified animations as both the attribute most lacking in presentations and the attribute that most distinguished Prezi from PowerPoint; furthermore, the more a presentation was judged as lacking animation, the worse it was rated. Taken together, this evidence suggests that Prezi presentations were not just better overall, but were better at engaging visually with their audience through the use of animation. Because ZUIs are defined by their panning and zooming animations—and animation is an ancillary (and frequently misused) feature of slideware—the most parsimonious explanation for the present results is in terms of ZUIs and slideware in general, not Prezi and PowerPoint in particular. The medium is not the message, but it may be the mechanism.

The animated nature of ZUIs makes more sense as possible mechanism for the observed effects when one considers relevant literature on animation. Past research has shown that animation can induce physiological and subjective arousal (e.g., [ 90 , 91 ]) and facilitate attention, learning, and task performance (e.g., [ 92 – 94 ]; but see also [ 95 , 96 ]). Most pertinently, people appear to prefer animated media over static media. Participants rate animated online advertisements as more enjoyable, persuasive, effective, and exciting than static online advertisements [ 97 , 98 ], animated websites as more likeable, engaging, and favorable than static websites [ 99 ], and animated architectural displays as clearer than static displays [ 100 ]. In an experiment of online academic lectures, participants preferred whiteboard-style animations over a slideware-style version matched for both visual and audio content [ 101 ]. Moreover, ZUI’s use of animation aligns with recommended principles for using animation effectively in presentations, which include the creation of a large virtual canvas and the use of zooming to view detail [ 102 ]. Slideware, on the other hand, encourages the use of superfluous animation in slide transitions and object entrances/exits, despite evidence that adding such “seductive details” to multimedia presentations can be counterproductive [ 72 ].

Therefore, we not only conclude that audiences prefer Prezi over PowerPoint presentations, but also conclude that their preference is rooted in an intrinsic attribute of ZUIs: panning and zooming animations. Compared to slideware’s sequential, linear transitions (and oral presentations’ total lack of visual aids), zooming and panning over a virtual canvas is a more engaging and enjoyable experience for an audience.

From this perspective, the reason that participants rated Prezi presentations as more persuasive, effective, and organized than other presentations—and Prezi presenters as more knowledgeable, professional, effective, and organized than other presenters—was because they confuse media with messages and messengers. Dual-process models of persuasion contend that opinion change occurs through not just slow deliberations grounded in logic and reason but also through fast shortcuts rooted in associations and cues [ 103 – 106 ]. If better presenters with better arguments tend to give better presentations, then an audience’s experience while viewing a presentation may shade their judgments about its presenter or argument. This is the same basic logic of research that demonstrates PowerPoint’s persuasion advantage over oral presentations [ 53 , 54 ]. Just as audiences appear more persuaded by slideware than by oral presentations, they also appear more persuaded by ZUI than by slideware presentations. But unlike past research, we do not argue that audience members use technological sophistication as a cue for argument quality [ 53 ] or presenter preparedness [ 54 ]; instead, we suggest that they use their subjective viewing experience as a heuristic for judging both presentations and presenters. Because ZUI presentations are more engaging than slideshows, ZUI presentations and presenters are judged more positively than slideshows.

Concluding remarks

Media research, including research into presentation software, is plagued methodologically by a lack of experimental control, the unjustifiable assumption that media effects are constant across individuals and content, and a failure to account for the biases of all involved: the presenters, the audiences, and the researchers. In the research reported here we strived to overcome these challenges by randomly assigning presenters and audience members to competing presentation formats, blinding them to the experimental manipulations, and sampling a sufficient array of presentations within each format.

Our conclusions about the advantages of ZUIs (such as Prezi) over slideware (such as PowerPoint) and oral presentations are, of course, tentative. Further research will need to replicate the findings across different presentation contexts, clarify whether the subjective benefits of ZUIs over slideware result in decision-making or behavioral advantages, and better investigate the precise media attributes responsible for these advantages. Like others [ 107 ], we caution against technological determinism: Presentation medium is but one of many factors that determine presentation success, and presentations that rely on any given medium can succeed or fail. Because slideware can be used to zoom and pan over a virtual canvas just as ZUIs can be used to create slideshows, the benefits of ZUIs over slideware are ultimately based on affordances: How much do certain formats encourage or enable psychologically advantageous media attributes, such as zooming and panning animations?

In many ways, it is surprising that we found any effects of presentation medium. The presentations differed in many ways aside from their format, ways that surely influenced their effectiveness: Each presentation was made by a different person (sampled from a diverse pool of participants), presenters chose what content to include in their presentation, and presenters decided how to convey that content within their assigned format. Under real-world circumstances in which presentations of different formats are actually contrasted with each other, we expect this background “noise” to be greatly reduced and impact of format correspondingly greater.

Supporting information

S1 file. experiment 1 audience pre-survey..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.s001

S2 File. Experiment 1 audience post-survey.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.s002

S3 File. Experiment 1 presenter pre-survey.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.s003

S4 File. Experiment 1 presenter post-survey.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.s004

S5 File. Experiment 2 audience post-survey.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178774.s005

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Erin-Driver Linn, Brooke Pulitzer, and Sarah Shaughnessy of the Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching for their institutional guidance and support, Nina Cohodes, Gabe Mansur, and the staff of the Harvard Decision Sciences Laboratory for their assistance with participant testing, Michael Friedman for his feedback on pilot versions of the study protocol, and Tom Ryder for his support in adapting the multimedia case for research purposes.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization: SMK ST STM.
Data curation: ST STM.
Formal analysis: ST STM.
Funding acquisition: SMK ST STM.
Investigation: ST.
Methodology: SMK ST STM.
Project administration: ST STM.
Resources: ST STM.
Software: ST STM.
Supervision: SMK ST STM.
Validation: SMK ST STM.
Visualization: STM.
Writing – original draft: STM.
Writing – review & editing: SMK ST STM.
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What If Awesome People Gave Awful Presentations!

Imagine that the leaders of some the greatest tech companies in the world gave the worst presentations you’ve ever seen! With a little help from Photoshop we created a few examples on how brilliant minds could fail at presenting. Would you’ve taken their ideas and vision seriously if you saw them presenting like that?

Steve Jobs – The “All Text on 1 Slide” Presenter

Steve Jobs introducing a brilliant new invention to the world. He is a little shy so the doesn’t want to talk or make a great speech. He lists all the iPhone features on slides. Raise your hand if you’re done reading so he can get on with the the next slide.

Bill Gates – The “Couldn’t Care Less” Guy

He had one assignment. He completed it. The audience is probably stupid anyway so he made it look very simple. Oh and he used Prezi because it’s free, not that stupid PowerPoint as he couldn’t find that Office 2017 torrent anyway… Why do you want to ask questions? I just showed you all the information on the slides?

Mark Zuckerberg – Simply Overcomplicated Ideas

It is important to deliver the cookies with an SSL connection that is protected with a 128-Bit Encryption. Before you confirm the database-based authentication, make sure all the data is hashed as 32-character string. That’s how easy it is to make a new friend on Facebook, duh!

Jeff Bezos – The “Last Minute & Unprepared” Guy

The most important presentation of the year. Jeff Bezos walks into the room 5 minutes before the presentations starts. Not a single minute was wasted on preparing for the presentation. Tries to connect his own laptop to the display – not working. Let’s wait until someone finds the tech guy.

Elon Musk – The Funny Dude with Ineffective Visuals

Would you as an investor give any money to a man showing slides like these? Unfortunately I’ve seen many business pitches with similar content. It would be a perfect idea – if you were making a coloring book startup!

So I hope there were a few lessons learned here! Your ideas might be great, even the best, but if you fail at presenting, people simply won’t take you seriously. Just try to prepare for your speech even a little bit and it will have a big impact. We can be quite sure that the brilliant minds above probably did give a few awful presentations during their early days, but they definitely learned from their mistakes.

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Avoid the PowerPoint Trap by Having Less Wordy Slides Don't let your slides distract an audience from the message you're delivering.

By Carmine Gallo • Mar 17, 2014

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

The following is the fourth in a series, " Talk Like TED ," in which communications coach/author Carmine Gallo applies tips, techniques and insights to help entrepreneurs and business professionals sell their ideas more persuasively. These ideas are inspired by the TED Conference's most celebrated talks in its 30-year history.

The explorer Robert Ballard discovered the remains of the Titanic in 1985, two-and-half miles beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. In 2008 he stood on much safer ground on a TED stage to reveal the astonishing and hidden undersea world of the deep ocean.

His slideshow contained 57 slides, yet there were no bullet points or text on any of them. Ballard showed artist renderings, photographs and animations of the fascinating undersea worlds he's discovered, but no text. Why?

"I'm storytelling, not lecturing," Ballard tells me.

Related: 10 Questions to Ask When Creating a Killer PowerPoint Presentation

Avoid the PowerPoint Trap by Having Less Wordy Slides

Ballard has a point. It's well established in research literature that too much text on a slide is the worst way of transferring information. The brain simply cannot multitask as well as people think it does. If you deliver complex information -- and ask your audience to read words on a slide at the same time -- they won't retain a thing.

Some speakers deliver TED talks with no slides, while many others use presentation design software such as PowerPoint, Apple Keynote or Prezi. I actually prefer slides, if done well . And the reason I prefer slides is because of a concept well established in neuroscience literature. It's called picture superiority. Simply put, if you deliver information verbally, your listener will retain about 10 percent of the content; add a picture and retention soars to 65 percent.

Our brains are wired to process visual information -- such as pictures -- very differently than text and sound. Scientists call the effect "multimodal" learning: pictures are processed in several channels instead of one, giving the brain a far deeper and meaningful encoding experience.

PowerPoint has earned a bad reputation, yet it's the presentation tool of choice for more than 90 percent of business presentations today. PowerPoint is not the enemy! The enemy is the improper use of PowerPoint. I've seen a lot of bad PowerPoint decks and many elegant ones. I've seen gorgeous slides created with Apple Keynote and some truly awful ones. Regardless of the design tool, slides that work best have a balance of words and pictures instead of text alone.

Related: 3 Ways Public Humiliation Made Me a Stronger Entrepreneur

At TED 2010, billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates gave a very popular presentation called "Innovating to Zero." The average PowerPoint has 40 words. It took Gates 15 slides to reach 40 words of text. Instead of words, he showed photos and images. Gates' first slide showed a photograph of poor children in a small African village. "Energy and climate are extremely important to these people. In fact, more important than to anyone else on the planet," he began.

Gates is remarkable at making complex content easy to grasp. He explained global warming in seven seconds and used a "straightforward" visual formula to do it. According to Gates, "CO2 gets emitted. That leads to a temperature increase, and that temperature increase leads to some very negative effects." Gates' slide displayed the formula over a photo of a dry, parched landscape.

If you want to create a TED-worthy presentation to wow your audience, utilize images and photos. You don't have to eliminate text entirely, but favor visuals over words.

Here's an exercise. Strive for no more than 40 words in the first 10 slides. This will force you to think creatively about telling a memorable and engaging story instead of filling the slide with needless and distracting text. You might not be able to achieve this goal with every slide, but it's good practice.

Once you force yourself to eliminate wordy slides, you'll realize how much more fun you can have with your presentation. The best part -- your audience will love it!

Related: Want to Sell Your Ideas? Tell Engaging Stories.

Keynote Speaker, Bestselling Author, Communication Coach

Carmine Gallo is a popular keynote speaker and internationally bestselling author. His new book, The Storyteller’s Secret : From TED Speaker to Business Legends, Why Some Ideas Catch On And Others Don’t , features famous TED speakers, business legends and successful entrepreneurs who reveal why some ideas catch on and others don’t. Gallo is also the author of The Wall Street Journal bestsellers Talk Like TED and The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs . For more information or to sign up for Gallo’s newsletter, visit CarmineGallo.com

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Jim Harvey's Presentation Skills Advice

The worst presentation slide ever.

You might have seen this slide before, as it’s often used as an example of the worst presentation slide ever. You can see why, I’m sure. But sometimes analysing extremely bad examples can help us to understand how we can improve our own presentations – even when we have (I hope) much better slides to begin with.

This slide comes from a presentation created by the US military for a discussion about (apparently) the Afghanistan war. One of the audience members is famously reported to have commented on the slide, “When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war.” Is it the ‘worst presentation slide ever’? And if so, what makes it so bad?

What’s the Point?

In a presentation, the audience is concentrating on listening to what the presenter is saying, so they have little time or brain capacity to devote to understanding slides. For that reason, slides should have one clear, simple message which the audience can understand at a glace, allowing them to devote their attention to the words of the presenter.

You could spend 30 minutes staring at this diagram in silent room, and still not understand it’s point.

Where Should I Look?

One of our top presentation rules is ‘remove clutter’ . Why? Clutter confuses the audience because they don’t know where to look. If the presenter says “as you can see from the picture” and there are five pictures on screen, the clutter is diluting the message and distracting the audience.

Simple slides give the audience one thing to look at – focusing their attention and making the most of an opportunity to provide visual back-up to the presenter’s verbal message (see more on visual and verbal channels ).

What Does it Say?

I don’t know how big a screen this diagram was shown on; but I doubt the audience could read all of it’s text. If you’ve got so much clutter that your text is too small to read, what’s the point of it? Again, removing clutter improves presentations by allowing the information you do show to be big, clear and memorable.

Is This the Worst Presentation Slide Ever?

It’s definitely bad. But we can’t know how bad because nobody knows the purpose of the slide. If the message of the slide was simply to say, “this issue is really complicated, and you don’t need to understand the detail”, then the slide was probably effective. It passes Nancy Duarte’s ‘glance test’ because after a second anybody seeing that diagram would think “that’s one complex subject”.

But if the purpose of the slide was to explain the details of the subject, it fails. The audience would not only have no clue what they were supposed to look at or how to interpret all of the information; they’d probably be put off ever delving deeper into the subject.

Perhaps the US Military should be required to read our series on explaining complex concepts.

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Prezi™ For Dummies® by Stephanie Diamond

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Chapter 17. Ten Worst Things to Do with Prezi

In This Chapter

Getting stuck in the wrong mindset

Forgetting to follow your story line

Missing out on sharing presentations

Using Prezi is an adventure. You get to rethink presentations and let creativity dictate your outcome. Along with this new freedom is the need to explore and find out what works for you.

This chapter looks at some of the mistakes you might make when getting started with Prezi. I've listed some of the things you want to avoid as you go along. There's really no big mistake that you make that can't be corrected. As you become more comfortable with your new tools, you'll quickly see how to avoid them. This list will help prevent you from dragging old habits with you. Out with the old, in with the new!

Keep an Old Mindset

The only requirement you have when you start using Prezi is to open your mind to a new way of thinking about presentations. If you try to shoehorn a previously created slide presentation into a prezi, you will be disappointed.

Slide presentations are flat. They have no dimension or contrasts. When you create presentations in Prezi, you need to break all the pieces apart and think about grouping them in new more effective ways.

Imagine a dense slide that has five bullet points on it. With Prezi, you can take each point and give it its own space, dimension, and timing. This is a very different way of presenting data. You can use Frames as containers to group things instead of showing a list. In these groups can ...

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Prezi review

Take your designs, videos and presentations to the next level.

TechRadar Verdict

Prezi is a feature-rich online presentation suite that aims to enable anyone to create stunning presentations, including those without any in-depth knowledge of design and related practices. It comes with various advanced tools that can help you do pretty much anything you want with your presentation, and it doesn’t take a lot of time to get used to how everything works. Prezi does have some minor shortcomings in its UI, though those are mostly limited to features that aren’t that actively used in the first place.

Rich in features

Easy to create stunning presentations without any design skills

Lots of assets ready to use

Some UI elements are a bit clunky

Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

Online presentation tools have evolved a lot over the last decade, with the advancement of various rich web technologies that have enabled developers to do everything they want within the confines of the typical browser . Traditionally, these applications required powerful hardware, especially if one wanted to leverage their full features. Nowadays it’s a different story, with many tools offering advanced functionality directly in the browser, without requiring a strong machine. This is especially noticeable with tools where most of the processing happens on the company’s servers.

Prezi is built from the ground up with the goal of removing as many of the traditional limitations imposed by web applications, and enabling users to create stunning, rich presentations with minimal effort and design skills. It doesn’t take long to get used to how Prezi works and where everything is located, including some of the more advanced features of the application. Its price is quite attractive compared to the majority of its competition too, making Prezi a great offer all around.

Plans and pricing

Prezi is offered in three different subscription tiers though all of them include access to all three main parts of the suite – Prezi Video, Prezi Design, and Prezi Present. Prezi's Standard plan costs $5 per month, the Plus plan costs $15 per month and the Premium plan costs $19 per month. Since the three tools are meant to be used in conjunction in the first place, it makes sense that the subscription includes access to all of them, though this can create the impression that you’re getting much more value for your money. Still, all points considered, the pricing of Prezi is more than adequate, especially compared to other similar tools on the market.

A free trial is available, unlocking all features of the premium subscription for a week. That’s on top of the free tier that’s already provided by default, which can be very useful for comparing what Prezi has to offer and what some of the more advanced features can do. The company occasionally runs discounts on their subscription plans, though it can be tricky to catch those in time.

Prezi is divided into three main sections – Video, Design, and Present. Prezi Video is used for creating videos, as the name implies. It has various features to get started as quickly as possible, including recording directly from your desktop or camera, importing a PowerPoint presentation, or starting with one of the provided templates. The available templates are diverse and carefully designed, and there should be something for everyone in there.

Prezi Design, on the other hand, allows you to create more general designs that can be reused between different parts of the program. For example, you can create a design for video presentations, which you can then combine with templates in the Video creator to fully customize your content and tailor it to your own needs.

Last but not least, we have Prezi Present, which allows you to create the perfect presentation, with various features that you’ll find familiar if you’re coming in from PowerPoint or another similarly popular presentation tool.

Interface and in use

Prezi’s interface doesn’t take long to get used to, and the program is designed in a very clean manner overall, providing quick access to all important features at a glance. Those familiar with PowerPoint should feel right at home. Which is interesting, because Prezi did not start out that way. The program was originally designed with the idea of doing everything that PowerPoint doesn’t, and improving on the rest. Its initial UI was very different from what we have now, but many users seem to agree that the changes we’ve seen in the long run have made sense.

Some of the more obscure features can take a while to find, but Prezi can make it easy to get through those obstacles with its detailed help section. You should need very little time to find your way around Prezi in the beginning, even if you’re looking for more advanced functionality.

There’s a knowledge base with a lot of information available to anyone, and the company offers various additional forms of support on top of that, including phone support and a user forum. Phone support might be restricted depending on your account, but as long as you’re on a premium subscription, there should be very few cases where you have to explicitly request access to it. The company also provides a comprehensive workshop with lots of guide videos and other materials to get users started on their journey as quickly as possible. Self-learners should find Prezi to be an absolute delight to use, and it’s definitely aimed at those who like to research their tools on their own.

The competition

Microsoft PowerPoint and Apple Keynote are perhaps the most notable competitors of Prezi, though the application does plenty of things in its own unique way, and easily stands out on this market. It’s worth checking out some of the more prominent competitors in case you’re wondering how other companies approach the design of some common features, but it’s very likely that you’ll find yourself sticking with Prezi in the end.

Final verdict

All things considered – especially the price – Prezi is a great offer in a market with a lot of competition. It does some things in its own unique way, but in most cases, that’s an improvement over most other tools in that price range on the market.

We've also highlighted the best presentation software and best free office software

Stefan has always been a lover of tech. He graduated with an MSc in geological engineering but soon discovered he had a knack for writing instead. So he decided to combine his newfound and life-long passions to become a technology writer. As a freelance content writer, Stefan can break down complex technological topics, making them easily digestible for the lay audience.

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Prezi vs. PowerPoint: Which One Has the Wow Factor?

Are you looking for the right tool to prepare a formal presentation?

We can assume that your presentation's material will make or break the entire affair. A presenting tool, on the other hand, will capture the interest of your audience. Prezi vs. PowerPoint? Which is better for standing out in your talks?

Whatever you pick, the presentation's outcome will be heavily influenced by the material and how it is delivered.

However, a greater grasp of the two programs is necessary for you to make an informed choice on which software to use for your school assignment or business presentation .

Prezi vs. PowerPoint: The Ultimate Showdown

Prezi and PowerPoint each have their own style to the interface.

Prezi employs a zooming user interface (ZUI) that allows users to zoom in and out. While PowerPoint is linear, Prezi isn't. Prezi's non-linear approach, which allows viewers to transition between various concepts rapidly, is reportedly disturbing PowerPoint users.

While Prezi and PowerPoint have their shining parts, they both have drawbacks. As a result, whether you are planning an instructional or a commercial presentation, you should comprehend all parts of the Prezi versus PowerPoint debate .

Want an alternative? Check out our review of a new presentation software, Prezentar, here .

The web-based nature of Prezi means that, unlike PowerPoint, the user has access to a blank canvas on which to build their presentation. None of the old-school slides are present.

However, the infinite canvas allows you to arrange your thoughts in a non-linear form, with various possible routes connecting your ideas.

Prezi makes it simple to zero in on a specific section of text for closer examination. Many people prefer Prezi over PowerPoint because of the presentation format's interactive features .

Highlights of Prezi

Non-linear navigation.

Prezi's primary benefit is its ability to zoom out and get a bird's-eye perspective of a presentation. Prezi's trademark navigation also provides a fresh point of view from which to create and experience presentations. The whole presentation is built in chunks rather than slide by slide .

If the presenter or audience needs to return to the main menu slide, they may easily do so by selecting it. Presentation makers bored with the standard method will greatly appreciate Prezi.

Compatibility

The wide number of available integrations is Prezi's second selling point. Apps like Slack, Zoom, and Google Meet may be linked directly to your Prezi presentation.

As a result of these add-ons, Prezi presentations may be easily shared and given to groups of people.

Affordability

The free edition is perfect for basic school assignments that don't need a lot of bells and whistles. The cheapest monthly fee for a premium plan is just $3.

Drawbacks of Prezi

Complicated interface.

Prezi's primary strength is also its worst weakness. Many people find that constantly panning in and out is too much information to process at once.

In addition, if the recipient of a shared Prezi presentation is unfamiliar with the software, they may get overwhelmed by the complexity of the presentation.

It's also simple for the maker to give up on the zooming navigation. It might be challenging to present cohesively if the slides and sections aren't well-organized and straightforward.

Offline Access Is Not Free

The second drawback of Prezi is that presentations made using free editions need access to the internet to be viewed.

Navigation might be quite difficult when using Prezi over a slow internet connection. In addition, only premium subscribers have access to content when offline. This drawback gives PowerPoint an edge as users can access and edit their presentations offline.

Limitations in Data Customization

Prezi provides a few chart and graph choices. However, unlike PowerPoint, these charts cannot be edited to give your presentation a unique appearance and feel.

While Prezi's new design function is an improvement over previous attempts at data visualization customization, it still falls short of competing alternatives.

Allows users to zoom in and out easily
Adding media like photos and videos is a breeze
Possible to embed a presentation into a website or blog
Users may give the presentation the appearance and feel of traditional media, such as newspapers and magazines
Accessible on any with an internet connection
Relatively new to most people
Offline access requires a pricey Prezi Desktop subscription

Since 1978, PowerPoint has revolutionized the concept of presentations. PowerPoint has drastically developed, and it is now in its 12th iteration. Due to its popularity as a presenting tool, PowerPoint is now a standard feature of almost all presentations.

As with most software, presenters only used a small fraction of the features available while using this application. PowerPoint presentations are mostly a collection of slides with text and bullet points.

Presenters read from slides, employ logical graphics, and attempt to captivate listeners with animations that don't belong in their presentations. This gap led to the creation of innovative presentation tools such as Prezi.

If you're a fan of Microsoft Office, you'll be happy to hear that PowerPoint has had significant updates in the last year. The intense rivalry between the two systems has spurred significant development in both areas.

Therefore, PowerPoint has received some wonderful updates that make it more competitive against Prezi, which is gradually developing a reputation as the most inventive presenting tool.

PowerPoint is the program of choice for many people who need to create a presentation. It's more suited for professional presentations that need a linear plot and gentler on the user and the learner.

Highlights of PowerPoint

The first PowerPoint pro is that it is widely adopted. With decades in the market and hundreds of updates, PowerPoint has earned the trust of millions. PowerPoint presentations are very accessible and widely understood.

Hence, it is simple to disseminate and share with coworkers. In fact, many consider it the standard presentation tool.

Extensive Multimedia Features

PowerPoint's many options for incorporating media into presentations are a huge plus.

Users can use multimedia elements like video, audio, voiceover, and animations to maintain audience attention. It is possible to increase a presentation's visual impact by using these tools.

Various Templates

PowerPoint's third selling point is access to a wide variety of premade slides, and it is not directly inside the application but rather via other web resources and online markets.

Since PowerPoint is the standard for creating presentations, many premade themes exist for presenting on various topics .

Drawbacks of PowerPoints

Yes, PowerPoint presentations are connotated with boredom. Often, you'll hear a coworker say: "I fell asleep during a PowerPoint." Users have used PowerPoint to the point where it has become synonymous with homework.

As a result of this notoriety, numerous presenters began providing novel approaches. There's even a phrase 'death by Powerpoint'.

PowerPoint requires the perpetually pricey Microsoft 365 Office Suite , which is a major drawback. Users may independently get PowerPoint, but doing so comes at a steep price, and it costs money each month since it's included in Microsoft 365's comprehensive package.

Compared to purchasing the Software Suite, purchasing the software individually does not include any data backup or storage.

Incompatibilities

The third con relates to PowerPoint's longevity in the business . Sometimes older computer applications won't work with more modern formats. Alternatively, the newest PowerPoint won't run on PCs that can't handle it.

For instance, if you wish to use their cloud for collaborative editing of a PowerPoint presentation, you can't use a PPT file. You'll need a more recent format.

Lastly, the offline version of Microsoft PowerPoint is only available in Windows operating systems. People using Linux and Mac may experience challenges using them.

Comes with customizable pre-designed slide templates
Suitable for a musically and aurally pleasing presentation
Compatible with voiceovers and video clips
Easy to print the slides
Easy to access linked resources
No internet connection is required to open and navigate the presentation
Difficult to return to a previous slide quickly
Few options for premade slide designs
Part of Microsoft Office Suite, so you'll need to install it on your computer

Prezi vs. PowerPoint? Which is More Impressive?

Consider how easy it is to go with your preference. Give some thought to the field you work in and the specifics of your employment.

It doesn't matter whether you're a teacher , a salesman, or a businessman, PowerPoint will help you create a more polished presentation. You may find many sets of professional templates, backgrounds, and slides online and use them in your presentation.

With its compatibility with Excel and other tools, PowerPoint is an excellent tool for business presentations.

On the other hand, Prezi will keep your audience interested throughout your presentation, and it will do wonders for promoting your business.

Prezi is great for attention-grabbing presentations, especially those with a narrative, and PowerPoint is like a well-thought-out guidebook, whereas Prezi is like a moving infographic.

Comparing Prezi with PowerPoint

PowerPoint is perfect for creating fast presentations ( like Ignite ) that get the idea across. It is often used in academic contexts, such as presentations, lectures, and seminars, when the knowledge the audience is seeking is the focus of the presenter's efforts.

But Prezi is a better choice for young people. If your audience loves eye-catching graphics, make sure there are plenty of special effects, humorous animations, and other features.

Your audience profile and interests should be front and center in your mind whenever you pick out a presentation tool.

Wrapping Up

Prezi vs. PowerPoint? Your digital skills and the profile of your audience will determine which tools are best for you.

Reading this post, you may weigh the benefits of each tool and select the tool that will dazzle your audience. As a takeaway, always consider your audience, their needs, and the presentation's content.

Want an alternative? Check out our review of a new presentation software, Prezentar, here .

Like what you're reading?

How to create a great thesis defense presentation: everything you need to know

Get your team on prezi – watch this on demand video.

Anete Ezera April 13, 2024

Ready to take on your thesis defense presentation? It’s not just about wrapping up years of study; it’s your moment to share your insights and the impact of your work. A standout presentation can make all the difference. It’s your chance to highlight the essentials and really connect with your audience.

This is where Prezi comes into play. Forget about flipping through slide after slide. With Prezi, you craft a narrative that pulls your audience in. It simplifies the complex, ensuring your key points hit home. Let’s explore how Prezi can help transform your thesis defense into a successful presentation.

What is a thesis defense presentation and why are they needed?

Whether you’re preparing for a master’s thesis defense or a Ph.D. thesis defense, this final step in your academic journey is the one with the most significance, as it dramatically influences your final grade. It’s also your chance to display the dedication and effort you’ve put into your research, a way to demonstrate how significant your work is.

So, why is this such a big deal? A good presentation helps convince your teachers that your research is solid and makes a difference in your field. It’s your time to answer questions, show that your research methods were sound, and point out what’s new and interesting about your work. In the end, a great thesis defense presentation helps you finish strong and makes sure you leave a lasting impression as you wrap up this chapter of your academic life.

Best practices for making a successful thesis defense presentation

In order to craft a standout thesis defense presentation, you need to do more than just deliver research findings. Here are some key strategies to ensure success, and how Prezi can play a crucial role in elevating your presentation.

Start with a strong introduction

Kick-off with an engaging introduction that lays out your research question, its significance, and your objectives. This initial segment grabs attention and sets the tone. Using Prezi’s zoom feature can make your introduction pop by visually underscoring key points, helping your audience grasp the importance of your work right from the start.

Organize your presentation clearly

A coherent structure is essential for guiding your audience through your thesis defense presentation. Prezi can help by offering a map view of your content’s layout upfront, providing a clear path through your introduction, methodology, results, and conclusion. This clarity keeps your audience engaged and makes your arguments easier to follow.

Incorporate multimedia elements

Adding multimedia elements like videos, audio clips, and animations can greatly improve the appeal of your thesis defense presentation. Prezi supports the seamless integration of these elements, allowing you to bring your research to life in a more vibrant and engaging way. Videos can serve as powerful testimonials or demonstrations, while animations can help illustrate complex processes or changes over time. This variety keeps your audience engaged and helps convey your message in a more exciting way.

Smiling african woman giving presentation at startup. Happy female professional standing in front of a large television screen with a graph.

Simplify complex data

Your findings need to be presented in a way that’s easy for your audience to understand. Prezi shines here, with tools that transform intricate data into clear, engaging visuals. By implementing charts and graphs into your presentation, you can make your data stand out and support your narrative effectively.

Engage your audience

Make your thesis defense a two-way conversation by interacting with your audience. Whether it’s through questions, feedback, or direct participation, engagement is key. Prezi allows for a flexible presentation style, letting you navigate sections in response to audience input, creating a dynamic and engaging experience.

Highlight key takeaways

Emphasize the key takeaways of your research throughout your presentation to ensure your audience grasps the most critical aspects of your work. With Prezi, you can use spotlighting and strategic zooming to draw attention to these takeaways, making them stand out. This method helps reinforce your main points, ensuring they stick with your audience long after your presentation concludes. By clearly defining what your audience should remember, you guide their understanding and appreciation of your research’s value and implications.

Practice makes perfect

Confidence in delivery comes from thorough practice. Familiarize yourself with every aspect of your thesis defense presentation, including timing, voice control, and gestures. Prezi Video is a great tool for rehearsing, as it allows you to blend your presentation materials with your on-camera performance, mirroring the live defense setting and helping you polish your delivery.

Cropped shot of a businesswoman delivering a speech during a conference

End with a lasting impression

Conclude your presentation powerfully by summarizing your main findings, their implications, and future research directions. Prezi’s ability to zoom out and show the big picture at your conclusion helps reinforce how each section of your presentation contributes to your overall thesis, ensuring your research leaves a memorable impact on your audience.

By using these tips and taking advantage of what Prezi offers, you can make your thesis defense presentation really stand out. It’ll not only hit the mark with your audience but also clearly show why your research matters.

Meeting tight deadlines with Prezi

Facing a looming deadline for your thesis defense presentation? Prezi offers smart solutions to help you create a polished and engaging presentation quickly, even if it feels like you’re down to the wire.

A closer look at Prezi AI features

Prezi AI is a standout feature for those pressed for time. It assists in structuring your presentation efficiently, suggesting design elements and layouts that elevate your content. This AI-driven approach means you can develop a presentation that looks meticulously planned and executed in a fraction of the time it would normally take. The result? A presentation that communicates the depth and value of your research clearly and effectively, without the last-minute rush being evident. Here’s what Prezi AI can do:

Streamlined creation process: At the core of Prezi’s efficiency is the AI presentation creator . Perfect for those last-minute crunch times, it’s designed to tackle tight deadlines with ease.
Easy start: Kick off your presentation creation with just a click on the “Create with AI” button. Prezi AI guides you through a smooth process, transforming your initial ideas or keywords into a structured and visually appealing narrative.
Visual impact: There’s no need to dive deep into design details. Simply provide some basic input, and Prezi AI will craft it into a presentation that grabs and holds your audience’s attention, making your thesis defense visually compelling.
AI text editing: Spending too much time fine-tuning your message? Prezi AI text editing features can help. Whether you need to expand on a concept, clarify complex terms, or condense your content without losing impact, Prezi AI streamlines these tasks.
Content refinement: Adjust text length for deeper explanation, simplify language for better understanding, and ensure your presentation’s content is precise and to the point. Prezi AI editing tools help you refine your message quickly, so you can focus on the essence of your research.

Using Prezi Video for remote thesis defense presentations

For remote thesis defenses, Prezi Video steps up to ensure your presentation stands out. It integrates your on-screen presence alongside your presentation content, creating a more personal and engaging experience for your audience. This is crucial in maintaining attention and interest, particularly in a virtual format where keeping your audience engaged presents additional challenges. Prezi Video makes it seem as though you’re presenting live alongside your slides, helping to simulate the in-person defense experience and keep your audience focused on what you’re saying.

Using these advanced Prezi features, you can overcome tight deadlines with confidence, ensuring your thesis defense presentation is both impactful and memorable, no matter the time constraints.

The Prezi experience: what users have to say

Prezi users have shared compelling insights on how the platform’s unique features have revolutionized their presentations. Here’s how their experiences can inspire your thesis defense presentation:

Storytelling with Prezi

Javier Schwersensky highlights the narrative power of Prezi: “This is a tool that is going to put you ahead of other people and make you look professional and make your ideas stand out,” he remarks. For your thesis defense, this means Prezi can help you craft a narrative that not only presents your research but tells a story that captures and retains the committee’s interest.

Flexibility and creativity

Tamara Montag-Smit appreciates Prezi for its “functionality of the presentation that allows you to present in a nonlinear manner.” This flexibility is key in a thesis defense, allowing you to adapt your presentation flow in real time based on your audience’s engagement or questions, ensuring a more dynamic and interactive defense.

The open canvas

Vitek Dočekal values Prezi’s open canvas , which offers “creative freedom” and the ability to “create a mind map and determine how to best present my ideas.” For your thesis defense, this means Prezi lets you lay out and show off your work in a way that makes sense and grabs your audience’s attention, turning complicated details into something easy and interesting to follow.

Engagement and retention

Adam Rose points out the engagement benefits of Prezi: “Being able to integrate videos is extremely effective in capturing their attention.” When you need to defend a thesis, using Prezi to include videos or interactive content can help keep your committee engaged, making your presentation much more memorable.

These real insights show just how effective Prezi is for crafting truly influential presentations. By incorporating Prezi into your thesis defense presentation, you can create a defense that not only shows how strong your research is but also leaves a lasting impression on your audience.

Thesis defense presentations for inspiration

Prezi is much more than a platform for making presentations; it’s a place where you can find inspiration by browsing presentations that other Prezi users have made. Not only that, but Prezi offers numerous templates that would be useful for thesis defense presentations, making the design process much easier. Here are a few examples that you may find helpful:

Research project template by Prezi

This Prezi research project template stands out as an ideal choice for thesis defense presentations due to its well-structured format that facilitates storytelling from start to finish. It begins with a clear introduction and problem statement, setting a solid foundation for the narrative. The inclusion of sections for user research, interviews, demographics, and statistics allows for a detailed presentation of the research process and findings, which are crucial when defending a thesis.

Visual elements like user mapping and journey maps help make complex information understandable and engaging, which is crucial for maintaining the committee’s attention. Additionally, addressing pain points and presenting prototypes showcases problem-solving efforts and practical applications of the research. The template culminates in a conclusion that ties everything together, emphasizing the research’s impact and future possibilities. Its comprehensive yet concise structure makes it an excellent tool for communicating the depth and significance of your work in a thesis defense.

Civil rights movement Prezi

This Prezi on the Civil Rights Movement exemplifies an effective thesis defense presentation by seamlessly blending structured content, multimedia enhancements, and dynamic navigation. It organizes information into coherent sections like “About,” “Key Events,” and “Key People,” offering a comprehensive view ideal for a thesis presentation. The strategic use of videos adds depth, providing historical context in a dynamic way that text alone cannot, enhancing the audience’s engagement and understanding.

Furthermore, Prezi’s open canvas feature brings the narrative to life, allowing for a fluid journey through the Civil Rights Movement. This method of presentation, with its zooming and panning across a virtual canvas, not only captivates but also helps to clarify the connections between various elements of the research, showcasing how to effectively communicate complex ideas in a thesis defense.

AI-assisted history template

This AI-assisted presentation template stands out as a great choice for thesis defense presentations, especially for those rooted in historical research. By merging striking visuals with rich, informative content, you can use this template to craft a narrative that breathes life into past events, guiding the audience on an engaging journey through time. Its sequential storytelling approach, empowered by Prezi AI , ensures a smooth transition from one historical point to the next, demonstrating the depth and continuity of your research. This template showcases Prezi AI’s capability to enhance narrative flow. By integrating advanced visuals and text, it captivates audiences and makes it an invaluable tool for presenting complex historical theses in a clear, compelling way.

Master your final grade with a Prezi thesis defense presentation

Preparing for a thesis defense, whether for a master’s or Ph.D., is a pivotal moment that significantly influences your final grade. It’s your platform to demonstrate the dedication behind your research and its importance in your field. A well-executed presentation convinces your educators of your research’s validity and your ability to bring fresh perspectives to light.

To craft a successful thesis defense presentation, Prezi’s innovative features can be a game-changer. Prezi can empower you to transform presentations into captivating stories and provide you with the flexibility and creative freedom needed to make your presentation an outstanding success. Incorporating videos or utilizing Prezi’s non-linear presentation style can keep your committee engaged and emphasize your research’s significance.

Prezi also serves as a hub of inspiration, offering templates perfect for thesis defenses. From structured research project templates to dynamic historical narratives, Prezi provides tools that communicate your thesis’s depth and significance effectively, ensuring you leave a memorable impact on your audience. So, it’s time to revamp your thesis defense presentation and change it from dull to inspirational with Prezi.

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6 thoughts on “ Top 12 Most Annoying PowerPoint Presentation Mistakes ”

Pingback: Presentation Approaches 2.0 | Tyler Ed Tech 541 Fall 2013

This is very informative and stresses all the valid points of why some things aren’t meant to be a part of a presentation. Instead of using clipart, you can create your own custom images in PowerPoint with the geometric shapes provided. This can put your own creativity to work! http://presentationpanda.com/uncategorized/how-to-create-your-own-images-in-powerpoint-or-keynote/

For a ‘visual communication guy’ you certainly have made a very bland, wordy article. I got bored just scrolling down the page!

On the contrary – it delivered just what I needed. If you didn’t want an informative article then go find a Powerpoint filled with animations and written in Comic Sans.

this was too helpful thank u very much lol 🙂

i was probably going to do half of these but thx for the info

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5 Better Alternatives To Google Slides

I f you're looking to create a compelling presentation to showcase a new idea or persuade others, Google Slides may be the first option that comes to mind. But with few built-in templates, basic themes, and a limited graphics collection, you'll likely have a hard time making your presentation stand out against others.

If you want to make your presentation truly stand out, there are several alternatives to Google Slides that offer extra perks and features to give your presentations an edge. While Google focuses on integrating Slides with its other work-based apps like Sheets and Docs, other presentation apps focus more on design elements, transitions, and themes to help you convey your brand or personal image throughout your presentation.

We've tested these Google Slide alternatives to give you an idea of other available options to deliver impactful presentations. If you're looking for a way to make boring information more fun and engaging, here are the best presentation apps to replace Google Slides.

Read more: Major Graphics Card Brands Ranked Worst To Best

Microsoft PowerPoint

There's a reason so many businesses around the globe use Microsoft PowerPoint. Building its reputation as the go-to option for delivering high-quality presentations, the software generated $100 million in annual sales only three years after its initial release in 1990.

Microsoft PowerPoint may be Google Slides' largest competitor, but there are plenty of unique features that can add an extra flourish to your slides. PowerPoint excels in its impressive library of custom animations and slide transitions, which are fairly limited in Google Slides. Another unique feature is its AI-powered Designer tool. This provides professional design schemes that mirror the words used in your slides. For instance, if your title slide is named "Basketball Team 2024," Designer will automatically suggest pictures and slide layouts associated with basketball.

As PowerPoint has been in development longer than Google Slides, it naturally offers more nuanced features if you're looking for something specific. For example, you can save individual slides as an image file (using .png or .jpeg formats) or as a separate presentation file. There's also a large library of free PowerPoint templates designed to speed up your workflow. Moreover, PowerPoint integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Teams with its PowerPoint Live function, allowing you to easily share your presentation with your co-workers.

Prezi offers an innovative approach to showing presentations with its unique canvas feature. Unlike traditional presentation software, Prezi lets you zoom and pan around a flexible canvas. The canvas may feel distant to something of a presentation program, but there is still some linear order provided thanks to the Timeline view.

Finding ways to visualize data is one of the biggest challenges when dealing with presentation software. Prezi resolves this struggle with the help of its Story Blocks: a series of infographics available in multiple designs to visually represent data. You can easily edit infographics and even add animations to individual shapes. This can help add a story to your presentation and help you emphasize key points.

To further enhance your presentation visually, Prezi offers several topic path settings, which let you change how Prezi transitions from one topic to another. These options include subtopics, which are super helpful for breaking large chunks of information down. If you're looking for a unique, modern approach to presenting information, Prezi is a top pick.

If you're looking to create a professional presentation to convince potential clients about your business idea, Slidebean is a popular choice among professionals with plenty of customization options. One of the issues with Google Slides is its fairly limited template library, which is filled mostly with basic designs. Slidebean offers a better alternative with a broad selection of innovative templates split into categories for convenience.

The app's user interface is easy to navigate so that you can create slides in less time. Each slide has a dedicated Design and Outline tab. You can use the Outline tab to quickly edit the information on each slide without being distracted by all the visual elements. Another productivity-enhancing feature is the ability to generate a presentation theme from your website. Simply enter your URL, and Slidebean will automatically apply the theming to your presentation.

Slidebean is another presentation app to take advantage of AI. Using the Auto-Design feature, you can generate recommended slide layouts based on your existing content. It also features AI text suggestions designed to suit different industries. Overall, Slidebean offers a quicker, more efficient method for creating stunning presentations compared to Google Slides.

Canva is a well-known app among graphic designers, but it's also capable of making stunning presentations. The app also has mobile editions, so you can easily create and edit presentations on your Android phone , iOS device, or tablet. As long as you have an internet connection, you can modify your designs wherever you are.

To get started, head to Canva's online presentation maker . Canva offers a vast range of templates categorized by topic, which easily surpasses the simple templates in Google Slides . While some of the templates are only available to Canva Pro members, there is an ample amount of free templates to help you get started. You'll also find a large selection of stock photos, shapes, and illustrations to create beautiful customized slides.

Because Canva is built for graphic designers, you can access several features to give your presentation consistent theming. These include color palettes, font sets, and even a brand kit that allows you to add your company's fonts (available to Pro members only). One time-saving feature is Canva's Uploads tab, which lets you access recently uploaded media files. This offers a convenient way to copy content between different presentations.

Visme is a powerful visual design tool able to create videos, infographics, and presentations. One of the perks of using Visme is the company's free educational content, which offers advice on how to create impactful content to boost your brand. After signing up, the company also asks whether you're using Visme for your business, education purposes, or personal use to offer personalized tips.

In terms of charts and graphs, Visme offers some of the most impressive features we've seen from a presentation app, so you can effortlessly convey important statistics. From the Data tab, you can access dozens of graph styles to visually represent your data. Then, simply double-click a chart inside your presentation to edit the values instantly in a simple table format.

Another area that Visme excels in is collaboration. You can either generate a link to publish your presentation on the web or share your presentation privately with others. For each team member, you can choose who can view, edit, and comment slides for a seamless workflow. There's also a Slack integration that lets you receive messages whenever changes are made to your presentation. Visme is free for all users, with limited features available in its premium plans.

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We have collected some real life examples, in order to analyze and learn lessons of how to avoid the bad presentation trap. So, here is our list of the five worst presentations of all time - and why they went wrong. 1. Lung Cancer Surgery PowerPoint. Kshivets O. Lung Cancer Surgery from Oleg Kshivets.
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