A consultant to the Multiple Sclerosis Association needed a small "interactive brochure" to help promote corporate funding of the MSA... something that would fit on a disk in his pocket (this was a couple of years ago before we had credit card sized cdroms). He contracted me to produce a 1.5 Mb "emotional" interactive PowerPoint presentation. It was an interesting challenge. Here are 2 sizes of the work accomplished (only at 12 fps). NOTE: the visual effects are the same as when using the PowerPoint originals... all native to PowerPoint despite appearances. The original was 640x480.
LG (4.7 mb) MD (700 kb). Both are autoplaying, whereas the final was a "step thru" process so the Man can make his Pitch. Please see "continuation" for details on "how, why, and so on."
My Macromedia Director experience (going back to pre-Director "VideoWorks" days in 1984) gave me an approach to using PowerPoint as a much more effective interactive presentation application with subtle transitions and visual effects than most might use.
PowerPoint is somewhat crude and ill-designed (I used the original application many years ago before Micro$oft bought it...), and the PowerPoint files I posted herein (converted by KeyNote cleanly to Quicktime) were part of the final work accomplished (there are some text formatting errors that did occur in the QTs not in the original work). It's ironic that it all wouldn't look near as "good" or have the proper transitions without using another tool to convert them.
PowerPoint is a bit limited. I've done PowerPoint work shown to the directors of NASA and NOAA, as as examples, and it never failed to amaze me that this tool has become the "standard." I can make it sing, but it really isn't the best application to use for many presentations. There are others that are easier to use, more effective, and more impressive in final results.
For this project, though, I had to use PowerPoint and I knew that emotional impact was critical. I went with very subtle and smooth transtions, growing lines and visual effects "guiding" one's eyes to the key points are they were presented and as images were "revealed." This is vital: most designers miss the need for "guiding" a person's eyes and don't stop to think about the cognitive disrupt if you "fly things around" on the screen in a way that's not "normal" or "smooth."
The lines, properly utilized, also indicated a sense of "connectiveness" and "unity." It was important to imply this concept throughout.
For overall layout, I went with a lot of "white space" on the "screen" to emphasis a solemnity and "emotive appeal" to the occasion. Careful use of transitions with the photos was important. I layered the complexity of the whole presentation step-by-step in drafts to continually gauge size; I had a 1.5 MB limit.
Photo material was only available in greyscale, so I needed to accomodate this in visual approach. I wasn't allowed to colorize the MSA logo, and went with what I had. The "text quotes" at the end were an issue, and I tried to incorporate them without violating too many layout rules.
Overall, I do believe that this PowerPoint presentation shows a very different approach to making a presentation --- it focuses on the visual and cognitive nature of the message not wedded to conceptualizing it all as a "slide show." Every person I've shown this to asks the same question: "Is this really PowerPoint?" Yes, and it's NOT a slide show. It's an interactive presentation.
It ain't the tool, it's how you use it.
Months after the project was completed, I walked into a major defense corporation in front of a Vice-President with this diskette in my pocket for a demo, and walked out with a very good (and lucrative) research project to explore 3-D PowerPoint templates for their use (showcased elsewhere in this blog). They loved the "white space" and the "non-slide show feel" of the work. PowerPoint has become synonymous with ill-designed gaudy slideshows. It doesn't have to be so.
BOTTOM LINE: if you think in slideshow terms, you get a slide show. PowerPoint, despite the many liabilities, can produce effective interactive user interfaces/presentations, but this requires a different mindset for the design approach.
