Years ago, the Dallas Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) equipped all conference rooms with digital whiteboards. Soon, many of these whiteboards will be upgraded with 82-inch Microsoft Perceptive Pixel screens. These screens can accept 100 simultaneous (and pressure sensitive) points of touch and are the ultimate in touchscreen technology. As the conference room evolves with these new technologies, presenters should adapt to deliver better presentations.
This post will outline six touch techniques for creating better Microsoft PowerPoint presentations: Zoom In/Out, Hyperlinks, Trigger Animations, Business Intelligence, Office Extensibility, and Inking/Annotations. The video below illustrates the techniques outlined in this post.
(Please visit the site to view this video)
Zoom In/Out
Have you ever had someone ask a question during a presentation that you have a great slide for later in your deck? PowerPoint presentations are traditionally very linear, making it hard to adapt to these one-off questions. You would typically jump forward or backward to specific slides, showing every slide in between. Microsoft PowerPoint 2013 provides a better mechanism for navigating in a non-linear way. With touch, you can simply touch the screen in a pinch motion to zoom out to see an outline of all slides. From here, you can quickly jump directly to any slide in the deck (including hidden slides).
Zoom Out:
Alternatively, you can pinch in the opposite direction to zoom into the specific area of a slide.
Zoom In:
Hyperlinks
Hyperlinks can also help deliver non-linear PowerPoint presentations. Any text or object on a slide can serve as a hyperlink to other slides. Create the hyperlink to “Place in This Document” and you have a unique navigation path (tip: remember to include a hyperlink to get back). Hyperlinks aren’t new to PowerPoint, but they are much more elegant to use with touch than a mouse.
Adding Internal Hyperlink:
Trigger Animations
Navigation links allow a presenter to click on something to navigate between slides. Trigger animations allow a presenter to click on something to initiate an animation in the existing slide. Triggers can be used to show/hide, move, or emphasize specific objects on the slide. Similar to hyperlinks, triggers aren’t new to PowerPoint 2013, but they are much more natural in a touch presentation.
Trigger Animations:
Business Intelligence
It is common for presentations to include charts and other data visuals to support a presenter’s message. Too often these visuals are static, requiring presenters to jump out of presentation mode and into live data when questions arise. Microsoft Power View is a highly interactive business intelligence tool that can be exported into PowerPoint and stays live/interactive in presentation mode. Power View is also very touch-friendly, making it perfect for touch presentations.
Power View Export to PowerPoint:
Office Extensibility
With the release of Microsoft Office 2013, Microsoft introduced a new approach to Office customizations. The new “app model” allows highly interactive apps to run inside Office without installing anything; apps run from the web and Office just needs to know the web addresses. This is significant because anything cool on the web can now be delivered as an Office customization. There is an entire online marketplace for these apps in the Office Store. Currently, PowerPoint supports Task Pane apps, which support the creation of documents. However, Microsoft is investing heavily in this app model, so we could see additional types of apps in the near future. The video created for this post illustrates the power of incorporating touch-friendly web content in presentations.
Inking/Annotations
Inking allows a presenter to annotate/draw on slides during a presentation. Of all the techniques outlined in this post, this is the most dependent on a touchscreen. PowerPoint has powerful support for making annotations and saving them at the end of a presentation. Annotations are a fantastic technique for transforming a dull slide into something engaging. Presentations optimized for inking often incorporate one or more blank slides reserved solely for annotations. A single blank slide can often replace several prepared slides for a more interactive and shorter deck.
Annotating in PowerPoint:
I hope these six techniques help illustrate how to make better PowerPoint presentations with touch. Incorporating touch into your presentations can elevate your message and help you better engage with your audience.
 | Richard diZerega is a Technology Architect at the Microsoft Technology Center in Dallas, Texas, where he helps large enterprise customers architect solutions that maximize their Microsoft investments. Although a developer at heart, Richard spent a good portion of the last decade architecting SharePoint-centric solutions in the areas of Search, Portals/Collaboration, Content/Document Management, and Business Intelligence. He is a passionate and skilled technology evangelist who has great interest in innovative solutions that include Windows Azure, Windows Phone, Windows 8, Microsoft Lync, Kinect, and much more. Richard is a frequent speaker around the world at large conferences like TechEd, TechReady, and the SharePoint Conference. Many of his solutions and community contributions can be found on his MSDN blog, Dallas MTC site, and Channel 9. |