Our love-hate relationship with PowerPoint
1–10 of 36 posts
Re: Our love-hate relationship with PowerPoint
#2Even though my primary working computer is a PC, I always default to Apple keynote for presentation slides. I feel it just works better for me. At my work, we make presentations all the time, and our presentations are generally more detailed because we want people to be able to review them later.
Re: Our love-hate relationship with PowerPoint
#3The problem with Powerpoint is that it is 'not the web'. So a great amount of resource goes into a deck of slides with the graphics department doing images, someone else getting reports and someone else editing the whole thing for the boss to present.
There may actually be great things in this presentation, things that should be on the main website but they are not on the main website, they are only available in this proprietary presentation format.
By now the small to medium size business has a whole team of people bothering themselves with these presentations and probably working in CMYK for the graphics. This team did not think to try using HTML and the web, they got stuck in Powerpoint, Word, Excel and the 1990's way of working non-collaboratively. Information gets prepared for the boss in these slide decks rather than be widely available for logged in web users to the company website.
PDF files used for website design proposals are my pet peeve. However it is the legacy workflows and duplication of effort that bugs me, when companies aren't willing to step up and use the new tools but bumble along the 'Powerpoint way'.
Re: Our love-hate relationship with PowerPoint
#4The problem with Powerpoint is that it is 'not the web'. So a great amount of resource goes into a deck of slides with the graphics department doing images, someone else getting reports and someone else editing the whole thing for the boss to present. There may actually be great things in this presentation, things that should be on the main website but they are not on the main website, they are only available in this…
The main reason for using PPT is a presentation during a meeting, not to put something out on the web. And you may prefer the feature set from Word or Excel over Google Docs for some tasks, where the resulting documents can easily be emailed or put on a shared drive. Also Office 365 offers online versions of Office, or you could upload to Google Docs.
Re: Our love-hate relationship with PowerPoint
#5I don't get it. Powerpoint is literally perfect. There are no downsides. It's up to you to not overdo the designs and the animations.
Personally, I always use the default theme (Black Calibri text on white background), with no animations or transitions. The included drawing tools are also world class, and help get your point across as long as you don't make it too complex.
Re: Our love-hate relationship with PowerPoint
#6The problem with Powerpoint is that it is 'not the web'. So a great amount of resource goes into a deck of slides with the graphics department doing images, someone else getting reports and someone else editing the whole thing for the boss to present. There may actually be great things in this presentation, things that should be on the main website but they are not on the main website, they are only available in this…
> The problem with Powerpoint is that it is 'not the web'.
But it is!
https://talkjs-my.sharepoint.com/:p:/g/personal/egbert_talkj...
Re: Our love-hate relationship with PowerPoint
#7Somebody said power point is a crime against humanity. I don't agree fully as it is a great tool if used in the right way. Unfortunately it is almost always overused and crammed with too much information. I have seen decks of 90+ slides full of charts and tables made in various excel files and all numbers had to tie. Such presentations cost organization millions of wasted labor and don't even get to the point. They give a false sense of "knowing what is going on" while in reality nobody analyses the problems well enough. In fact everyone is too busy preparing and tidying off slides.
Also somebody here in the comments said this ready: slides are locked in files poorly shared across the organization. There is a huge amount of valuable information that nobody can search. It is sometimes easier to find detailed information on any random fact on the web than key information in your company.
I think banning power point might be too strong, but companies should force a "code of conduct" on this tool and should seriously figure out a better way for information to surface to employees when they need it.
Re: Our love-hate relationship with PowerPoint
#8I don't get it. Powerpoint is literally perfect. There are no downsides. It's up to you to not overdo the designs and the animations. Personally, I always use the default theme (Black Calibri text on white background), with no animations or transitions. The included drawing tools are also world class, and help get your point across as long as you don't make it too complex.
> I don't get it. Powerpoint is literally perfect. There are no downsides. It's up to you to not overdo the designs and the animations.
Only if you can refrain from the Design tab, something that MS seems to emphasize with every update.
Re: Our love-hate relationship with PowerPoint
#9The problem with Powerpoint is that it is 'not the web'. So a great amount of resource goes into a deck of slides with the graphics department doing images, someone else getting reports and someone else editing the whole thing for the boss to present. There may actually be great things in this presentation, things that should be on the main website but they are not on the main website, they are only available in this…
Do you mean that graphic designers should bother themselves with CSS instead of dragging shapes? I must have misinterpreted what you said.
Also, I find the PDF format to be quite practical for real world use, just because it is easy to print them and then annotate them by hand in a meeting or while reading them.
Re: Our love-hate relationship with PowerPoint
#10PowerPoint is a fantastic tool when used as designed - to create slide decks to provide assistive material for an in person presentation, or longer report.
The issue is, most people don't use PowerPoint like that, rather than being assistive, it becomes the end result, so you end up with very complex material distilled down to a single slide, loosing much of its value and context - or worse, inscrutable diagrams and charts crammed with so much detail no one could understand them, and again, often lacking in context.
I once worked for a large telecom - everything came 'round in a slide deck;
Need an account for this service? PowerPoint
Need to understand this complex technical issue? PowerPoint
Need directions to configure some software? PowerPoint
Need some common links for services? PowerPoint
It was absurd - I joked that if PowerPoint suddenly disappeared, no one at the office would know how to get anything done.