PowerPoint vs. Prezi

The Project

We've just finished a job for a client where we were looking at ways of turning a 3 day course that was often described (in their words!) as death by PowerPoint into something that was much more intrinsically engaging.

The other main outcome of the project was that the course should also have more life in it when being delivered so that the trainer felt assured that this was an effective teaching and learning experience rather than there being any sense of going through the motions. We looked at all aspects of what is a very technical course, both in terms of the delivery and assessment and considered various different interactive approaches.

The client chose to start with the delivery side of the course as this could kill two birds with one stone and also provide some attractive media that could be used in marketing and on their website.

We demonstrated the use of a Prezi and it immediately presented itself as an excellent fit for the job we wanted to do for the following reasons:

• It was immediately different and engaging
• The course material actually felt more at home in the Prezi environment as concepts could be expressed as well as the information
• We could design the Prezi in such a way that the old PowerPoint handouts would still be relevant
• Any trainer would be able to use the Prezi both from the point of view of ease of use and because the structure of the course would still be familiar

Reflection

The aspect of the project that particularly struck me was that I found that the way the Prezi presents information and ideas felt utterly intuitive. This is not so much to do with the user interface (which is pretty good) but I think more to do with the fact that if you were able to look at the way my mind thinks, it probably resembles a multilayered Prezi much more than it does a sequential PowerPoint!