prezi bad presentations

• 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 problems with Prezi

• Written by: Joby Blume
• Categories: Presentation technology
• Comments: 30

Here at BrightCarbon, we like Prezi , and we are happy to use it. We can use pretty much any presentation technology to create presentation visuals – from whiteboards and sketches to Keynote, Prezi, or anything else you can think of.

We understand that people are bored of PowerPoint, unable to harness it for effective presentation design , and looking to avoid death by PowerPoint. We understand that in 2012 people don’t want to get up and present boring bullet points. For most though, Prezi is not the answer .

Text is still text, bullet points still don’t work

Prezi easily allows the use of text, images, and insertion of videos. Because most Prezis are created with a reader in mind, text is usually still used to convey messages – and so the problem of audiences being able to read for themselves is still present when using Prezi for presentations. Just as PowerPoint doesn’t work well when audiences read bullet-points for themselves and ignore the presenter, Prezi also doesn’t work well when audiences read bullet-points, however fancy the transitions between them.

Prezi allows interesting transitions between frames, but within-frame animations are limited

Done well, PowerPoint allows a significant range of sophisticated on-slide animation. Prezi allows smooth transitions between frames (as they call slides), but once one gets to a frame, try setting a motion path, animating a graph, or doing anything other than zooming in to another level…   (Prezi added a simple fade-in animation, to use within frames. It’s a good start.) PowerPoint actually allows more high-end animation than Prezi, although Prezi’s transitions are easier to master.

The canvas provides a spatial framework for organising information, but few presentations make use of it properly

The major feature of Prezi is the ability to organise information spatially on a giant canvas, and zoom around. This is perfect for presenting information that is spatially related. Yet even the most popular Prezis – those held up by the company as best practice, viewed millions of times – fail to make use of the feature properly. We think Prezi is a great tool to deliver content that all relates to a physical thing that we can zoom around e.g. a typical hospital, or New York, or anything else where content can be explored spatially. Unfortunately, we hardly ever see Prezi used in this way. In most long Prezis, the viewer is left confused as to where on the spatial plane information has been placed. (For those who are interested, the pptPlex plug-in for PowerPoint from Microsoft can organise PowerPoint slides on a spatial canvas. It works well – although it isn’t supported. We would like to see it included in the next version of PowerPoint.)

Frames in Prezi are spatially related whether this makes sense or not

Prezi suggest organising content around large photos, or diagrammatically. But even the basic examples given, or the ‘best practice’ Prezis promoted by the company, contain material that shouldn’t be related spatially. Why should ‘What do Dinosaurs Look Like?’ and ‘When did Dinosaurs Live?’ be related spatially? Prezi’s canvas format forces a spatial relationship where none exists. Want to show a series of photographs in PowerPoint without spatial movement? No problem. Want to do it in Prezi? Prepare for motion sickness, and confusion as to why the photos are related to each other in space.

Nesting of content within frames mixes spatial and hierarchical relationships, which is confusing for audiences

Prezi recommend nesting ‘less important’ information within frames – which to the viewer looks like a zoom in. But on a spatial canvas, we expect a zoom to suggest a closer look at something in space (e.g. USA -> New York -> Central Park, or Hospital -> ER -> Blood gas analyser). It’s simply confusing when the zoom ends up providing additional detail with no relationship to the spatial nature of the canvas (e.g. USA -> New York -> Dutch colonists in 1624). But few presentations allow all information to be usefully organised in a single spatial plane.

Prezi’s default settings encourage poor practice

Just as PowerPoint’s ‘click to add subtitle’ encourages the use of bullet points, Prezi’s default ‘click to add text’ and path settings also encourage poor practice. We like that Prezi encourages the use of images and videos by making these options prominent, but we don’t like that path settings make the issue of motion sickness very real for most Prezis. We aren’t quite sure why authors are encouraged to rotate text, or why it is so easy to arrange content over large distances, which contribute to motion sickness. Why not keep all text horizontal by default, discourage the use of rotation, and encourage shorter ‘pans’? Why not allow control over the speed of panning?

Beyond Prezi

For the advanced user, PowerPoint offers more powerful options than Prezi. For the part-time slide designer? Prezi can deliver something new – but often it replaces ‘Death by PowerPoint’ with ‘Sea-Sick and Confused by Prezi’. We’re not sure that’s a huge step forward. The clear message is to use whatever presentation technology you use effectively – often by ignoring some default settings.

Aside from the obvious (e.g. PowerPoint, Keynote) alternatives to Prezi include Ahead and impress.js – let us know if you think we should look at – or feature – any others.

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All the above points are valid, except the heading. These are not problems with Prezi, but problems with would-be presenters/presentation-designers.

The same pitfalls apply to how these aesthetically-challenged people use PowerPoint, but you make a point of saying PowerPoint isn’t the problem, it’s the user. The same logic should be applied to Prezi.

There are circumstances where Prezi will result in a far better, or far easier to create, presentation than PowerPoint, and vice versa. So Prezi should be included in any presentation designer’s toolkit as a result. That is not to say throw PowerPoint, or Keynote, or any other tool out the window.

Just use the right tool for the job.

I’m glad you found the article – I was going to send you a link to it, but don’t think I got around to it.

I agree with the thrust of your comment. I always get annoyed when people complain about PowerPoint being some sort of “evil” tool, as quite clearly we can use it without causing “death by PowerPoint”. That said, as I mention in the article, PowerPoint’s default settings do have to take their share of the blame for the way people use the tool – it’s set up to encourage bad practice. Prezi is similar in that regard, but I think some of my criticisms above are actually more fundamental:

1. There isn’t any within frame animation available within Prezi – and I would say that’s a problem with the tool, as one can’t easily display change, or show how a process works. (Without zooming around a canvas using static frames – it will work for some processes, but not all.) Limiting, to say the least.

2. Prezi’s canvas forces a spatial relationship onto all elements. It’s true that when used for brainstorming, that’s not really a problem. But when used to present, audiences just naturally wonder why certain items are to the left, some to the top, and so on. There’s no way to show items without the question of whether the spatial relationship means something. To me, that’s a fundamental issue with the platform.

For the right topic, Prezi is wonderful. I would contend that ideally Prezi should only be used for certain material, where information is best organised spatially. Of course, it is easier to get an ‘interesting’ result than with PowerPoint, and not everyone has our PowerPoint design expertise – so that’s of course part of the appeal.

When I first saw Prezi, I was completely dazzled by the fresh approach, which clouded my judgement, until I started thinking about the limited functionality. This was nearly two years ago. They are slowly, but steadily adding functionality as they go.

We have to remember that they are not Microsoft, who can throw X hundred development hours at something over a weekend (and still make suboptimal products).

About a year ago I was completely frustrated with the limitations of Prezi, but have come to appreciate their careful consideration of features (I just wish it was quicker).

The lack of animation (without Flash) is the biggest bug-bear of mine, but also, the use of custom-fonts is a mystery to all but very technical people. In the changes they have made, they do seem to have kept in mind the requests of their users, so I’m hoping animation is in development.

The spatial relationship issue is somewhat similar to the implied chronological relationship that a standard PowerPoint gives you. I’ve experienced many presentations where the order, and indeed general organisation, of content has been as questionable as the design choices. At least with the blank canvas approach it gives the audience the opportunity to at least view, if not understand, the reasoning behind the presenter’s organisation of content.

(As an aside, and in relation to that last point, I have become an active audience-member in all presentations. I know and understand that the presenter has an agenda, and wants to effect change in my knowledge, understanding or behaviour. So I look for their motivation, their clarity of thought, their organisation of content. Presentations are far more two-way than people credit).

I never considered that there was an implied chronological order in the relation between PowerPoint slides. If there is, it isn’t as strong as with Prezi’s spatial relationships. And of course Prezi when used to present also has that same temporal element – things are shown in an order, and that order is usually fixed.

As I said, I like Prezi. I think that for the right topic, it would be possible to do a great job. Many of the ‘high quality’ Prezis that are showcased aren’t great – but that’s true with the popular presentations on SlideShare created in PowerPoint. (Self-explanatory? Then it’s not a great visual aid when presented.)

This article had a bunch of views at the same time from Hungary – so maybe the team at Prezi will respond with some of their development effort. Certainly they’ve done a good job so far. Perhaps users make stronger claims for the product than the team at Prezi themselves, but I’m not so sure.

Presentations as two-way… They certainly ought to be. We like to think in terms of visual conversations. The iPad is a great tool for making presentations far more interactive. So yes, the audience ought to think and interpret in an active way, but we take it further and let them suggest topics to discuss, sketch ideas, answer polls, and so on.

When I found Prezi, I was amazed by the look and feel. But I found it very difficult to get to usable results. Powerpoint for me it quite a consistent nuisance – however usually I used Keynote, and I am very happy with it.

Now I wanted to do a concept and found Keynote [which has the same organizational structure as ppt] not perfectly suitable. I came back to Prezi and found it a wonderful tool to visualize, the different pieces of a concept fitting to a whole.

For some specific presentation I would always use Keynote – to make slideshows, animations and conservative presentations. For things which are related and to show their relation to each other, I will use Prezi from now on.

The only thing is, that it looks so simple to start with Prezi, but the learning curve for something decent is quite high…

Dominik thanks for the comment. I think you are right – when you want to show how elements are related to each other Prezi can be useful. It makes zooming in and out of the whole, and around a canvas, relatively straightforward. I guess the problem is what to do with the information that isn’t connected to the rest. It can’t go somewhere else – it has to go on the canvas. So showing some things that are related and others that aren’t related in the same way – that can be hard.

PowerPoint is more powerful than Keynote or Prezi – but to get really good results does take a lot of work, that’s for sure. Prezi has a steep-ish learning curve – but there’s probably less depth overall – the tool just can’t do as much as PowerPoint.

I am really glad that I stumbled upon this article. I was starting to think that there’s something I’m missing when I just couldn’t see the supposedly huge advantage of Prezi over PowerPoint. I do see how Prezi can be useful for certain purposes and audiences, but it’s definitely not as powerful as PowerPoint. As someone mentioned before – it’s not the tool that’s the problem, but the user who creates a boring presentation. I will keep on using Prezi when I see appropriate, but I will definitely not trash PowerPoint any time soon.

I think the attraction of Prezi is that it’s different. An awful Prezi (sea-sickness, nausea, lots of text, meaningless zooms) is horrible – but at least’s it’s a bit different.

Prezi does have a use, and we’ve done some cool things with it – but replacing a text-heavy PowerPoint presentation with a text-heavy Prezi presentation is pointless. You aren’t missing anything!

There is one real problem with Prezi – if you want to record (screencast) a prezi you have to use Keynote. Anything else will not produce the smooth movements of the original. On a PC with the latest version of Camtasia and all other programs closed to maximise memory resources may give you an acceptable result but this is not guaranteed every time. Buying a Mac and Keynote just to record a prezi? A bit on the expensive side IMHO.

Apart from that. I agree, Prezi has limitations, so does PPt. I combined both in a video (hence my need to record a prezi) to do precisely what is recommended in another post on this site: breaking up the monotony, being visually a bit disruptive to raise the level of attentiveness.

I just checked Ahead at the link you gave; it’s still not available.

Great article, thanks.

I don’t understand how you would use Keynote to record a Prezi but I hear that the feature for recording a Prezi is currently being remodeled by the Prezi team.

I agree with all points voiced with the exception of in frame animations. Example http://prezi.com/dsozghpepxxx/animation-test-timmy/ if you want animations then of course PowerPoint is best

Tim, is this native functionality, embedded video, embedded Flash, a plug-in, or something else? You didn’t get the dog walking from inside Prezi, did you? Still – it’s smart. It’s good to see people testing Prezi, but just a shame that so much that’s needed as core functionality isn’t there.

We normally do want animation, to tell a story with movement, comparison, and change…

Joby, sorry for not being more clear. This is just a flash .swf file and reacts to Prezi arriving on a specific view. Its not linked to a path point…if you zoom out and in on this area you will see the animation-stop and start. This is not native to prezi but it quite easy to do with flash. I agree, animation for animation’s sake is pointless unless it helps convey the story or point of view of the presenter. I even question animation at all…Slideshare seems to be pretty successful without any animation support. Any way I digress ..it was just test and can be adapted to play video without being directly linked to Pathpoints and other things too. Prezi is still pretty new and they seem to be adding new capabilities all the time so here’s hoping.

SlideShare doesn’t need animation support because it isn’t actually a tool for presentations, it’s a tool for slides. Remember a presentation is a presenter with visual aids.

SlideShare slides work without a presenter, as stand-alone visual documents for people to skim-read. You don’t need animation to tell the story because they aren’t being presented.

That’s a neat trick for Prezi. But, it’s (a) not something that someone can do just with Prezi (b) involves knowing flash, which sort of obviates the need for Prezi in the first place, no?

But yes, I agree – Prezi is developing. They may add more new features. But at the moment, it’s a tool that helps cause as many problems as PowerPoint…

Point taken on Slideshare. Yes its a trick on the animation demo! You cannot do this with Prezi on its own. It does require the use and and a little knowledge of flash, but there are simple to follow tutorials. Personally speaking i’m a through and through PowerPoint person… I think Prezi does have its place as many platforms do and not wishing to enter the whole debate on Prezi Vs PowerPoint.. but in my own simplistic view.. i think it causes way more problems. Poorly thought-out and designed PowerPoint are awful, poorly designed and put togther Prezi’s are cringe worthy. As i say just my view and in no way am i an authority on the subject. Regards Tim

I think in-frame animations and pop ups are crucial for Prezi, because there definitely are many topics which need at least a combination of the different concepts. So I hope this will be included in future versions.

My beginner’s question to you: how did this guy get it going?

http://prezi.com/4i-1srem9cin/optimization/

Frame 8 is exactly what I would like to have as a functionality. I would also be interested in the background music. Google is only giving unsatisfactory results and I when editing the Prezi I can’t really tell how it works. Would be great if s.o. could point to the solution!

Thanks! Sebastian

Ah, got it myself: the small star once you choose “edit path”.

https://prezi.zendesk.com/entries/22388523-Fade-in-animation

Thanks, anyway!

Hello, I love Prezi, but can’t seem to play a video longer than the auto play time. Is there any way around this, if I want to play on auto? Thanks, Bob

I am a Learning & Development Consultant for a large insurance company, in the UK. I discovered Prezi just over a year ago and instantly fell in love with it…it was just so different and seemed fresh. The learning curve was steep. However, after 10 hours of constantly using it and a very late night, I cracked it.

Since then, I have seen the heads turn and been approached from managers to do more and to show the wider team that there is more to life than just PowerPoint. It’s not just Prezi though. It’s one of many tools.

It’s definitely the person behind the presentation that is often the flaw. I rarely like the model examples Prezi holds up but they inspire, which is their purpose. I like how Prezi is expanding it’s toolkit of templates and how they are making changes. Prezi today compared to Prezi over a year ago are quite different.

A Prezi used right gets buy in from partner banks that I work with. The reality of most companies is that their staff are subjected to death by PowerPoint, so when I turn up and pull out a well made Prezi, they lift their heads and give me the chance I need to wow them…after all, whether we use Prezi, PowerPoint or any other tool, they are there to hear from me…not to stare at a board. I keep text to a bare minimum on all my presentations and instead just use them as visual cues for me and thought provoking images or videos for the group.

I won’t be throwing PowerPoint out…it has it’s place. I am just glad that finally, someone is giving us something different!

Sebastian, I’m glad that you are getting decent results from Prezi.

I think it’s fair to say that a well-done Prezi is better than Death by PowerPoint. Then again, a poor Prezi is no better than a poor PowerPoint deck.

My personal sense is that except for a few situations (where information is all organised spatially) a really good PowerPoint deck (e.g. view our demo at the top of the page) is better than most decent Prezis. Just because usually, a single canvas doesn’t help to organise the information appropriately.

But really, if you are pleased with the results you get with Prezi, and are avoiding some of the major mistakes listed in the article – that’s great.

Since I discovered Prezi I have often encouraged others to check out the site and consider it for future presentations. I myself return to the platform and browse and tinker. Still after two years or so I have yet to actually even complete a draft for a presentation using Prezi. The article was helpful in identifying and defining some of the obstacles I have encountered when trying to create a visual dimension to some presentation or training session. I wonder if Prezi in fact introduces a spacial non linear model that is more able to be realized and accessed through highly interactive digital text books.

Ralph, I think Prezi does a good job of allowing navigation of a spatial framework in a non-linear way. It’s just that the times when that are needed are limited. When people use Prezi because they like the spinning transitions, things can be painful.

I really like this article and some of the issues it broaches. Conscious consideration of presentations is, and remains, the most important feature of any type of visual aide. However, I do take issue with this question:

“Why should ‘What do Dinosaurs Look Like?’ and ‘When did Dinosaurs Live?’ be related spatially?”

Simply put, because when a particular dinosaur lived is directly related to what it looked like, and the spatial arrangement of temporal relationships is a major mode of information presentation in the sciences (consider any tree diagram ever, or even a simple time-series graph).

I take the larger point, but this is a silly example to use.

David, thanks for the comment – point taken.

I wish I had linked to the particular Prezi that I was talking about. It literally had ‘What do Dinosaurs Look Like?’ and ‘When did Dinosaurs Live’ as two separate sections on a single canvas. If the two topics had been woven together as in e.g. a tree diagram or time-series, that would have worked well in Prezi.

Apparently many people have asked for nonlinear navigation in Prezi and it’s still not available. Slidedynamic.com made an aftermarket plugin that worked for a few Prezi revision cycles, but is now defunct.

Without the ability to put hyperlink branches in a presentation, all the fancy transitions business is just fluff. I’m sticking with PowerPoint.

I don’t know how to contact Prezi and tell them myself but i like this for group projects in college. We can all get on our separate computers from home but still work on the power point together. That is very helpful, i just want to be able to talk, chat, basically communicate with them somehow. We use our phones, which is a bother. I feel they should add a chat box so we can chat together or some way so we can agree on stuff easier. Other than that i love it, very helpful for classwork in college.

Nice thx alot prezi is pretty awesome and i wouldnt have found out about it if it wasnt for your blog! Thalia grace

Hey Can anyone tell me how i can put images into my prezi? I actually know how to do it but it doesn’t work anymore-even with the same pictures I already used. It only tells me what kind of pics prezi supports. Hope I’m clear Thanks 🙂

Hi Joby, I very much enjoyed this article, especially as a new prezi user facing some challenges having to do with a project I don’t feel was a good match for prezi. Your article put into words the thoughts that had been in my head–it’s always nice when you find someone who agrees with you!!!

I’ll be doing a debrief to my organization. Is it possible for you to post a link to a prezi that you believe is a good one–that ties the visual concept to the content and/or demonstrates spatial relationship? I am finding fault with many I have looked at, and am searching for a couple I can show my team that are good examples. If you don’t feel comfortable posting them here, perhaps you could email me at the address I provided.

Many thanks, J.

Janet, I’ve seen very few – and annoyingly, I can’t seem to find any of those now. Most of the showcase examples aren’t that good. Here’s something that Duarte did – http://blog.prezi.com/latest/2010/3/24/a-prezi-success-story-on-duarte-blog.html – no nausea, but nothing that uses Prezi in any interesting ways.

Clients often come to us saying “we want a Prezi”, but they never do. They want not to be boring, which is something best solved with a slide platform that supports animations (not just zoom/pan transitions). It’s incredibly rare that a whole story works well organised around a single spatial canvas.

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Prezi vs PowerPoint: Which One Should You Use? (In 2022)

Written by: Orana Velarde

Last Updated: 12/16/2020

The main difference between Prezi and PowerPoint is that Prezi is a cloud-based tool for creating non-linear presentations while PowerPoint is an offline tool for creating standard presentations.

In this comparison guide, you'll learn what tool is best for your presentations in 2022.

Choose the element that you’re interested in from the navigation below and find out what option is the best for your presentation needs.

Let’s get into it.

Jump to the Section You Want

What is prezi, what is microsoft powerpoint, prezi: advantages & disadvantages, powerpoint: advantages & disadvantages.

• Comparison Point #1: Features
• Comparison Point #2: Templates
• Comparison Point #3: Cost
• Comparison Point #5: Online vs Offline Performance
• Comparison Point #6: Teamwork & Collaboration
• Comparison Point #7: Storage & Backup
• Comparison Point #8: Embedding

Prezi is a presentation app known mostly for its style of zoom navigation and a “slideless” design. The core concept of creating a presentation with Prezi is that all sections are connected and the presenter can zoom and navigate between them seamlessly.

This style of presentation is unique to Prezi and it’s their way of standing out above PowerPoint. Even though the zooming feature sounds complex as an idea, its ease of use is impressive, especially when following a template.

Microsoft PowerPoint is the presentation software in the Microsoft Office Suite.

It has long been the most sought out software for creating presentations in both business and education. So much so that its overuse led to the term “Death by PowerPoint”.

The downloadable desktop app for Microsoft PowerPoint works seamlessly on both Mac OS and PC with Windows.

Let’s take a look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of the Prezi presentation software.

Advantage #1: Non-Linear Navigation

The first advantage of Prezi is the zoom and overview feature.

The signature navigation in Prezi offers a unique perspective for creating and viewing a presentation. Instead of adding one slide after another, a project is created in sections.

There is the main menu slide and the presenter or viewer can navigate back to it at any time. This Prezi advantage is particularly useful for presentation creators that are tired of the usual way.

Advantage #2: Integration Support

The second advantage of Prezi is the long list of integrations. Prezi can be connected to other apps like Slack, Zoom, and Google Meet. These integrations make it easier to share and present Prezi projects with teams and collaborators.

Advantage #3: Low Cost

The third advantage of the Prezi software is its low cost.

The free version is great for students that need the bare necessities for their projects without too much fanfare. The paid plans start as low as $3/month.

Disadvantage #1: Confusing Layout

Interestingly enough, Prezi’s first advantage is also a disadvantage. The frequent zooming in and out movement can be a bit overwhelming for some. Also, a Prezi presentation shared on its own can be confusing if the viewer doesn’t know how to navigate the functions.

Likewise, for the creator, it can be easy to go overboard with zooming navigation. If the slides and sections aren’t organized and easy to follow, it can be difficult to present cohesively.

Disadvantage #2: Paid Offline Access

The second disadvantage to Prezi is that if using the free or lower-tier versions, presentations depend on the internet to be viewed.

Slow internet speeds can make a Prezi almost impossible to navigate. Offline access is only available in the paid subscriptions.

Disadvantage #3: Limited Data Visualization

Even though there are some charts and graphs options in Prezi, they aren’t fully customizable or editable for a personalized look and feel.

Prezi did add a new feature called Prezi Design to improve the customization of data visualizations, but it's still limited compared to other tools.

Let’s take a look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of PowerPoint.

Advantage #1: Popularity

The first advantage of PowerPoint is its widespread use. Pretty much everyone knows how to open, use, view and edit a PowerPoint presentation. That makes it easy to distribute and share with team members and collaborators.

Advantage #2: Rich Multimedia Features

The second advantage of PowerPoint is the rich features for using multimedia in presentations. Users can add video, audio, voice-over and animations to keep viewers interested and engaged. These features help add a good dose of visual impact to presentations.

Advantage #3: Plenty of Templates

The third advantage of PowerPoint is a large number of available templates. Not exactly within the software itself but mostly through third party sites and marketplaces. Since PowerPoint has been the long-standing favorite in presentation makers, there are templates for every style and purpose.

It's similar to how there are thousands of Apple Keynote templates available on sites like Envato Elements and GraphicRiver.

Disadvantage #1: Death by PowerPoint

The main disadvantage of PowerPoint is the coined term “Death By PowerPoint” and the meaning the term carries along with it. It’s not uncommon to hear people say things like “not another PowerPoint!”, or “I fell asleep during the PowerPoint”.

This reputation was the catalyst for many presentation makers to offer different and more creative solutions.

Disadvantage #2: High Cost

The second disadvantage of PowerPoint is the ongoing cost of the Microsoft 365 Office Suite. Users can obtain PowerPoint on their own but the cost is high.

As part of the full package with Microsoft 365, it has a monthly fee. Buying the Software on its own doesn’t come with storage like with the Suite.

Disadvantage #3: Compatibility Issues

The third disadvantage has to do with how long PowerPoint has been around. It can happen that the software used is from an old computer and then it’s not compatible with newer media. Or the newer version of PowerPoint won’t open on older computers.

For example, if you want to collaborate on a PowerPoint and need to upload it to their cloud, a PPT file won't work. It needs to be a newer version like PPTX.

Both Prezi and PowerPoint have many features on hand to help presenters create engaging slide decks. But in both cases, there are some features that stand above the rest. The one thing that makes the software a favorite among its users.

Prezi Feature #1: Zoom Navigation

The best and most notorious Prezi feature is Zooming navigation. Prezi created this feature as a differentiator from PowerPoint and other presentation makers.

Creators can design slides into groups or sections which are organized in the main menu on the first Prezi slide. The presenter can then navigate through a section and to the next or using the back button to return to the main slide.

When creating a Prezi presentation, this feature can’t be turned off. It’s ingrained in the program so creators must be sure that they want this style of presentation to begin with.

Prezi Feature #2: Prezi Video

Prezi recently added an integrated video feature to their software.

Prezi video is like a regular Prezi presentation with the difference that the background is the live video of the presenter. This feature is great for live webinars, meetings and courses.

To create a Prezi Video, users do have to use a different app in the Prezi Suite but can use already created Prezi presentations and simply integrate into Prezi Video.

Prezi Feature #3: Integrations with other Apps

Prezi has a number of practical integrations to share presentations in different ways.

For example, use Slack to share presentations with team members inside channels. Or, use Zoom or Google Meet with Prezi Video and create a presentation that you are a part of.

PowerPoint Feature #1: Microsoft Toolbar

PowerPoint has many notable features in its editor, but the most notorious is the Microsoft Toolbar with all the editing features a creator will ever need.

Microsoft Office Suite software like Word and Excel have similar toolbars to PPT and this makes it easier for users of all three programs.

Having an understanding of the Microsoft Toolbar is a time saver and offers a large number of creative and practical features for any PowerPoint presentation.

PowerPoint Feature #2: Layout Themes

Another notorious feature of PowerPoint is the starter layout slides. These are simple slides with a basic composition of images and text. These save time when creating new slides, as creators don’t have to insert new image and text boxes every time.

These are also pre-designed to look good and be effective. Using the layout themes helps create better-looking presentations every time, and customization is simple and to the point.

PowerPoint Feature #3: Export to Other Apps

Powerpoint presentations can be exported to use in other presentation makers.

Prezi is one of them. A PowerPoint presentation inside Prezi must be adapted to fit the zooming navigation by grouping slides into categories.

A PowerPoint presentation can easily be opened as a Google slides presentation with hardly any difference in editing features. This will work better on a Chrome browser.

Prezi and PowerPoint both have available templates to use in their software.

In both cases, templates exist in the editor, but there are also other template resources for both software. Let’s take a look at how the templates compare between the two presentation makers.

Prezi Templates

Prezi offers a variety of templates for their users. Recently they added templates for the Prezi Video feature and other engaging templates in the education and marketing niches.

As is to be expected, all Prezi templates are created taking advantage of the zooming feature.

For Prezi users, using a template is always the best choice. This way, the navigation has already been optimized and only the content needs to be updated.

These are some of the available topics in the Prezi presentation gallery:

• Business Review
• Education and Nonprofit

Like many of its competitors, Prezi also has a large number of third-party templates to choose from. These are available on sites like prezibase.com and creatoz.eu.

On these sites, creators will find thousands of Prezi templates in many different styles and designs.

PowerPoint Templates

The templates available inside the PowerPoint software have been the same for years and feel a bit outdated. There are no more than 24 legacy templates that even though are a bit old, still help create presentations faster and easier.

Aside from Pre-designed presentation templates, PowerPoint also offers Theme layout options to pick and choose at the user’s discretion.

Additionally, when a presentation is created from scratch, the software offers “Design Ideas” with pre-designed slides in a scrollable bar to the right of the editor.

PowerPoint templates are available on many sites online. On Envato alone, there are over 1000 ready-to-use templates in many different styles and for different industries.

Given how there are so many PowerPoint templates on third-party sites, it's easy to understand why Microsoft doesn’t create more templates to add to their PowerPoint program.

Many of the PowerPoint templates offer tutorials on how to best use them.

Moving on to the cost of each presentation software. Let’s take a look at the different options for both presentation apps.

Prezi Pricing

The pricing on Prezi is much like any online app, there are options to choose from according to the industry or need of use.

The monthly plans, apart from the Free basics, start at $3/month and can go as high as $59/month and prices for teams and enterprises are on demand.

Pricing groups are separated into basic, individual, education, and business.

PowerPoint Cost

PowerPoint usually comes as part of the Microsoft Office suite, now called Microsoft 365. The monthly fee starts at $6.99/per month and increases depending on users and team needs.

Buying the software on its own costs $139 and doesn’t come with cloud storage.

Online vs Offline Performance

Presenting online and offline is a bit different between the two software. Let’s take a look at how they are different and how each software manages to present online and offline for their users.

In both cases, if the presentation is rich in interactive media and large photos, a slow connection will definitely slow down performance if viewed online.

In general, offline access is available on a limited basis.

Prezi Performance

Prezi works only online when using the basic free plan. On paid plans, users have the option of a downloadable desktop app to create and present their slide decks offline.

If they send the presentation as a link to be watched by someone else, the viewer will need a good internet connection to view it.

Additionally, there’s also the option of Portable Presentations, which can be downloaded to view offline and can be sent in an email and downloaded or through a memory stick.

Prezi users also have the option of using the Prezi Viewer Mobile app to present their projects with collaborators and team members.

You get both online and with offline access once the app has been downloaded. Prezi Viewer is available for iPad, iPhone and Android devices.

PowerPoint Performance

As PowerPoint is downloadable software, presentations can be created offline without the need for an internet connection. They can then be shared online or via a memory stick and easily presented or viewed offline as well.

PowerPoint functionality is best when used offline but there is also an online version of PowerPoint in the cloud called PowerPoint Online.

Additionally, PowerPoint presentations can be viewed on an iPad with iOS or an Android device. There's no mobile app functionality to create a presentation on an iPad or mobile device, but they're perfect for viewing.

Teamwork & Collaboration

Most Presentation software these days offer teamwork and collaboration features.

Working on presentations together is important for business and education. Let’s take a look at how Prezi and PowerPoint compare to each other in terms of collaboration.

For team members to work together on a Prezi Presentation, they all need to have their own account or be part of an Enterprise account with different user logins.

The owner of the presentation can share the project with no more than 10 people at once. They need to be granted editing rights via the same email they use to log in to Prezi.

Collaborative editing on Prezi can be seen in real-time. This means that one user can see what another is working on and vice versa. Content from any other Prezi can be added to a group Prezi easily as well.

Apart from being able to edit together, collaborators can also leave comments in small post-it type notes.

Collaboration on PowerPoint is possible but needs a bit of preparation.

For a PowerPoint presentation to be editable as a team, it first needs to be uploaded to OneDrive or SharePoint Online for Microsoft 365. From there, collaborators can be added via their email.

Users can see when team members log into the presentation to make changes and can see what they are working on. If changes were made while a user isn’t logged on, they get a notification that changes have been made while they were away.

Storage & Backup

Losing a presentation after you’ve worked on it for a long time is never fun. Thankfully, most presentation software has storage and backup features, either on your own computer (Mac or PC) or as cloud storage.

Both free and paid Prezi accounts have unlimited storage for created presentations.

Uploaded media storage is larger in bigger plans. For example, free and small plans can’t upload videos to their presentations. Larger plans offer that and the storage to keep the videos in the media library.

Since PowerPoint is desktop-based presentation software, all your presentations are media are stored on your computer. Alternatively, you can store all your PowerPoint files and presentations in Microsoft OneDrive.

A Microsoft 365 subscription comes with a 5GB cloud storage plan that can be easily upgraded via the subscription page.

Embedding features for presentations go both ways. In some cases, you can embed third-party content into a presentation and you can embed a finished presentation into a website. Let’s take a look at how Prezi and PowerPoint compare.

Prezi presentations don’t have the ability to embed third-party content inside slides with I-frame or integrated apps. Their new app Prezi Design does offer iframe embedding but taking these designs to a Prezi presentation is not seamless.

Alternatively, you can easily embed a Prezi presentation into a webpage with a snippet of code.

Content can be linked or embedded easily into PowerPoint slides, either through the linking or embedding features. First of all, any content created on other Microsoft 365 software is easy to add to a PowerPoint presentation.

Excel charts for example can be added as live data. As long as the data is kept on your machine or OneDrive folder, the PowerPoint presentation will show the changes if it’s also uploaded to OneDrive.

Embedding a PowerPoint presentation into a website is just as easy as with Prezi. All that’s needed is an HTML embed code. Copy and paste into a webpage or blog.

Is Prezi More Effective Than PowerPoint?

Both Prezi and PowerPoint have their own advantages and disadvantages. The question if Prezi is more effective than PowerPoint is relative to your own needs. Prezi’s unique zooming feature will make your presentation instantly recognizable as a “Prezi”.

Likewise, a PowerPoint presentation with too many transition features and excessive use of animation will be recognized as a PowerPoint presentation.

When it comes to choosing between Prezi and PowerPoint it mostly comes down to what style of presentation you want to deliver. More so, each tool has particular features that the other one does not.

For example, you can’t embed third-party content into a Prezi and PowerPoints already have a bad rep with the whole “Death by PowerPoint” situation.

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Disclaimer: Information is accurate as of December 3rd, 2020

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About the Author

Orana is a multi-faceted creative. She is a content writer, artist, and designer. She travels the world with her family and is currently in Istanbul. Find out more about her work at oranavelarde.com

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Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

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
• Reader Comments

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
• PNG larger image
• 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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Harvard Researchers Find PowerPoint Could Be Bad for Business

Create beautiful charts & infographics get started, 19.07.2017 by anete ezera.

Presentations play a big role in our modern lives. We experience them in school, in the workplace, and even in personal settings. While presentations are important, basic questions remain about how to present effectively. How do ‘medium’ and ‘message’ impact communication? What software tools and visual aids are most effective?

Harvard University wanted to find answers to these questions, which is why they conducted a study comparing the effectiveness of three commonly used formats for communication: verbal only, PowerPoint, and Prezi .

Harvard’s Department of Psychology recently published the study in the journal PLOS ONE titled, Does a Presentation’s Medium Affect Its Message? Let’s go over the experiments they conducted, the shocking results, and the main takeaways you’ll want to remember for your next presentation .

Key Players

Oral Presentations – Oral presentations have been a part of the human experience since the dawn of time. Oral (or non-visual) communication is a great way to tell stories, impart tradition, and preserve history.

PowerPoint – Microsoft’s presentation platform has populated the scene for decades; for better or for worse. PowerPoint is known for its sequential, linear transitions, and the formation of a slide deck. Slides may contain text, graphics, sound, movies, and other objects, which may be arranged freely.

Prezi – Released in 2009, Prezi has quickly emerged as the go-to business and educational presentation tool. Prezi is known for its zoomable user interface (ZUI). It allows users to arrange images, graphics, text, audio, video, and animations on one large visual canvas, as opposed to a deck of stacked slides .

The Experiments

Harvard researchers conducted a double-blind study on the effectiveness of presentation techniques, broken up into two experiments.

Experiment 1: 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.

Harvard researchers provided the necessary context, instruction, and time to create a short but realistic presentation. Participants then presented live over Skype to select members of the study, who judged each presentation’s efficacy.

• Harvard recruited 146 individuals who participated as presenters in the study.
• Harvard recruited 153 audience participants from the Harvard Decision Science Lab.

Experiment 2: Video recorded versions of these presentations (from Phase One) were presented to a larger online audience, affording Harvard greater statistical power and allowing them to measure the impact of presentation format on decision-making and learning.

• 1069 respondents in the final dataset. Participants completed the experiment entirely online.

The Results

Participants evaluated Prezi presentations as more organized, engaging, persuasive, and effective than both PowerPoint and oral presentations. In fact, PowerPoint presentations were rated as no better than verbal presentations with no visual aids at all. Users rated the three formats on a scale from 1 to 5 in a few major categories.

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.

Presenters giving Prezi presentations were also noted as being “more knowledgeable and professional” by their audience.

Main Takeaways

The Medium Says Something About You

Not only does the medium affect how your audience absorbs your message, it also gives them ideas about you – the presenter. The medium you use to present can alter people’s perception of you and your brand, which is why it’s important to pick a tool that has been proven to make you look professional, organized, and knowledgeable.

In the case of Prezi, good design and exciting animations lead to a better presentation experience for the audience. The best way to persuade and convince the viewer is to give them a truly compelling presentation.

Zooming Reigns Supreme

The study concluded that Prezi’s interactive format and zooming user interface make presentations more effective, engaging and persuasive. The study found the results “reflect a true and specific benefit of Prezi over PowerPoint or, more generally, ZUIs over slideware.”

The audience reported that zooming in and out of a virtual canvas was a more favorable experience overall when compared to slide decks and oral presentations.

People Want Visuals

Participants were asked to rate whether the presentation had ‘not enough,’ ‘too much’ or an ‘about right’ amount of text, graphs, images, and animations. People rated the visuals from Prezi presentations as more “dynamic, visually compelling, and distinctive” than PowerPoint.

When it came to graphs and animations, viewers indicated that there were not enough graphs or animations in PowerPoint presentations when compared to Prezi.

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7 Types of Bad Presenters: Tips for Better Presentations

Delivery is key in presentations. Learn about 7 bad presenters and how you can avoid becoming one!

You can probably relate to this all too familiar scenario:  You’re attending a presentation and the presenter is almost unbearable to watch. Whether they’re stumbling through slides or speaking rapidly, you find yourself unable to process any of the information presented. But what contributes to the failures of bad presenters? First, we should define what contributes to great presentations.

What Makes a Great Presentation?

When it comes to any type of presentation, its delivery is key to success. Take it from the masters at TED Talks . Speech and body language are important to delivering your message. These affect an audience’s perception. Chris Anderson, owner of TED, summarizes what all great presentations have in common:

“And even though these speakers and their topics all seem completely different, they actually do have one key common ingredient. And it’s this: Your number one task as a speaker is to transfer into your listeners’ minds an extraordinary gift — a strange and beautiful object that we call an idea.”

Telling a story is one way to help tap into audience members’ minds. Storytelling is scientifically proven to stimulate the entire human brain. Whereas the use of bullet points only stimulate 2 parts of the brain. Many impactful speakers choose to use images instead of words on slides — opting to use their voice to deliver their ideas.

Additionally, no matter how many slides your presentation ends up being, make sure it carries a consistent visual theme from start to finish. This helps to guide the audience along.

What Makes a Bad Presentation?

There are many factors that contribute to bad presentations. Geoffrey James, contributing editor at Inc.com, identifies 8 bad habits that ruin presentations . Whether it’s asking for extra time or fidgeting, there are numerous ways for a project to go south.

Most bad presenters are either unprepared or unaware of their habits. Or, they’re aware of their shortcomings but don’t know how to develop better presentation skills. 

Prep for Your Next Presentation

When you’re creating your next set of slides, be sure to abide by presentation best practices . If you don’t have access to (or are worn out from) Microsoft PowerPoint, don’t fret. You have options.  Here are 3 excellent alternatives to using Microsoft PowerPoint:

• Piktochart — Piktochart is home to themed templates for infographics, reports, and presentations. Use free graphics, fonts, charts, and pictures.
• Prezi — Prezi’s navigation is more of a journey, and less of slides. Check out their premade templates for lively transitions. Plus, access your Prezi from anywhere.
• Google Slides — Similar to PowerPoint, Google Slides has free templates and simple slide transitions. Access your slides from anywhere and integrate it with other information in your Google account.

Don’t forget Mimeo when it comes to preparing your next presentation! Sign up for a free account . Then build, proof, and ship your presentation in minutes!

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Mastering internal communication: The key to business success

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

Anete Ezera June 28, 2024

So, what is internal communication? It’s an essential part of any successful organization. It’s about the way a company shares information and builds relations. It ensures everyone is moving in the same direction while achieving business goals. High-quality internal communication ensures that staff members remain knowledgeable and are involved in the company’s progress. 

There are many ways to share information within a company, such as emails, newsletters, presentations, and collaboration tools. Prezi offers several options for successful internal communication , and, in this article, we’re here to show you how to make the most of them.

The role of internal communication in business success

Internal communication plays a critical role in business success. Explore the following key areas that are impacted the most.

Enhancing employee engagement

Engagement is critical. When employees are kept in the loop and feel involved, their motivation and dedication to their work often increase.

Improving productivity

Clear communication is essential because it can decrease misinterpretations and mistakes. When staff members are equipped with the necessary details, they can work in a more organized way, resulting in increased output.

Boosting morale

When employees feel valued and heard, their morale improves. Consistent communication and feedback can significantly change how employees view their roles and the company. Ultimately, good internal communication creates a positive work environment for all.

Facilitating change management

In any organization, change is inevitable. Whether it’s new policies, technologies, or strategies, effective communication plays a critical role in managing these transitions well. It helps to keep resistance and confusion low while ensuring that every member is included in the decision-making process.

Building trust

Building trust is essential for a healthy work environment. Clear and consistent communication helps create trust between employees and leaders.

Strengthening team collaboration

When executed properly, internal communication has the power to significantly improve teamwork through integration. If every team member stays informed, there are fewer misunderstandings. Open and regular sharing of information fosters cooperation in problem-solving tasks, ultimately leading to more advanced and innovative solutions that can bring the team closer together.

Improving employee retention

When staff members feel appreciated and are actively involved through receiving regular information, they’re more likely to remain committed to the organization. Additionally, good internal communication can help identify issues at an early stage and map out clear career paths for employees, making them feel integral to the company.

Supporting organizational culture

Good internal communication helps to articulate the company’s values, mission, and goals, making them a part of everyday operations. Regularly sharing success stories, recognizing employee achievements, and discussing company milestones can strengthen the cultural fabric of the organization.

These aspects clearly demonstrate how important internal communication is for any business’s success, and that effective internal communication lays the foundation for a thriving workplace. 

The role of leadership in internal communication

Effective internal communication starts with leadership. Leaders set the tone and culture for how information is shared within an organization. When leaders prioritize clear and open communication, it encourages a culture where information flows smoothly and effectively throughout the company.

Leading by example

Communicating expectations is one thing, but effectively modeling the desired behavior is another. With that in mind, leaders need to model the communication behaviors they expect from their employees. This means being transparent, approachable, and consistent in their messaging. Open communication about company goals, challenges, and successes helps build trust and encourages similar behavior across all levels of the organization.

Encouraging open dialogue

Building on the previous point, a healthy organizational culture thrives on open communication. However, this openness doesn’t extend to every detail or unfiltered language. Instead, the focus should be on transparency and sharing key information freely. This can be promoted by leaders through regular one-on-one meetings, anonymous suggestion boxes, and open-door policies. When employees are sure their views are appreciated, it promotes a culture of mutual respect and collaboration.

Providing clarity and direction

One of the primary duties of a leader when it comes to internal communication is to give clear directions and purposes. Communicating vividly and distinctly what the company’s vision, goals, and expectations are helps employees see the big picture and their part in it, which can drive motivation – ensuring that employee objectives are aligned with those of the organization.

Recognizing and celebrating success

The use of internal communication for acknowledging and celebrating the achievements of employees is a great way to heighten spirits and positive behavior. It sets an example for others by appreciating individual and team accomplishments on a regular basis. This will go a long way in fostering a culture of recognition and appreciation within the organization.

Leveraging communication tools like Prezi

To reach all employees effectively, leaders must be adept at using various communication tools. This can include using platforms like Prezi for creating and sharing engaging presentations, using video conferencing tools for virtual meetings, and making sure that important messages are accessible on mobile devices. By using a range of tools, managers can ensure their communication is inclusive and reaches every corner of the organization.

Best practices for effective internal communication

To ensure your internal communications have maximum effect, we’ve put together some key tips for you to explore. Let’s dive in!

Develop a comprehensive communication plan

The core of good internal communication is a strong communication plan. First, establish specific goals: what do you want to accomplish through your internal communication? Then, identify your audience segments. Different departments within the organization may need tailored messages and communication channels.

Outline the primary information that aligns with your company’s interests and then choose the most efficient channels for communication. Continuously review and update this plan to ensure it remains relevant as you experience changes in your business or organization. This approach will keep your communication efforts focused and make them more result-oriented.

Use a variety of channels

Communication is not a ‘one size fits all’ concept. Different employees have different preferences for getting information. While some might find emails easy, others might like instant messaging apps or physical meetings. That’s why it’s important to use multiple channels— like newsletters, video conferences, presentations, and collaboration platforms— so that your message can reach everyone in the way they prefer. This not only improves the chance of effective internal communication but also accommodates different working styles and schedules. 

Foster two-way communication

Effective internal communication is about more than just passing information along; it’s also about fostering an environment where employees feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and opinions. You can do this by using surveys to gather feedback, setting up anonymous suggestion boxes for confidential input, and holding regular meetings to discuss concerns and ideas openly.

When employees see that their voices are heard and taken into account in decision-making, they feel more valued and engaged. This two-way communication not only boosts morale but also provides leadership with crucial insights into what the workforce is thinking and what they need, helping to shape better strategies for the future.

Keep messages clear and concise

Effective communication is built on clarity. Jargon and complex language have no place as they only serve to confuse your audience. Instead, be sure to deliver your message directly and to the point. When handling complex information, consider using visual aids such as infographics, presentations, or videos. They help in breaking down the information into smaller, more digestible parts. 

In addition, visuals can highlight important points that you want to get across— making your communication more interesting and memorable. Always remember — simplicity and accuracy are key in ensuring your messages are understood.

Always measure and improve

An evolving communication is an effective communication. Continually assess your feedback by collecting employee engagement data—such as the number of people who replied to an email and the number of people who read it—and the feedback itself. Use measures like participation rates in surveys, meeting attendance, and the general tone and sentiment from feedback to evaluate the effectiveness of your strategies in driving internal communication. Scrutinize this information for areas that can be improved based on understanding, and act on them by making the necessary changes. This approach guarantees constant evolution towards better strategies for internal communication.

By adopting these best practices, you can construct a solid core of internal communication that keeps employees updated and involved, leading to business success.

Discover more useful techniques in our blog article on internal communication best practices and tips .

Common mistakes that can sabotage internal communication

Even with the best intentions, communication internally can sometimes miss the mark. Here are some common mistakes to avoid to ensure your strategy is effective:

Lack of clarity

An error that can be made in internal communication is a lack of clarity. Jargon, complex language, or vague messages can easily lead to confusion among employees— which in turn paves the way for misunderstandings. Always strive for easy and straightforward communication by simplifying the ideas into terms that everyone can easily understand.

One-way communication

Another frequent mistake is one-way communication— when messages flow from top to bottom without promoting feedback. Effective communication should be a two-way street. Encourage the workforce to communicate their thoughts, feedback, and suggestions through various channels such as surveys and periodic meetings.

Inconsistent messaging

Inconsistent messaging can also sabotage internal communication. When different leaders communicate conflicting information, it creates confusion and distrust. Ensure consistency by aligning all communication with the company’s values, goals, and current initiatives, and regularly updating your leadership team.

Overloading employees with information

Bombarding employees with too much information at once or sending frequent, lengthy communications can overwhelm them. Prioritize and space out your messages, using concise updates and visual aids to highlight the most important points.

Ignoring feedback

Ignoring employee feedback is a critical mistake. It can lead to disengagement and a lack of trust. Show that you value feedback by acknowledging it and taking appropriate actions, and communicate any changes made based on employee suggestions.

Neglecting non-verbal communication

Relying solely on written communication and ignoring the power of visual and face-to-face interactions can limit engagement. Incorporate a mix of communication methods, including video updates and visual presentations to make your messages more engaging.

Lack of follow-up

Sending out important messages without following up can lead to a lack of understanding and implementation. Always follow up on critical communications with meetings or reminder emails to check on progress and address any questions.

Overlooking cultural differences

Don’t overlook the diverse cultural backgrounds of your employees. Misunderstandings and feelings of alienation can have critical consequences. Communication should be inclusive and sensitive to these differences, with training on cultural competence provided when necessary to ensure respect for all cultures involved.

How Prezi can transform your internal communication

Prezi is an excellent tool for internal communication. Whether you’re planning a team meeting or sharing information through a pre-recorded presentation, Prezi offers many ways to relay information effectively across your team.

Prezi’s open-space canvas

Boring and limiting are two words often used to describe traditional presentations. Prezi’s open-space canvas introduces a new way of creating presentations—conversational and non-linear—making the information much more memorable. The open canvas is especially useful for companies, as it fosters increased engagement without requiring a lot of effort from the creator. It enables easy navigation through topics discussed during meetings and allows for detailed discussion points from different perspectives. 

This approach ensures employees remain attentive and retain more information. Moreover, it simplifies sharing presentations through entire organizations, keeping everyone informed and up-to-date, which is crucial for those working remotely or as part of hybrid teams.

Creating visual aids for internal communication often consumes a lot of time, as attention to detail is essential for them to be both informative and visually appealing. Prezi AI simplifies this process, reducing it to just a few clicks, and enabling you to produce professional presentation designs quickly and easily. This tool is especially useful for preparing internal reports, training materials, and company updates, ensuring that your content is engaging yet straightforward.

With Prezi AI , creating presentations is easier than ever. You don’t have to worry about the difficulty of design because it offers smart templates and user-friendly tools that let you focus on your content. This ensures your presentations look professional and high-quality with minimum effort.

Prezi Video

Virtual meetings can be challenging, especially in remote and hybrid work environments , where keeping participants engaged is often difficult. Prezi Video transforms the experience by allowing you to appear alongside your content, creating a more dynamic and interactive presentation. This feature ensures that the audience remains focused, as it feels more like a conversation rather than a traditional, one-dimensional presentation. 

By integrating your presence with your visual materials, Prezi Video improves understanding and retention of information, making your meetings more productive and impactful. Additionally, this tool supports various multimedia elements, adding further depth to your presentations and keeping viewers actively involved throughout the session. For more valuable information, read our article on how to boost engagement with internal communication videos .

Plus, Prezi makes it easy to share these visual materials across your organization, so everyone gets consistent and clear information. This improves the effectiveness of your internal communications, keeping all employees well-informed and up-to-date with the company’s progress.

What Prezi can do:

• Customizable templates: Choose from a variety of professionally designed templates .
• User-friendly tools: Enjoy easy-to-use features that simplify the creation process.
• High-quality presentations: Ensure your presentations look polished and professional.
• Easy sharing: Effortlessly distribute visual materials across your organization.
• Maintain brand identity: Maintain clear and uniform messaging for all staff by integrating branding elements into the visuals.

With Prezi, you can transform your internal communication, making it more efficient and effective.

Why presentations are key for good internal communication

Presentations are a standout method for internal communications because they offer a visually engaging way to share information, making it easier for employees to understand and remember key points. Unlike lengthy emails or text-heavy documents, presentations break down information into digestible chunks using visuals like charts, graphs, and images. This not only captures attention but also aids in better understanding.

Prezi Video elevates this experience by allowing presenters to appear alongside their content, adding a personal touch that other methods lack. This makes the communication feel more direct and engaging, especially important in remote and hybrid work environments where maintaining connection and focus can be challenging. 

Furthermore, unlike static slides, Prezi’s interactive format allows for a more dynamic presentation, helping to keep the audience engaged from start to finish. By combining visual appeal with the presenter’s presence, Prezi Video ensures that messages are delivered more effectively, making it an ideal tool for internal communications in any company.

Internal communication presentation examples 

Experience how interactive and engaging Prezi presentations are and get inspired by the following examples to create your own!

Effective onboarding for PM’s 

This is a great presentation example to use in internal communication because it provides a clear, structured, and interesting approach to onboarding. It highlights the importance of the onboarding phase, breaks down complex information into manageable sections (Product, Process, People), and offers specific, actionable steps. The interactive and visual format ensures that new PMs can easily understand and retain crucial information, fostering better engagement and alignment with company goals.

Parental leave policies in financial services

This Prezi effectively conveys critical information through a clear, structured narrative. It highlights real-life scenarios and survey data to show the importance and current challenges of parental leave policies. This approach not only informs but also engages the audience by presenting relatable stories and concrete statistics. By zooming in on specific data and sections, it draws attention to the most important elements, keeping the audience focused and making the presentation more interesting to watch. 

Stunning talent has no borders

This Prezi on remote work demonstrates how to effectively highlight key benefits, such as increased productivity and environmental impact, using clear data and real-life examples. For your internal communications, draw inspiration from its approach by focusing on the positive impacts of your message, supported by relevant statistics. The simple design and consistent layout of the presentation make it easy to absorb the information, emphasizing the importance of a clean and coherent format to enhance understanding and retention.

How to fix your underperforming team before it’s too late

This presentation on fixing underperforming teams offers valuable inspiration for internal communications by emphasizing storytelling and clear, actionable steps for improvement. The simple design and consistent layout make the information easy to absorb and follow. Additionally, the use of relatable scenarios, like Joey’s story, and concrete strategies for leadership, such as setting standards and fostering accountability, ensure that the audience remains engaged and retains the key messages. 

Do all employees need to have equal benefit plans? 

This Prezi on employee benefits serves as an excellent source of inspiration due to its clear, structured layout and use of data visualization to convey complex information. It simplifies intricate topics like self-insured arrangements and IRS nondiscrimination tests, making them accessible and easy-to-understand. This style of presentation is particularly useful for HR departments, financial services firms, or any organization needing to explain detailed policy information to employees or stakeholders. 

Boost your internal communications with Prezi

We hope this article has helped clarify the internal communication meaning as well as its importance. Remember, the method you choose to communicate is crucial.

Creating interactive meetings with tools like Prezi can truly maximize your internal communication efforts. By making your presentations more engaging and interactive, you ensure that your employees stay informed, engaged, and aligned with your company’s goals. 

Don’t settle for generic methods when you can elevate your communication further. Boost your internal communications with Prezi and witness the positive impact on your organization’s productivity and morale. Start enriching your communication strategy today!

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Bad PowerPoint Examples You Should Avoid at All Costs

There is a lot of information online on how to better your PowerPoint presentations. But sometimes an example of what you should not do can be very useful in the way of avoiding mistakes. So, what does a really bad presentation look like? Here I’ll show you the worst of the worst PowerPoint sins you can commit when designing your presentation. These bad PowerPoint examples will show you exactly what you don’t want your presentation to look like.

From slides so ugly they cause eye strain, to just plain boring, if your presentation looks anything like this, then you have some work to do! But to prove that everything has a solution, we asked our team of in-house designers to show us how they would fix some of these terrible PowerPoint slides.

Too much text

PowerPoint is a great tool, but it’s just that: a tool. It should not overshadow you. To exploit the presentation as a visual aid, you want it to complement the speaker, not to repeat word for word everything it’s being said. Too much text can be an important factor in the “death by PowerPoint” phenomenon. Just from seeing whole blocks of text, people watching your presentation can feel immediately overwhelmed. Surely you can relate to feeling annoyed just from finding out that the presentation you’re sitting through has way too much text on its slides.

People are usually visually-focused since, as a species, it’s the sense we have developed the most. Chances are that, as soon as people see the slide, they’re going to start reading it from start to finish. And doing so, they’ll be paying less (or no) attention to the speaker in front of them – in this case, you! And, if you’re just repeating what’s being said in the slide, why should they? Even when it’s not exactly the same, as a speaker you’ll be competing with your own presentation for your audience’s attention.

Having the speech word for word on the presentation can also worsen the abilities of even the most experienced public speaker. It’s too tempting to read, instead of going with the flow and accommodating your audience’s mood. Most likely, your presentation will feel stiff and not very engaging. After all, timing is a great part of becoming a successful presenter.

This is a bad PowerPoint example that clearly has too much text. When the text is this long, PowerPoint will immediately lower the size of your fonts to make it fit on the slide. In the end, you’ll find yourself with text so small that even if the audience wanted to read it they wouldn’t be able to.

So, how do you avoid lengthy text slides? Think caveman-like speech. Do not, by any means, dump complete paragraphs in your presentation. Some even say to even avoid complete sentences . Focus on your keywords, in the most important concepts or ideas that you want your public to take with them. People have limited capacity for retention, and focusing on key points will make your presentation easier to digest.

For example, check out the slide our designers fixed:

Animations are a tricky topic. PowerPoint has over 150 animations, and some presentations seem to have made it their personal goal to try all of them. As a general rule, too many animations are an easy way to make your PowerPoint look unprofessional and outdated. When every single element in a slide is animated, it’s distracting (and even tiring) for your audience.

Even for the presenter, animations can become a nuisance. Animating a slide in a way that every single element needs a click to appear or disappear is probably not the best idea. It’ll have you worried and distracted thinking if you have already shown all the points you were meaning to show, or if you have shown too many. Many times presenters can even give away their next slides too early. This will not only ruin your timing but probably distract your audience too, as they will remain thinking of the next point rather than focusing on what you’re speaking.

Of course, using animations doesn’t mean your presentation becomes immediately awful. Here at 24Slides, our designers use them often in our free templates. For example, check out this great Project Management Template . It has animations for several elements, but they work automatically, without the need of clicking. This way, the presenter doesn’t have to distract themselves with it.

Compare it to this bad PowerPoint example. Each element of the slide is animated separately, so it takes much longer to finally show them all. Also, each element has more than one animation. It makes the slide look overloaded, and distracts the audience.

So, how many animations are too many? There is no “correct” amount of animations. Most presentations can be more than fine with none at all. The key to work with animations without overusing them is to give them an emphasis purpose. See what I did there? If the whole paragraph was in bold letters, it would be difficult to pick out quickly which was the most important idea behind it. But since it is just one word, now “ emphasis” is the idea that will stand out.

Think of animations as a highlighter. It makes little sense for you to highlight every single word on a page. It will be unhelpful, and most likely, annoying. But if you highlight just the main ideas, it can be extremely useful. You can even use animation to highlight shock value or unexpected changes. Just remember: when talking about animations, less is always more.

For example, in this slide, the animations are used to shift the focus from topic to topic. Having all these arrows around might be confusing for the public, but with the colors and the arrow shifting, you can redirect your audience’s attention to wherever you like.

“Rainbow” Presentations

Color and its use is a whole other topic. But you don’t need to be an expert in color theory to be able to make a decent looking presentation (though it sure helps). You can summarize the general rules of using color in just one point: make it easy to read! Loud, bright colors , like orange, or lime green, are probably not the best for a presentation.

Also, take into consideration that for your public to be able to read easily you need to contrast your colors. For example, black letters on a white background, despite looking very simple, is also very easy to read. While something like light grey on white will probably give your audience problems. For example, check out this yellow text on a lime green background. It’s not very friendly, is it?

Now, if you want to go a step further and give your PowerPoint a more professional look, you should pick a color palette. Microsoft Office has thousands of templates you can pick from, and even some of our own. But if you don’t wish to use one, you can also pick a premade color palette. This will ensure that the colors on your presentation don’t clash together. Something as easy as this can give your presentation a much more polished look.

The Fake Minimalistic

Sometimes people can take too far the saying “less is more”. While having different color palettes in one single presentation may make it look unprofessional and eye-straining, an all-white presentation is not the answer either. PowerPoint’s blank templates are a good place to start since you can edit them to your taste and according to your own necessities. But they are not meant to be left like that for a serious presentation. Blank presentations are just plain boring, and that can be as distracting as too many colors.

Sobriety is different than being simplistic. Even if you feel you’re taking the “safe” route when designing a presentation, it can backfire. An all-white presentation can make you look lazy, or that you didn’t put any effort into it. It can affect the way people perceive your work too.

Take this bad PowerPoint example of an all-white presentation with just bullet points. As you can see, it becomes predictable and boring very fast. Plain PowerPoint presentations can also lead to the common “death by PowerPoint”. It just doesn’t give the audience any motivation to keep paying attention. It doesn’t have to be filled with colors, animations or graphics. Keep it simple, but elegant!

This is the slide fixed by our designers. No one can say it isn’t professional, but it’s not boring either. You can check out this Minimalistic Design Template for more inspiration.

Pictures and Fonts

As with colors and animations, here also applies the “less is more” rule. Your priority should be your audience’s ease when reading. For example, a font like Impact , which has too little space between the letters, is probably not the best choice. Over-stylized fonts can also be a problem, especially those that imitate italics. This also applies to font size too. In general, it should never go below 20 pts. The easiest way to see if your font size is good enough is to go to the farthest possible point of the room where you’ll be giving your presentation in. You should still be able to read it easily.

Choose your images smartly! Too many images can also be distracting to the public, especially if they overlap. When considering several images, ask yourself if you really need all of them, or if one can stand for some of the others as well. Check this bad PowerPoint example with too many pictures. It looks messy, right? Even if images are great to illustrate a point and to avoid using too much text, too many of them will make the presentation look outdated.

Also, avoid clipart! It has been a while since the 2000s, so there is no reason for you to be using Screen Beans.

What all these bad PowerPoint examples have in common

In summary, there are two basic rules for a great PowerPoint presentation. It must be visually engaging and it must be clear. Sometimes people can feel tempted to sacrifice one of these points to make the other stand out. For example, adding too many images or animations in hopes of making it more engaging to the public. But this will only make it look confusing and unprofessional. Or, on the other end, add too much text to make their every point clear. This will make a boring, overwhelming presentation that will distract your audience from the speaker.

What all these bad PowerPoint examples have in common is that they lack the balance between engaging and clarity. Avoid “death by PowerPoint” and engage your audience. Use everything in your power to catch their attention and keep it. Microsoft offers a lot of resources to do that: colors, graphics, pictures, embedded videos, animations and so on. It is up to you to use them smartly. Ask yourself, can I change this complete sentence for a picture or a keyword?

But also, review your own presentation as a spectator would. Is it clear? Are the pictures or animations distracting? Are the colors clashing which each other or are they eye-straining? Only when you consider both you’ll be able to design a truly great PowerPoint presentation.

If you want more tips on how to become a better presenter, you may like to read this article on the 15 most common presentation mistakes you want to avoid .

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Opinion | After Biden’s debate disaster: The president’s…

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Opinion | after biden’s debate disaster: the president’s tough choice about quitting or continuing.

The American economy is the envy of the world. Abortion rights are under threat due to Trump’s appointments to the Supreme Court. The sitting president is on the right side of public opinion on gun rights, health care and much more — immigration remains a very real vulnerability — yet he was less persuasive than a reasonably well-educated man on the street, offering an all-you-can-eat word salad bar in stumbling answer after mumbling answer . 

None of this came as a surprise . Even Joe Biden’s strongest supporters have known for months that he is rusty when unscripted in public. That doesn’t mean he is an ineffective president; by all accounts, he understands complex questions and makes intelligent decisions. He has a strong team around him, both in the White House and in federal agencies.

But an election is a binary contest: A candidate either wins or loses, and that win or loss is based not on some elevated intellectual analysis of the quality of the job he does. The political impressions we sometimes dismiss as mere “optics” are, for millions of swing and low-information voters, decisive. A candidate with massive political liabilities and insufficient political strengths does no favors to his cause, however just.

This was not about a stumble or two . The consistent and holistic impression of the night from Biden was of a man who couldn’t make a coherent argument for himself, his party or his ideals. A man who at 81 is well past his prime is now asking the public to reelect him to serve until he is the age of 86. 

Biden has some real accomplishments achieved and he feels that he has been a better president than Trump and would be a better president than Trump even at that advanced age. That is not the question, however. The question is whether he can beat Trump in November.

In the 1960s and earlier, both national parties were strong organizations led by bosses with the power to step in and tell a candidate to step aside. No longer: The president is the head of the party; his power comes straight from the voters. Biden ran essentially unopposed in the primaries and at this late date will be the nominee in November unless he himself makes the affirmative choice to bow out.

It would indeed be a big gamble for Biden to step aside. An open convention would be messy, and whoever was hastily chosen — Vice President Kamala Harris or someone else from a plenty-talented field of governors and senators — would have to scramble to rally the Democratic coalition, much less win over independents and any persuadable Republicans. 

But after Thursday night’s debate, it’s equally apparent to those who fear a second Trump term that keeping Biden is also a big gamble.

The choice is Biden’s. The moment to search his soul is now. He must make a decision motivated not by pride, but by digging deep and honestly answering a difficult question: Is he the Democrats’ best option to put up a fight against Donald Trump?

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