How To Describe Presentation Abilty to Potential Clients

Jul 21, 2011

Alecia Teel
By Alecia Teel

I'm a new user of Presenter--I created and distributed my first Flash presentation last month. The purpose was to explain employee benefits available during annual enrollment for a client. Since that was so successful, we want to decribe this service to potential clients to assist in their particular employee benefit communication needs. My question is, what is the best way to describe this type of presentation? Our sales rep just called it a "powerpoint presentation" in his proposal, but I don't think that does it justice. I'm not sure that calling it a "Flash presentation" is explanatory enough either. It can't really be considered an "e-learning course" as it is strictly informational and no user interaction is included other than the ability to repeat a slide (we will probably usually want the slides viewed in a particular order). The only tool I am using is Presenter. Any suggestions on how to decribe to a client?

6 Replies
Heather Beaudoin
almost 13 years ago07/21/11 at 2:23 pm (UTC)

1. Does it have audio narration?

2. Does the viewer ever need to click to proceed, or does it just continue unless they pause it?

3. Are you using any Articulate features that makes it different than just recording audio in a PowerPoint?  Like left navigation or clickable areas for branching slides?

Based on those answers, you could call it either a "video" or a "multimedia presentation".  Both really if they use audio.  Otherwise, if it's only using one media, it's not multimedia. 

If it's interactive, you could try "interactive presentation" or "interactive brochure" if it's like a brochure full of information.

You could always throw the word 'multimedia' or 'video' into those two suggestions, too.  Just makes the name longer, though.

I'd personally stay away from 'Flash presentation' -- that's just the technology.

Just ideas since I haven't seen it.  I'm sure others will have creative ideas.

Alecia Teel
almost 13 years ago07/21/11 at 2:59 pm (UTC)

The presentation I created last month does include audio narration (we recorded the H.R. Director describing the benefits on each slide) and the user does not have to click to proceed--the transitions are automatic. I did allow the ability to repeat a slide, but not to skip to a topic that has not been viewed. For this presentation, we felt that the user should proceed in a linear fashion; not sure if this would be true for future presentations. I didn't use any of the other Articulate features, just kept it simple. What really made the Presenter software attractive for this projecct (other than the ease in adding the narration and exporting to Flash) was the player template. It made it feel more like a "webinar" experience as opposed to just a series of PowerPoint slides.

My presentation can be viewed online at http://presentation.otpbenefits.com/nonline/. Do you think I could call this a "multimedia presentation"?

.

Heather Beaudoin
almost 13 years ago07/21/11 at 4:26 pm (UTC)

Looks great!  Sure, I think "multimedia presentation" would work fine.  Maybe someone else will have a better suggestion for you.

I noticed a couple things I thought I'd mention, if you're interested in some complimentary "usability testing".  I only viewed through part of the Limited Medical Plan because I couldn't jump ahead.

  • On the first screen, I suggest you put an indicator on the screen telling people to adjust their volume.  If they're muted, they won't know they're missing a ton of audio, and they'll just click through the presentation silently.  You have a lot of audio-only info they would miss.
  • Most people won't use those forward/back buttons at the bottom. I was forced to use the back button to get back to the first slide because it wasn't available in the left navigation and I wanted to listen to it again.  You have a lot of other hidden slides that aren't available over there either.  That's fine, but my experience is people don't notice those arrow buttons in the player.
  • The title slides all include a ton of important info that I think should be on info slides of themselves.  All that info got lost for me having it all be audio-only while the title slides were displayed.
  • When going through the benefits tables, I'd suggest removing the audio.  Just let people browse through the tables to read and absorb the details.  The audio just zipped through it, and I wanted to go at my own pace to really get it.  I'd also add some forward / back buttons onto the slides themselves (centered vertically on the left & right sides of the slides), and link them as forward / back buttons.  The eLearning Heroes community download section has great arrows you could use that match your template.  Again, people won't click those arrows in the player.  You think they will, but they almost never do in my experience.  You might have better luck with it, though. 

Very nicely done!

Alecia Teel
almost 13 years ago07/22/11 at 7:12 am (UTC)

Heather, thanks so much for taking the time to review my presentation and provide all the helpful feedback. I didn't even think about the possibility that the user would have their volume muted! Do you by chance have an example of how you have included this on a slide?

Also really like the idea of the back button directly on the slides. I had to remove the seekbar from the player template because the slide count didn't display on some slides and we didn't want it to be confusing. I think this is because some of my slides are hidden so they don't show in the left navigation (as they are just a continuation of the previous slide). We don't want the user to be able to skip forward, but we do want them to be able to repeat a section.

You have a very good point about the information on the title slides. The HR Director actually wrote the script for those right before he recorded his narration (after the PowerPoint had been completed and we were already on a tight timeframe). But I will definitely try to improve that when we revise the presentation. It probabably would have been helpful to have the script written before I designed the slides, but when we first started the project, we didn't know it was going to turn into a narrated presentation.

Thanks again! Unless anyone has any better ideas, I will suggest that our sales team use "multimedia presentation" when describing this communication medium to prospects.

Heather Beaudoin
almost 13 years ago07/22/11 at 7:27 am (UTC)

I'm glad you found my unsolicited advice helpful and didn't take offense to a couple suggestions. 

You can see how I addressed audio on the first slide of this course.  I added music on the intro slide only to allow them to adjust their volume, and then click Start when they're all ready to go so they don't miss anything.

http://www.articulate.com/blog/articulate-guru-honorable-mention-golf-match-play-by-heather-steckley/

As a side note, I always write the script first.  It takes some getting used to, but you can often communicate about 20% of the content through audio and an additional 80% through the visuals that support the audio.  If the audio only communicates what is displayed on the screen, then studies show it's best to not use it and let people go at their own pace without audio.

Again, nice work!

Alecia Teel
almost 13 years ago07/22/11 at 7:59 am (UTC)

Goodness no, I would never take offense to helpful advice--this was my first project of this type and I need all the help I can get.

Thank you for the link to your presentation. What a great idea to play the music at the beginning for volume adjustment. Beautiful presentation--gives me something to aspire to!

So glad I chose a product with such a helpful community of users!

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