PowerPoint Remains the Ultimate Presentation Software
3 Reasons Why We Use PowerPoint 32 Years after Its Release
We know PowerPoint, our presentation application of choice, isn’t the new kid on the block. And, honestly, that’s why we trust it. Microsoft has created an application that has stood the test of time after 30+ years.
In the world of professional presentations, PowerPoint continues to be the standard. We believe it owes its continued popularity and usefulness to a few components that make applications “sticky” over time.
Let’s walk through the three reasons we stick with PowerPoint as presentation designers.
PowerPoint is familiar.
One thing we understand well at Ruby + Citrine is that audiences can have a novelty bias (“I’ll engage if it’s brand-spankin’ new!”) or a familiarity bias (“I’ll engage if it’s not too foreign”), but MOST TIMES, there’s a delicate contextual balance between the two.
PowerPoint has been around long enough that you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who feels out of their depth engaging with PowerPoint presentations. That’s important to us because our clients must have the ability to edit their presentations if necessary. Of course, we also revel in the fact that PowerPoint allows skilled designers to craft impressive and compelling narratives.
Presentations created with PowerPoint have the potential to exist at that sweet spot where a large audience wouldn’t become so overwhelmed by the medium that the message is lost but also isn’t so bored by the medium that the message loses its appeal.
In addition to balance, one facet of the endless potential we’ve mentioned involves the use of elements other than static images to convey information.
PowerPoint is versatile.
While visuals are the foundation of PowerPoint presentations, the potential to reinforce a given narrative through animation, video and/or audio text is something we extensively harness at Ruby + Citrine.
Whenever it appears that every corner of PowerPoint design has been explored, that’s usually when we start to get excited about taking your presentation slides to the next level.
In addition to being versatile in terms of visual mediums, PowerPoint’s flexibility also extends into the realm of file sharing.
Live-sharing PowerPoint presentations in virtual meetings or uploading them to cloud-based platforms isn’t any more difficult than attaching your presentation to an email or copying it to an external storage device. This is critical for our clients whether they’re large organizations or small businesses pitching their ideas.
PowerPoint is adaptable.
The functionality of PowerPoint as a communications tool is conventionally viewed in terms of data or storytelling. It’s great for beginners and convenient for creative and corporate professionals.
Other, more unconventional, uses of PowerPoint demonstrate even greater adaptability than simply helping to illustrate a storyline or create visual data. One underappreciated example of this is authors using a vision board-like template in PowerPoint to outline storylines for novels or non-fiction research, while another example is using hyperlinking to create immersive, interactive demos or sales tools.
With PowerPoint, the uses range from engaging quizzes to video playlists to storyboarding, all of which highlight PowerPoint’s adaptability.
PowerPoint continues to be the most reliable presentation tool despite having been around for over three decades. It also continues to evolve with the needs of its users, which we think makes it even more awesome.
Whether it’s your first time creating slides or you’re looking to push the boundaries of creative presentations, there are many features in PowerPoint specifically designed to help you communicate your ideas, data, and research creatively and efficiently.
