Comments on: Interactive Prototypes with PowerPoint

By: terrybleizeffer

terrybleizeffer — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Very good, practical advice. In particular, I’ve been trying to figure out how to change the default formatting for link text in PowerPoint for years without success. Drove me crazy. I usually resorted to creating a rectangular autoshape with no fill and no border, add the blue-underlined text, then make the box the hyperlink (as you say in the article). A pain in the, um, neck.

I also like using PowerPoint for prototyping. Another good technique is using a combination of PowerPoint and Visio. You can embed a Visio object into a PP chart (Insert -> Object -> Microsoft Visio Drawing), then choose a drawing type of Software -> Windows XP User Interface, which allows you to quickly create a mockup. Then for interactivity, I use “invisible” hyperlinks sitting on top of the Visio object. By invisible I mean a no-line, no-fill rectangle with a hyperlink to the appropriate slide. The downside is that if you update your mockup you have to remember to move the invisible hyperlink, but sometimes the advantage of being able to use the Visio drawing makes up for the hyperlink maintenance. And people don’t need Visio to view your PP charts.

Anyway, nice article. I use PP a lot and still learned some new tips. Thanks.

By: lifeafterweb

lifeafterweb — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Fantastic article! (and a bit of the slap in the forehead, I admit) I have used PowerPoint for web mock-ups and, separately, have used the hyperlink feature in presentations to link to sites I want to show, but I had no idea I could link to pages within PowerPoint itself. I will definitely put this tip to use. Thank you so much!

By: billhutchison

billhutchison — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I found this excellent too – thank you. I’m not sure if you mentioned the fact that you can save the deck as a Powerpoint Show or .pps. This allows people who don’t have Powerpoint to view it. I tried with your example and the links all appeared to work.

By: tamlyn

tamlyn — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

This had never even crossed my mind! I’ve just spent the past few days drawing screens on bits of paper which is all very well until I have to change something or demonstrate some kind interactivity. I passed them on to the designer who did a good job but inevitably got some bits wrong. A powerpoint prototype would have been just the ticket and I’ll definitely be giving it a go soon. Thanks!

Incidentally this all works in OpenOffice Impress too.

By: uiguy

uiguy — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Great article …I’ve used PowerPoint for mocking-up GUI’s and learned lots of good tricks I thought only available via VB …similar to VISIO stencils, I try to keep a a set of contols available for re-use in a separate slide e.g.checkboxes, radio buttons, tabs, tables etc…when I need higher fidelity I steal contro;s from the VISIO XP stencil….

By: ccollingridge

ccollingridge — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Both this article and the article on PDF are excellent for those of us who need to create simple prototypes that are easily distributable, and don’t always have a development resource to assist. The roll-over is a good tip, but a horrible solution! Thanks also to Tamlyn for the heads-up on OpenOffice…

By: dshen

dshen — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I love this. There should be more articles on how to use commonly available software for design purposes, especially if it speeds up the process. How many of us know Flash to whip up something that doesn’t require its complexity to express our ideas? What other programs have people used for design purposes? Logo design in MS Paint? HTML coding in WordPad?

By: josephseeley

josephseeley — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I use PowerPoint prototypes often. Maureen and some commenters have described the main techniques. Here are a few tips I have found useful in my circumstances.

* Len mentions having a slide with all the controls and widgets, like a stencil or library. This saves a lot of time. I have a starter PowerPoint file with this slide in it, as well as the transition settings that Maureen mentions.

* Avoid the temptation of linking to Next and Previous slides, and go to named slides (as in Maureen’s examples). You’ll be grateful later when you insert additional slides to flesh out an interaction or show alternatives.

* I go to some lengths to avoid giving the prototype a polished visual design, because we have a graphic designer who gets paid to do that and is better at it than I am, and because I want the clients or users to see the prototype as a rough draft. Also, my prototypes are for exploring site architecture and task flow, which means font and color would just be distracting. (“Can we change this blue to something lighter?”) So, I work in grayscale, use a handwriting font, and highlight navigation tabs with crudely drawn semitransparent ovals. (Despite these efforts to make sure the prototype is seen as an early rough sketch, I still get comments like “I really like the way you highlight the tabs. Can we do that?”)

* I usually end up creating multiple slide masters. In a tabbed interface, one master per tab is typical. An interaction that takes place on a single page may require 4 or 5 slides to portray, and I find that having the common elements of those slides on their own master makes later adjustments easier.

* For remote usability testing, I sometimes put a brief description of the task on all of the relevant slides for easy reference. I like to use a callout box coming down from the upper right of the slide.

* I display the slide title and slide number at the bottom of each slide, in a very light gray. During remote usability testing or walkthroughs, this helps keep everyone on the same page.

By: amitava

amitava — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I was pleasantly surprised to come across this article in Boxes and Arrows!
Joseph’s recommendations above are useful. And thanks to Maureen for publishing this article. I never thought that this was such an underutilized feature. I first discovered the interactive power point show back in grad school while tinkering with it for a class project- as I wanted something quick and dirty to demonstrate a tool in my CHI class. And incidentally now I am using it as a tool to do some quick usability tests at work.

I think it is a very useful tool to run quick and easy tests with users at any time in the design process. And it doesn’t take too much work to set it up either. Thanks for sharing it with everyone Maureen!

By: ijese

ijese — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I have been watching Boxes and Arrows for long time and this is another great article!

I feel there is much more to “Low-fidelity vs. high-fidelity”, though. There is allways a good chance exact prototype in color looking “like the real thing” will create more problems than it will solve.

For articles and discussions on the same topic, you can check Henrik Olsen’s great site http://www.guuui.com

I’m author of a specialized tool for prototyping (www.MockupScreens.com) so I’m probably biased on this, but I have compiled a list of specialized tools at:
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?GuiPrototypingTools