So, to start this story, I need to share with you, that we have been doing Prezi like presentations for almost a decade. Mostly coded by hand, no editor, just scripting planes of information for zooming around, showing details, etc. (Like we all do now) During this process, sometimes we shared these presentations for friends who changed content, tweaked the code a bit, and talked about various topics.
About 2 years ago, something really interesting happened. We did a zooming presentation to sell the concept of an innovation lab, with lots of images, arrows, fields, all talking about research methods, interaction design, group dynamics, etc, etc.. It all made sense, the idea was sold, the lab was born. Some months after this a friend, a researcher of Angkor temples borrowed this presentation, to create a talk on his own. He replaced our images with images of ruins.
He replaced our innovation related text with architectural history… but he left all the arrows, fields, graphics in place. He simply filled out our innovation presentation with his own research, and just used the relevant relations where some relations where already visualized.
What is most surprising to me, that it worked amazingly well!
Another point to bring in here, is a dialog in (not so) recent architecture practice, brought up in contrast of the modernist paradigm “form follows function” – that we could just as well use “function follows form”. If you have experience in design, you probably understand this well – in many occasions you get great ideas from visual stimuli, from sketches, layout, etc. You start with form, you end up with concepts…
Why did we get into all this? We’ll continue tomorrow…
I did my first real Prezi presentation today. It went quite well, and I had a blast creating it. It still sits somewhere between a traditional powerpoint and the Prezi form, but I’m starting to get it! (old habits die hard)–take a peek:
http://prezi.com/7187/view
Now my point. I think I’d love to have some “form” or “relational” templates like you describe. It would help me learn new ways of presenting data in more relational ways. Yes it seems odd that a template would work for a variety of different information, it could, but more importantly, I’d learn a bit more from seeing others templates. Love the tool, and I’m tryin to rearrange my brain as I use it.
-Joel G.
Wow, I learned so much about photographic composition in 2 minutes!
Really great Prezi
I think you used it very well in the various topics, maybe one additional layer would be to have the overview also tell the whole story from a distance – this (http://prezi.com/6978/) is a template in the making – where beyond the various topics and details, the whole has a visual narrative – maybe in your case, you could place all these points either on an image, or simple layout so they make sense form a distance – this even helps to audience to remember what where the rules to follow – end with an overview?