Professional Documents
Culture Documents
By Felicia Beehner
April 6, 2016
For Technical Writing
Table of Contents
Introduction...3
Methods.........3
Results...4
Task 1: Creating an account and user login....4
Task 2: Choosing a theme.......6
Task 3: Modifying a theme.....7
Task 4: Navigating the site..9
Task 5: Importing images..10
Task 6: Inserting a video...11
Task 7: Previewing the finished product...12
Task 8: Uploading and sharing the presentation.......13
Recommendations...14
Introduction
This white paper compares the results from a usability test of two
free online presentation creation tools: Prezi and PowToon. They
differ from perhaps the most common presentation tool of
PowerPoint by being free and useable online without a download.
These tools appeal to my target audience of educators, which
includes myself as an education major.
Oftentimes we hear about boring PowerPoints, especially in
school. Both Prezi and PowToon are viable, free options to
innovate the way we create presentations. These are two easy to
use sites, and most educators are familiar with a fair amount of
technology. Most educators would be familiar with PowerPoint, but
perhaps not an online presentation creator. I did the testing and it
was done as part of the course work for a technical writing class
at the University of Idaho.
Methods
The usability test for both sites was done over the span of two
days: March 30th and 31st from my home. I used my 2014 HP Envy
laptop with an i7 processor. I was in a quiet room alone while
conducting the tests. Since the presentation tools are web based,
the computer processor or model shouldnt matter as much as the
speed of the Wi-Fi.
The tasks I chose to evaluate are:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
Results
Task 1: Creating an account and user login
Im going to discuss each points of interest and for each program
and do side by side comparisons when possible. I will keep Prezi
images on the left and PowToon images on the right.
to create an account
and free, but it may be
an issue or difficult to
figure out its free. It
only asks for a name,
email, and password
when creating an
account. You log in with
your email and
password and it takes you to your dashboard where all of your
created Prezis are located. I marked down Prezi for easiness since
Figure 1.2 Prezi Dashboard
it may be confusing to figure
out the tiny free choice.
Powtoon on the other hand is a bit simplier to figure out from the
beginning. PowToon is
similar to Prezi with
account creation, but it
also wants to know what
you want to use the
program for. It
automatically makes an
account name for you, and
you can login with that
account name or email,
both with a password. It
also brings you to a
dashboard where your
created projects are
located. The sites comes across as nothing but free from the start,
but does also have a pro paid version. Pop up ads did advertise
paying, however.
Figure 1.3
PowToon Dashboard
I feel the two sites are similar in easiness but PowToon is a bit
easier to make an account for and log in to since it doesnt ask
you to make a payment choice from the very beginning.
5
PowToon
For PowToon, It lets you preview the theme before you pick it. It
takes a little time to load the theme, but the ability to preview the
theme helps that. It is not as
fast as Prezi, and the theme
takes a few minutes to load.
The tutorial opens after selecting a
theme to
customize
for the
first time. The
Figure
3.2 I
stared at this for a while
theme is easy to modify, with
additional backgrounds, icons, many font choices, and colors. The
tutorial seemed helpful for someone not familiar with presentation
programs, but I skipped it and was able to quickly figure out how
everything works. The
big, attractive
interface is eye
appealing. Some
icons are locked
unless you have the
pro version, which
can be a bit irritating.
In either case, it takes
some time to learn a new interface. PowToon is a bit
quicker to learn. The
Figure 3.3 PowToon
interface
numerous menus can be a
bit overwhelming at first when using Prezi.
The Likert values I assigned for each are as follows:
Prezi
PowToon
PowToon
PowToon
10
11
Prezi
PowToon
PowToon
13
or
easier
Figure
Recommendations
Based on scores, PowToon comes out a little on top. It has a
simple and clean interface that makes it easy to learn and use,
14
it
15