Another Corona metric?

The current flood of data about Corona cases and fatalities shows once more how graphs and other slides are not very effective in changing behaviour: everyone is happily going outside infecting each other. Too much information, too abstract (20% exponential growth, so what?), and looking backwards rather than into the future.

I think governments should publish a daily updated forecast number for the number of cumulative fatalities 4-8 weeks from now, and adjust that number based on daily developments. To make it more tangible, you could pro-rata that number down to the 50 to 150 circle of friends and family most people have. One simple, tangible number that gets updated everyday at 18:00 based on how we are doing as a group together.

Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash

Further search improvements

We got the house settled into some routine now which means I can focus my attention on SlideMagic again. Following up on a blog post of 2 days ago, I made more improvements to the slide search algorithm that produces related slides:

• It identifies variants of the same design (more or fewer columns or rows for example

• A similar message or concept that they are trying to convey

• Slides that are different but have the same visual structure as the one you initially picked

I removed the category labels in the search results (that were useful for me, but not really for a user). Instead, I am going for a single list of slides sorted by relevance without revealing what is behind that relevance. And that algorithm will get better and more accurate over time.

Size-based suggestions

A key step in my slide design process is figuring out what sort of grid I need: 3 x 1, 1 x 5, 4 x 4? Almost every slide in a business presentation is some sort of table in disguise. Today I started adding a “more x by y” search suggestions on the web-based template browser of SlideMagic. I will add more automation to slide classification in the near future. One obvious extension is the same slide but then with 1 more column, etc.

How to design management dashboards

The number of app installs of SlideMagic 2.0 is still small, but the graph has a similar shape as the exponential graphs we all have gotten used to over the past weeks.

Modern analytics tools allow you to track literally everything under the sun in your app and/or web site. Instant information overload supported by colourful graphs that look good, but don’t say much. This overload of data is similar to the ones I would encounter as a consultant at McKinsey. And now, 15+ years later, I find myself following a similar approach to making sense of it for my own app.

Most case examples about analytics are built for established apps and web sites with huge customer flows you can micro analyse whether the check out button should br green or red. SlideMagic is not there yet.

• I find myself going through a certain cycle. It starts with a basic question, “how many people did actually install the app”, which results in a daily manual routine to find the latest number, which then gets translated into a proper query in an analytics app. I check whether my analytics tool is consistent with the numbers I can dig out of my own server. Slowly, slowly, I get a sense of how the app behaves with a consistent set of data that I can recognise.

• Slowly, slowly, I start adding more questions to the picture, and make sure that I keep a picture of how they relate.

• Each factor has a specific visualisation: some are lines, some are bars, some uniques, some totals, some cumulative, you need to play around with it.

The key factor I need to work on now is a very specific one. Of the users that know of SlideMagic, installed it, tried it a first time, then tried it out seriously (now we are down to small numbers), of those, can I get a handful of users that really, really start using it. If we get that final step to work, I am confident that the previous steps in the funnel will work itself out.

Work in progress.

Photo by YIFEI CHEN on Unsplash

Getting to the point

Everyone is working remotely The meeting is on an improvised video call. Less time to prepare the slide deck. People watching slides on small screens. There is less room for “escape behaviour”, request another sensitivity analysis, rephrase slide 25 to get back to it later.

The current situation might be a turning point in corporate communication. PowerPoint still holds the fact packs and the result of our analysis, built up over months, updated with the latest information. Then, there is the (virtual) meeting tomorrow where you have 5 minutes to make a point. “OK, what it all boils down to is this…”

And that’s where SlideMagic comes in: fast and simple.

Photo by Tommy Lisbin on Unsplash

Home school your kids coding

Schools are shuttered here in Israel, I took the opportunity to create a morning routine where I teach my kids to code. They like it so far. Coding is actually hard to learn in a 30-person class room setting, and our Waldorf-style school does not even offer it as an option. This school break might actually turn out to be very productive.

I chose Javascript: you can use it both in the browser and on servers, and code experiments in a browser give instant visual feedback of your efforts. I am using this course (the beginner one from the same instructor I used to dust off my 1992 degree). No affiliate link links or kick backs for me here, prices for Udemy courses vary wildly depending on different times you check them out (some sort of A/B testing I think).

Photo by Feliphe Schiarolli on Unsplash

Stock photos and the virus

We are getting used to the photos of hospital entrances, images of empty trains, empty shelves. But they are still a lot better than the photo model wearing a mask with impeccable make-up, no sign of sweat, ready to cure the next patient.

Instant reaction to a draft pitch deck

The other day I was eye balling a pitch deck and here I am jotting down my reactions as I go page by page:

• Logo and colour on the front page looks nice, a grammatical error and an over used buzz word in the slogan

• Vision statement instead of describing what the app is all about. Vision statement contains overused buzzwords, and lists actually multiple possible consumer hooks, each could be a business in its own right, some are features, some are business models

• App screen shot looks nice, but highlighted features do not match the vision of the previous page

• Lots of market data, but in this industry, no one will ever doubt that the market is small, the question is how to take on the existing giants and way of doing things

• Product description (matches the screen shot, not the vision). Trying to relate this product to products I know (both traditional ones, and other innovators I am aware of). Maybe this product is new and does not merit a direct comparison, but still I am trying to understand what it actually does before getting into the positioning. Existing product comparison are good for the purpose of educating.

• Very dense internal consulting chart that shows how the team came up with the value proposition

• Competitive analysis is a detailed spreadsheet, competitor columns need re-ordering, feature rows need re-ordering and grouping

• A key strategic partner pops up at the end of the slide deck as a very important part of the brand

This is not a critique of a final, polished investor pitch, this document was just version 0.1 of an interested customer of SlideMagic, asking me what templates to use. SlideMagic can instantly upgrade the looks of these slides, some of the consulting frameworks are on board as a template already. But designing the deck is too early.

It looks like the project started as an original product idea with a very distinctive feature. Now the team is working to build the right consumer positioning out of it and is mid-way. Some recommendations:

• Keep the investor positioning and the consumer positioning separate. For investors, be very clear how your product/technology fits, relates, is different from other players in the market. The consumer pitch can sound different. You need to have a consumer pitch, since the investor wants to be confident that you know how to market, but that is a different check box you need to tick.

• Separate the charts from you internal consulting project from the pitch deck, they are totally different. Not only in graphical style, but also in content. Working documents show doubts, trade offs, analysis, pitch charts have a very clear and confident message

Photo by Science in HD on Unsplash

15+ years of working from home...

I have been working from my home office since 2002, and for me, the experience has been great. Well, it fits my personality (introvert who does not crave water cooler chats), and the sort of work I like to do (create, design things).

The coming weeks will give an opportunity to find out what sort of work can be done from home, and to what type of people it will appeal. There will always be people that need constant supervision and checking to stay “focused”. There will always be managers who just love to have all subordinates around ready to be called in at any time it suits her agenda. There will always be cultures that thrive on corridor chats to coordinate things.

For other situations, this might be an opportunity.

Photo by Breno Assis on Unsplash

"Only three per customer!"

This slogan creates a sense of scarcity and it works. People who would otherwise buy 1, or even one, take 3, just to be sure. Google used it to get users to sign up for Google Wave RIP.

The same is happening now with people stocking up with supplies. They see a half empty shelf, better make sure not to be left out, and the shelf empties out completely soon after.

When thinking about how to use scarcity in your presentations, consider the long-term implications to your brand as well. User might feel duped when they find out that you opened the flood gates 3 weeks after that special offer.

In the case of SlideMagic, the early restricted signups were required since things were still buggy. Today I removed the required to sign up for an account before downloading the app as a sign of confidence in the platform.

Photo by Miguel Pinto on Unsplash

Better defaults

In version 2.2.5 I cleared up the default settings in SlideMagic. The way things used to work were aimed at a professional presentation designer: the presentation settings including logo and colour were saved as default as soon as you save the presentation. I have changed that: defaults get saved in the background as soon as you make active changes to the settings yourself, loading and saving a presentation with different settings than yours does not impact your defaults.

I made a big effort to avoid the whole book keeping of colour templates and profiles. I think SlideMagic does the right thing in the background now, and given the few settings options there are, it is easy to adjust something if needed.

You can download the latest version here.

How to create a logo page in a presentation

Yes, I have been in this situation as well:

Tweet of the century. This was my life for 10 years. https://t.co/eayvuTK2MG

— Jon Thomas (@Its_JonT) March 4, 2020

Below is a short video that shows how SlideMagic makes creating logo pages in a presentation really easy. In the first example, I start from scratch with a completely blank page. Notice how logos get plopped in, and how everything lines up instantly in the grid, and how easy it is to add columns, text boxes without having to re-arrange and re-align the entire page. (I have added this slide as a free slide on the template store, you can find it here, stripped of the logos I used because I could not verify copyrights)

The alternative is to start with one of the built-in templates of SlideMagic, search for “logo” in the app and see what slides come up:

Now you can customise the page and swap the logos for the ones you need.

The exact same search available in the online template bank as well (try searching for logo), but users who are downloading the PowerPoint version directly from the web site miss out on the magic of SlideMagic when it comes to manipulating image grids.

My suggested strategy: tweak things in SlideMagic, and export at the very last moment to PowerPoint if you have to share things with your colleagues. You will save a lot of time making those nasty logo grids.

Better PDF conversion

I just released V2.2.3 of SlideMagic, with a big feature update: a new approach to exporting PDF. Until now, I created PDF files by having the program recreate a .magic slide in .pdf, element by element, picture by picture, letter by letter. This got me to 99% accuracy, the 1% being cases where small mistakes would be introduced. For example, a word dropping to the next line because of tiny deviations in font size.

Unlike PowerPoint exports, PDF files are set in stone, you want to send that presentation to an investor, there is no way to fix a quick glitch.

So I changed the approach, the new PDF exporter takes a screen shot of the exact page you created and puts it in a high resolution PDF file. What you see is what you get, 100% of the time, by design. In the process, I could actually delete hundreds and hundreds of lines of code.

The app should upgrade itself in the background for existing users, or you can force the upgrade by downloading a new version from the site.

Other V2.2.3 improvements are mainly under the hood. For the geeks: the app has been upgraded from Electron 6 to 8, with a very recent version of Chrome, and both app and server now share the exact same code to render slides, images, and PowerPoint files, which will save me lot of time as I make improvements. I basically paid my duties for fixing “quick and dirty” copy-paste coding of a few months ago.

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

Why are all your images black and white?

Yes, almost all the images on my blog and in the SlideMagic template bank are in black and white. Why?

SlideMagic uses (and encourages you to use) a sober colour scheme: basically different levels of grey with one accent colour that should match the dominant colour in your logo. This is a pragmatic choice. SlideMagic is all about business presentations, not art. More colours require additional design skills to get it right. Too many colours can make a slide busy, can create inconsistencies between slides, make the brand identity of your slide weaker. Yes, a pro designer can get it right, and maybe the amateur as well, but - and that is a very important but - it just adds to the time it takes to create your deck. And SlideMagic is all about speed. One accent colour and greys always looks good.

Full colour images introduce colours to your slide that might not always match your colour scheme. Colour schemes of images can also vary wildly between images, creating inconsistent slides. You often see that professional-grade designs (ads, brochures, web sites) use images that have been selected based on their colour profile. The amateur slide designer does not have time for this. That’s why keeping things black and white solves this issue: images blend in, and images look consistent.

Should all images always be black and white? Absolutely not. Personally, I would go for anonymous images to be black and white, but depictions of real things in full colour; your product, your app screen, your prototype.

And.. unlike the downloadable slides in PowerPoint format, the slides in .magic format can be set back to colour, I just flipped the B&W toggle to grey for the moment. Direct PowerPoint downloads are in black and white only. But this might be your excuse to start using the SlideMagic app, and convert to PowerPoint (with full colour images) if you have to later on in the design process.

Photo by Kensuke Saito Surf Photography on Unsplash

Virtual backgrounds in video conferencing

Camera technology is finally good enough to solve the video conference background problem: no more bed rooms, bad lighting, plumbers, kids and/or other unpredictable events behind your back. In the settings tab of zoom, go to virtual backgrounds and set it to the mood you want.

Almost perfect, my hair and sweater pattern did get adjusted as well…

Most of your slides should be tables in disguise

After more than 25 years of designing presentations, here is an important insight: most of your slides are tables. Not only the spreadsheet-type straight table with columns full of numbers, but a more generic 2 dimensional layout of any idea.

Writing text on paper, in a word processor or telling a story verbally, is one dimensional. You make a point one after the other. A good slide adds a second dimension to organise your thoughts.

• Time to show a sequence of data

• Steps in a process or a supply chain

• Pros and cons

• Sales, costs, capital

Dependent on this second dimension, different slide types come out: 2x2 matrices, categorised lists, column charts.

The algorithm picks up some real tables as well…

Many of the classical management consulting frameworks were the result of someone trying to fit an idea across 2 axes. When it worked, you got a nice layout to discuss an issue, and often, you spotted missing scenarios that you did not consider before (“hey, what happens in the low-low box?”)

This also shows why bullet points are poor slides: they are 1-dimensional, you are missing that powerful second dimension to organise your idea.

Now you see why in SlideMagic the table is central to everything. It encourages you to think in 2 dimensions for every slide you try to design. Organising and lining up boxes is difficult in most presentation software. And when you got it to work finally, someone asks you to add another row and take out column 2. Piece of cake in SlideMagic.

Not everyone can become a master designer, but if everyone would create 90% of their slides in some sort of 2-dimensional grid, presentations would be lot more clear. SlideMagic is here to help.

One slide, multiple views

SlideMagic can change the way a slide looks at the touch of a button:

• Aspect ratio, going back and forth between 16:9 and 4:3

• Background colour: between dark and light

• Explanation panel: with or without a side box with space for text for when you are not there to explain the slide in person

In traditional presentation software, this can be cumbersome to do. The software is not to blame, it is by design. If you give the user full flexibility about how to place images, size shapes, and colours she can use, you cannot avoid stretching of image aspect ratios, mixing up slide layouts, and confusing colours when you apply changing to a slide layout. Yes, all can be fixed, but it always takes a bit of mopping up to get right.

SlideMagic has a very rigid colour and slide layout regime, and it pays off, you can go back and forth between different slide layouts instantly. Here are six versions of the same slide, all generated with a single click without corrections:

4:3, dark slide background (see how the app interface itself turns light to provide enough contrast)

Dark background, with the slide-out panel

16:9, dark background

Wide screen, with a light background, the app turns dark again

Light background, with a slider

And back to 4:3, with a light background

The great thing is that all of this works on all the templates that are in the SlideMagic database. At the moment, thumbs will show up on the web site or app search interface in 4:3 with a light background. (This Paris slide can be found here). I have the technology to render slides on the demand (aspect ratio, colour, and even your own logo and corporate accent colour). I store slides a dynamic database objects, not template files, but I need to understand the implications on bandwidth and server processing before I switch that on.

To be continued.

Video: making slides in the app

I am still mainly focused on improving the app, but soon I focus on marketing as soon as I see that a group users really gets hooked on using the product (and that group can be very small). One good way to show what the app can do is short screen capture videos I think. I quickly put two together, without editing, just my playing around.

The first one creates a data table with integrated bar chart (notice how it lines up) from scratch:

The second slide uses the built in slide template bank (the app has access to the same slides as you can search online). Notice how you pull in the template, quickly add in columns, delete rows, and pull in another image. (I am using the beta Unsplash integration here). They key problem with pre-designed PowerPoint templates is having a design layman adjusting a template that was created by a pro. SlideMagic solves that.

Do VCs like short pitch decks or detailed ones?

I am monitoring my server logs to catch broken links now that I am taking years of Shopify links down (it is like playing tennis against a ball throwing machine). One of the URLs that produced a 404 error was this one:

Do-interested-VCs-like-short-pitch-decks-that-stimulate-discussion-or-detailed-pitch-decks-that-demonstrate-thought-thoroughness

Someone must have typed this question in somewhere. Let’s try to answer it:

I think the different types of documents are needed in different stages of the VC due diligence.

Initially a VC is trying to get her head around what it is that you are actually doing. Presenting a massive fact pack with market statistics will show that you are diligent, but will not help her answer the question of the moment. It will also show that you do not really have great sales skills and tact.

On the other hand, showing up with 2 pages TED Talk-style (2 page filling images) in order to have a fresh exchange of ideas freed from bullet points, will not get you past that initial hurdle either.

In some sectors, leaving detail out can actually hurt. For example for a biotech pitch, it can all hinge on the results of your clinical trial, down to nitty gritty statistics. Leaving that out invalidates the pitch.

There is no one-fits-all answer here. Think how much time you have, think at what stage of the process you are in, think how well an investor understands the industry and see what is the right information needed for this moment.

If you are sending a deck via email (“send and pray”), add a bit more information, maybe separated in a clear upfront pitch and an appendix in the back. Again use judgement: details work plans of the team are probably not interesting, additional pages with bio info of the team could actually help (easy to skim, team is very important), confidential IP/technical information or financial data you might not want to email to an investor at all initially.

It all depends.

P.S. Seeing the live logs is actually really helpful, unlike Google logs, I can see a person going left, right, straight, backwards to get to a certain answer, giving me the opportunity to add slides that people need.

Photo of a Peugeot 404 by Joris Molenaar on Unsplash

Closing the old template store, subscribers can move to the new one

The new platform now includes the entire collection of the slides of my old Shopify templates store (and much more of course). Yes, it might be costing me SEO rankings, but I am going to close it down: multiple platforms are confusing for users, and hard to manage. Also the old store was difficult to use for subscribers who had to go through some check out process every time they want to download a slide.

For each paying subscriber with an active subscription, I have created an account on the new platform with a Pro subscription that expires at the same time your subscription on the old store did. I don’t store your passwords, so you have to go to slidemagic.com (this site), go to the log in page, and hit “forgot password”. After entering the email address you used for the old store, you should receive a link where you can create a new password (invisible to me).

I will keep the slide download option running on the platform, because that is what people are used to when it comes to buying presentation-related things online, but selling templates is not the main point of SlideMagic. The pro subscription also unlocks the full feature set of the downloadable presentation app. Try using it:

• Super easy to customise templates

• A lot, lot more templates available

• PowerPoint export so your colleagues do not have to notice (of course you can tell them about the secret of SlideMagic).

If you are stuck email [email protected], and I am here to help.

Photo by Rhys Moult on Unsplash