Presentation software supporting visual design: Displaying spatial relationships with a zooming user interface

Presentation software such as Microsoft's PowerPoint and its competitors are built upon the slide show metaphor, a metaphor that recalls the days when slide projectors were commonplace. A new presentation software tool, Prezi, sets itself apart by employing a new metaphor, the “infinite canvas” and the zooming user interface. Prezi's infinite canvas is a theoretically endless two-dimensional surface upon which text, graphics, video clips, and other visual aids are arranged. Prezi's interface allows for smooth and seamless zooming of the canvas, supporting views as wide or as narrow as the presenter desires. These two very different metaphors lend themselves well to displaying different kinds of visual information. I explore the history of each metaphor and its use in presentation software and discuss the characteristics of each metaphor when enacted in the presentation programs. I then highlight the wireflow document as one specific document type, relevant to the Human-Computer Interaction and User Centered Design communities, that is more effectively displayed in Prezi than in traditional presentation programs.