We’re delighted to announce our newest Haiku Deck Guru: entrepreneur, blogger, and all-around creative force Megan Hunt, a.k.a. Princess Lasertron. Megan’s high-style Haiku Decks have been wowing us for weeks, and we finally had a chance to hear more about how she’s using the app–and how it provided blog inspiration for Radvent, her latest creative undertaking.
Q&A with Megan Hunt
Haiku Deck: So, what inspired you to start using Haiku Deck?
Megan: I found out about Haiku Deck when I saw a business use it to pitch during a local Startup Weekend competition. I’m always super interested in trying new apps that seem like they’d make my life a little easier (particularly in the context of entrepreneurship). I thought Haiku Deck had a cute name and seemed promising, so I downloaded it and was immediately hooked. For me, the sparseness of the app makes it as fun to play with as it is useful. It honestly reminds me of the hours spent toying with HyperStudio as a kid. Really. It’s just fun.
check out any comments users may have left for you
and download a supercool PDF you can use for a handout
We’ve been getting some support requests from fans saying their decks aren’t showing up in their personal gallery. There are a few different reasons this can happen, and this post should help you troubleshoot them.
1. Poor Internet connection: Many publishing issues can be attributed to poor network connectivity. Check your connection and try again.
2. YourHaiku Deck created has not been published to the web: Simply creating a deck using the Haiku Deck iPad application does not automatically make that deck available in your online gallery. You must first share or publish the deck for it to appear on our website.
3. You used a different account to log in to the Haiku Deck application and the Haiku Deck website: You must use the same account for both. To test this, sign in to www.HaikuDeck.com using your preferred account. Then sign in to Haiku Deck on your iPad using the same account. (From the main screen, you can adjust this with the button in the lower left that says either [SIGN IN] or [ACCOUNT]). Try publishing a deck from your iPad by emailing it to yourself, then clicking the link to view it online. Additional information about what do to if you’ve logged in with multiple accounts here.
Our friends at Ethos3 have been working for years to fight against the dreaded “Death by Powerpoint.” We caught up with Ethos3’s content writer and blogger Maggie Summers to hear her thoughts on simplicity, and how Haiku Deck can help further the cause.
Haiku Deck: We’re certainly aligned in our quest for simplicity! Tell us more about your take on it.
Maggie: Leonardo da Vinci once said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” The very existence of simplicity implies thorough understanding, as well as thoughtful inclusion and careful omission. It’s far easier to maintain complexity than it is to foster simplicity.
Distilling complexity is worth the effort. Ideas are far easier to understand when they’re presented simply. Points are more easily retained when there’s no clutter or extraneous jargon. In reality, most people just turn off and tune out in the face of complexity.
Creative Commons licensed image by Wesley Fryer
Haiku Deck: And what are your thoughts about Haiku Deck in particular?
We’ve been huge proponents of simplicity since the beginning of Ethos3, so we’re really excited to see this app come into the presentation space. Haiku Deck is essentially a manifestation of the presentation designer’s most important commandment––use big visuals with little text. We think it’s a great resource for the at-home presentation designer striving for simplicity.
Haiku Deck: What’s your advice for people who’d like to simplify their presentation style with Haiku Deck?
Maggie: Don’t be intimidated by Haiku Deck’s two-line per slide limit. Really, the app is doing you a favor by encouraging the use of as little text as possible to convey a point. It forces you to weed out the complicated, and find the simple. How can you disseminate that point in five words instead of ten? How can you narrow that message down into a single, pithy line rather than squeeze it into a bulky two? Simplify.
The two-line limit becomes much less daunting if you restrict yourself to including only one point per slide. There’s no such thing as a presentation that’s too long or too short. In fact, try not to think of length in terms of number of slides at all. More often than not, expanding a 25-slide presentation into a 50-slide presentation presents the same information much more effectively. The quantity of slides isn’t important. The memorability and impact of each individual slide in the deck is what truly matters.
Haiku Deck: What tips do you have for using images effectively?
Maggie: Large visuals also help the presentation designer embrace simplicity. Use visuals that support and nuance the point on a slide. Don’t be overly literal or prosaic with your choice of images. Instead, play up visual metaphors and use humor, irony, and unexpectedness to add depth to the words on the slide. Use text to communicate the essence of your main point, and then use a compelling visual to communicate further its meaning.
Haiku Deck: Any last thoughts?
Maggie: The simple resonates with audiences much more quickly and resoundingly than the complex. Where complexity tends to alienate and dissuade, simplicity implies accessibility and thoughtfulness, inspiring an equal chance at understanding for all.
Here’s a lovely Haiku Deck that Maggie created to capture her thoughts on simplicity:
Simplicity – Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires
We’ve tried to make Haiku Deck as simple and intuitive to use as possible, but here’s our ultimate resource guide to help you get started. If there’s a question we didn’t answer, visit our support community or let us know in the comments! We’re always here to help.
Import Images Like a Pro (Learn how to use images in your camera roll, photostream and online accounts like Facebook, Instagram, Dropbox, Google Drive and more)
Visit our Featured and Popular Galleries to see the best decks from our community, hand-picked by our team. Tip: If you’re working in the app, you can visit the Gallery by tapping on the GALLERY button on the lower left hand corner in the MAIN MENU.
Tap GALLERY in the MAIN MENU to visit the Gallery in the app.
Pinterest boards (Inspiring examples of Haiku Decks from our creative community about education, real estate, business and more)
Over the past few weeks we’ve enjoyed collaborating with Nolan Haims, VP and Presentation Director at Edelman and author of the excellent blog Present Your Story, a fantastic resource for presentation inspiration and best practices. Nolan has been keeping us on our toes to make sure we’re not unleashing the wrong kind of zen presentation style into the world. We are grateful.
Q&A with Nolan Haims
Haiku Deck: What’s your presentation design philosophy in a nutshell? (Or, for super bonus extra credit, in a haiku?)
Nolan:
Design content
Not just frames
Around that content
[Haiku Deck note: This is technically more of a lune. But if we’ve learned anything from Nolan, it’s that there’s always a way to further simplify. Why have 17 syllables when 12 will suffice?]
Back to Nolan: The majority of presentation design continues to be focused on templates and unintegrated elements like clipart and random rectangles of imagery thrown on slides. Presentation design is too often thought of as template design, but a heavily designed template is just a frame around your actual message. I would love to see more people spend their energies and talents laying out and designing content, focusing on information design and a visual communication of the actual messages on a slide by slide basis.
Haiku Deck: What most makes you cringe in a poorly designed presentation?
Nolan: Too much content in on-screen presentations. Simply stated: the more that is on your slide, the less your audience will absorb—or even read in the first place. Studies have shown that students learn more when presented with less. It should be the same for presenters’ audiences. This means ruthless editing and often separate, more detailed print documents. Both of these things take time, which is why I think most people simply avoid them.
But, know when your presentation is actually a print document. There’s nothing wrong with creating a detailed textual document using PowerPoint—just know the difference between that and an on-screen presentation.
Haiku Deck: It’s not every presentation expert that recommends making your presentation like a Twinkie. Could you elaborate on that a bit?
Nolan: Oh, the Twinkie bit! When I train and coach, I tell people that they should have only two goals when creating presentations: 1) clarity and 2) stickiness. It doesn’t matter how brilliant you or your message is, if an audience doesn’t clearly understand your message and then remember it, your efforts are all for naught.
Much of presentation design is rightfully focused on the clarity part, but when it comes to stickiness, the most effective way to get your audience to remember your messages is to wrap them in stories. Charts, graphs, text, and pictures don’t last. Stories can live forever.
So, think of an idea as a Twinkie’s filling: on its own, it might be delicious, but it’s hard to digest, and it won’t last. But wrap that idea in a delicious cake wrapper—a story—and it will last forever. Just like a Twinkie…
A fantastic book on the stickiness of stories is Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick.
Haiku Deck: What’s the best presentation you’ve ever seen, and what did you love about it?
Nolan: I love Don Draper’s Kodak Carousel pitch from Season 1 of Mad Men. He makes use of many techniques that business presenters are hesitant to employ, but would be smart to incorporate:
Brevity: The pitch lasts just a few minutes.
Emotion: A good presentation should be a healthy mix of the analytical and emotional. While Don’s almost 100% emotional presentation style is probably too much for most non-fictional presenters, I think most presentations would be aided by more emotion.
The Personal: Every picture is a personal one of Don’s family—no stock handshakes, no guys climbing mountains; as with the emotional, most presentations would benefit from more personal touches.
Stories: Don tells a personal, visual story of his own life; it not only leaves his audience literally speechless, but will no doubt be remembered for years—only a story can do that.
Limited Text: “Kodak Introduces Carousel” is the only text on screen…
Haiku Deck: What advice do you have for Haiku Deck users who want to create strong presentations?
Nolan: Well, you could create a great Don Draper-like presentation with it, for sure. I think that Haiku Deck can be a good tool for creating a highly distilled presentation and in many ways keeping the focus on the presenter rather than the slides. Slides should always just be the backup singers—the presenter should be main attraction. But avoid the temptation of randomness and incessant metaphor in choosing imagery. If you’re selling widgets, but all your audience remembers are pictures of lemonade stands, handshakes and relay races (“teamwork!”), you haven’t created anything very sticky. Consider literal imagery when possible: How about a picture of your widget’s manufacturing process instead of one of a Swiss watchmaker?
More Presentation Inspiration
For more presentation inspiration, be sure to take a spin through our Presentation Pointers Pinterest board and our Featured and Popular Galleries, which highlight new awesome examples every week. You can also access the Gallery any time, right from the app.
We’ve heard from some educators that they want to be able use Haiku Deck with their students, but are concerned by the recommended age rating in iTunes. Here’s the story.
When you create a Haiku Deck, our app combs through more than 40 million Creative Commons licensed images that were tagged with keywords when they were posted on the Internet. Our goal is to bring back beautiful and relevant pictures to accompany your words. Some photo sources have filters to prevent inappropriate content from being returned in the results. Whenever possible, we use these filters.
We also maintain a list of inappropriate search terms that will not yield the kind of image results that mischievous little eyes will find interesting. That said, the problem of in appropriate images is more complex than simply preventing younger users from running inappropriate searches. Photos are sometimes tagged by the photographer in unpredictable ways.
We’ll continue to work on a solution that strikes the right balance between returning great photo results and protecting little eyes, but for the time being, we feel the 12+ rating is the best way to communicate to teachers and parents that, despite our intentions, inappropriate content may appear in the app. For some creative workarounds, be sure to check out our top Teacher Appreciation Tips. Over time we hope to make Haiku Deck more accessible to a broader audience.
Until then, enjoy this inspiring deck, safe for viewers of all ages.
The following guest post is by Dr. Michelle Mazur, award-winning speaker, author, and speech coach. Recently we noticed that she had used Haiku Deck to create a slidecast to complement her blog, “Relationally Speaking.” We invited her to share how she did it, and she very generously related her experience and a few tips.
Haiku Deck: How do you use slidecasts on your site?
Michelle: A slidecast basically allows you to record a presentation on your computer screen screen with a voiceover. It’s an excellent way to engage your audience with a dynamic multimedia presentation when you can’t be in the same room with them.
I thought a slidecast would be a unique way to make my content stand out and let my own voice shine through.
Haiku Deck: Why did you choose Haiku Deck to make your slidecast?
Michelle: I wanted to create a presentation that was visually vibrant, with great images that would hold my audience’s attention while I spoke. I was planning to use PowerPoint to make the slides, but I was dreading it–searching for hours for the right images, then designing a template that would meet my needs. When I read about Haiku Deck in Fast Company Design, I decided to give it a try.
On the first slide, I typed “What is your presentation destination?” Haiku Deck gave me the option to search for pictures related to presentation or destination. I had the perfect image for my slide in about 30 seconds. Then I formatted the text exactly the way I wanted it. WOW! I was able to create my entire 21-slide deck in less than an hour. It would have taken much, much longer in PowerPoint.
Haiku Deck: How did you actually create the slidecast?
Michelle: This was my first slidecast, and I found the software choices to be somewhat limited for Mac users. There are several free programs such as Jing and Screencast.com. I wanted to have a bit more freedom and editing power, so my decision came down to Camstasia or Screenflow. Both cost $100 and have excellent reviews, but I chose Camtasia because it has a 30-day free trial and doesn’t put a watermark on your videos.
Next, I put my script together for the voiceover. Camtasia is incredibly easy to use and they have awesome video tutorials on their site.
I practiced my voiceover a couple of times, just like I would practice an in-person presentation. When I was ready, I hit record. I got lucky and did the whole slidecast in one take. Using the built-in editing features of Camtasia, I was able to trim the beginning and end.
Finally, I exported it to YouTube. You can see the results here:
All in all, it took me about 3 hours to create my slidecast with Haiku Deck. If I had used any other presentation software, I’m sure my time would have nearly doubled.
Haiku Deck: What other tips might be helpful for people who’d like to give slidecasting a try?
Michelle: I recommend using an external microphone for professional sound. Your computer’s mic makes you sound like you’re trapped in a tin can! You can pick up a nice microphone for around $30.00.
Zooming out, if you are a blogger, entrepreneur, coach, speaker, author, or have any kind of online presence, creating a slidecast with Haiku Deck is simple. It’s a great way to engage your audience. Camtasia gives your content your unique voice, and Haiku Deck makes it a visual delight!
When you export to PowerPoint or Keynote from Haiku Deck, the Mail app on your iPad will automatically open for you to email the exported “.pptx” file as an attachment, which can be opened on a computer with PowerPoint or Keynote.
However, if the exported PowerPoint file is too large to email, or you encounter issues sending it from your email account, you can always retrieve exported decks by connecting your iPad to a computer with iTunes. Here’s how:
Plug your iPad into your computer via the standard USB cable that it came with.
Open iTunes on your computer.
After a moment, you can select the iPad in the left sidebar (or you can click the iPad button in the top right corner in the newest version of iTunes)
Click the apps tab near top/center of iTunes.
Scroll down to the File sharing section (below where you see “sync apps”) .
Find Haiku Deck in the File sharing list and click it.
Your Haiku Deck exports will appear in the list of Haiku Deck documents.
Select the deck you want and click the “save to” button below the list of files.
Most people don’t think about it, but photos on your iPad often contain hidden location tags in them. In order for the Haiku Deck iPad App to access these images, you need to allow the app to use “location data.” If you deny this permission the first time you run Haiku Deck, your local photos may not appear.
If you’re trying to use images stored on your iPad in a Haiku Deck and you can’t see them when you click the “IMPORT” button, try this simple fix.
If you’re on iOS 6 or 7:
Go into to your iPad’s settings menu.
Choose “privacy” on the left.
Choose “photos” on the right.
Find Haiku Deck in the list of apps that appears.
Turn location services ON for Haiku Deck.
If you haven’t upgraded to iOS 6, the process is a little different:
Go into your iPad’s settings menu.
Choose “location services” on the left.
Find Haiku Deck in the list of apps that appears.
Turn location services ON.
The next time you try to access local images, they should appear.
