Problems With Custom Animation in PowerPoint
For years, PowerPoint has been the presentation tool of choice for business meetings, classrooms and seminars. Unfortunately, many PowerPoint presentations are dull and use a heading and bullet points to reiterate exactly what the presenter is saying. To help alleviate the tediousness of these presentations, Microsoft has added custom animations to PowerPoint, which allows presenters to add animation to enhance the excitement of the slides. However, this brought new problems that presenters must know before enhancing their presentation with custom animations.
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Compatibility
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Because custom animations were not added to PowerPoint until 2000, custom animations are not compatible with every version of PowerPoint. In addition, as new versions of PowerPoint are released, new animations are also added; the new animations are usually incompatible with older versions. This poses a problem when you are transferring the presentation from one computer to another, especially if you are not sure which version of PowerPoint is on the next computer. It is frustrating when you think you have all your animations timed perfectly only to find out that the computer you are running the presentation from contains an older version of PowerPoint, and none of your animations do what they are supposed to do.
Negative Impact on Learning
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Although many audiences enjoy custom animations in PowerPoint, researchers from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington found that custom animations in PowerPoint presentations may have a negative impact on learning. The research lead by Stephen Mahar showed a PowerPoint presentation with custom animations to one group of students and the same PowerPoint presentation without animation to another group of students. The researchers then tested how much the students could recall and comprehend from the lecture. The tests showed that the students who were given the static presentation outperformed the students given the animated version. The researchers concluded that animated slides require more concentration and reduce time exposure for each slide.
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Forgotten Animation
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Most people are not accustomed to giving presentations; therefore, they get flustered in front of an audience. Because of this, a custom animation that was added in the last minutes of preparation may be forgotten. When that animation with a car-screeching sound appears, the presenter may become more flustered and lose her train of thought. In addition, if an animation takes longer to load, the presenter will be tempted to click rapidly, causing the slides to skip ahead of the presentation.
Distracting
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Once presenters begin using animation in their slides, they often get carried away incorporating excessive and extravagant animation. Although this may make creating the presentation more fun, the audience may find it annoyingly distracting. In addition, due to the resolution differences between the computer screen and the projector, animations usually will look better on the computer than they will look during the presentation. Rather than incorporating extravagant animations, make sure you have a rhetorical purpose behind the animation. For example, you can use animations to coordinate the text with your presentation.
Download Time
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Custom animation requires more memory space than static slides. Therefore, if your presentation includes a lot of animation, the time that it takes for your slideshow to load will increase immensely. As a result, the audience will become restless even before the presentation begins. You also could experience an increase wait time between animations. In the end, this technique used to increase the audience attention will result in a frustrated audience.
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