Abstract
The information technology revolution is a boon for educators and students (Rollag & Billsberry, 2012). Never before have we had such instantaneous access to all kinds of information to share and distribute in and out of the classroom. Yet this comes at a price (Fornaciari & Roca, 1999). In this age of information overload, simplicity is the new premium, and benchmark, for information technology tools. Stripped to its fundamental components, Google’s “one box, any question” format won favor over busier-looking search engines like AOL or Yahoo. TED.com’s ever-expanding storehouse of video talks, based around the old adage “keep it short and sweet” has become a worldwide phenomenon. The creators behind Twitter recognized the status update bar as the core principle of Facebook: “what’cha doing,” “what’cha thinking,” and “where’ve you been?” Pared down to less than 140 characters or a single snapshot, those essential questions captivate billions daily (Kwak, Lee, Park, & Moon, 2010). Enter Haiku Deck. Haiku Deck is to PowerPoint what Twitter is to Facebook: minimal essentials for maximal impact. It aims to revolutionize the production of presentations.
Resource Description
Words can make or break a presentation. Too many, and the message derails. Countless communication experts have argued the point: The more words you have per slide, the more boring you become, and the easier it is to lose your audience (Atkinson, 2011; Rollag & Billsberry, 2012). Too few, and the meaning is unclear. Haiku Deck makes it easy for users to create simple, engaging presentations. In a nutshell, Haiku Deck is an abstracted alternative to PowerPoint. It is free and can be used either on the web, or as an iPad app (no other platforms are supported at this time).
Haiku Deck marries the two core components of successful presentations, words and pictures, and pares them down to elegant essentials. True to its name (referencing the Japanese short poetry form Haiku), Haiku Deck limits text entry on each slide to a few words, then “deals a deck” of appropriate pictures, automatically searching for images that illustrate the text, and displaying them in the background. The result: beautiful, high-impact slides.
Here’s how it works. Users subscribe for free, via an email, Facebook, or Twitter account. iPad owners can also download the free app. To create a new presentation, users press the “+” sign and choose from among 5 free presentation themes. There are 13 additional themes available at a cost of $14.99 for the lot, or $1.99 per theme.
Slide creation begins once the theme is chosen. Slide types are limited to four: title, bullet point, numbered list, and unformatted text slides. Title slides restrict users to one title line, plus one optional subtitle line. Text size adjusts automatically for optimal fit, based on how many words are entered. The title line holds a maximum of 80 characters. Bullet point and numbered list slides are capped at five points. Unformatted text slides allow users to enter text in a nonbullet point format, also with a character limit.
Once the text is entered, users can choose to leave the background empty (with a color fill) or add a background photo. The app automatically selects key words and asks users to select those they want to use for a photo search. Archived photos are licensed under a creative commons agreement and number more than 35 million. Most of them are free. Some high-quality photos licensed by Getty Images can be bought for $1.99 a piece. Users can add their own photos via a variety of ways: their camera roll or photo stream, Facebook, Instagram, or Dropbox accounts, and so forth.
While creation is guided by text, pictures are one of the intrinsically differentiating features of Haiku Deck slides offering simple, yet powerful visual support to verbal presentations. This idea has been proposed by a number of communication experts, such as Atkinson (2011), Nancy Duarte (2008), and Garr Reynolds (2011), who advocate creating simple, powerful slides in the form of pictures (and only a few words) that illustrate and punctuate a verbal narrative. Such visual outlines move beyond drab lists to become instruments of emotional storytelling. Emotions promote recall, and thus enhance learning (Bowen, 2014; Neilsen, Winter, & Saatcioglu, 2005).
Charts can also be entered in three formats: histograms, pie charts (with an 8-numbers cap), or a simple numeric row (capped at 4 numbers). Users can also associate notes to slides, where they can enter additional details and links to other resources. Notes can be shared with the public or kept private for personal use.
The final step is publishing. Haiku Deck makes this very easy. Users save their presentations to the cloud, and decide whether they are public, private, or restricted to people they share a link with. For audience viewing, presentations can be exported to either PowerPoint or Keynote, shown directly from the web portal, or by mirroring an iPad screen to a projector. The ease with which presentations can be shared online is another core feature of Haiku Deck. The philosophy of the app is to allow presentations to be shared openly, associated with a simple link, and made public with a click.
Use in the Classroom
Instructors can use Haiku Deck as a replacement for traditional presentation tools, such as PowerPoint or Keynote. It allows quick and easy construction of beautiful presentations. However, the pièce de résistance for instructors may reside in how the app can assist students. By limiting the number of words on each slide, Haiku Deck forces users to get to the point, a critical skill that seems easy in theory but is difficult to master in practice. Minimizing visual text motivates users to elaborate their points verbally, making it less likely that students will merely recite the information displayed on their slides. Students should learn to become the focus of attention in their presentations, with slides playing only a supporting role to their performance. Concomitant with instructor coaching, Haiku Deck encourages the confidence and skill-building necessary to master the art of storytelling.
Unlike its unwieldy older cousins, PowerPoint and Keynote, the simplicity and speed of slide creation with Haiku Deck encourages impromptu in-class presentations. Students may be hesitant or unskilled at sharing their reflections with the classroom during a case analysis or in-class exercise. Technological stop gaps such as clickers and cell phone voting have begun to appear in answer to this problem (Keough, 2012). However, these tools limit students’ input to multiple-choice or numerical answers. Haiku Deck can supplement these technologies by allowing students to give self-generated, yet succinct, answers to questions asked in class.
Here’s how it could work. First, the instructor provides a short case study or exercise. Second, the instructor asks insightful questions (Kriger, 1990). Third, students use Haiku Deck to answer the questions succinctly. Finally, students are selected to present their answers to the class as a primer for a more general class discussion. Haiku Deck presentation can be shared easily through a link provided to the instructor. The reason Haiku Deck is particularly suitable for that use is twofold: (a) it is intuitive and easy to use and (b) it limits the amount of information students can display on each slide, which challenges them to get to the point.
Instructors can take advantage of how easily personal photos can be uploaded in Haiku Deck presentations. With app-assisted photo selection and access to photos in the users’ camera roll, Facebook, Instagram, and other accounts with photos, documenting progress on a project or exercise becomes fun and easy. Many in-class group activities ask students to work together and record their ideas on flip-charts displayed in the classroom. This can be cumbersome and awkward, as students run out of space, materials, or desire to display, view, and review their flip-charts. Haiku Deck simplifies the process. Freed from the tyranny of tape, swarm patterns, and flip-chart paper, students can record their ideas on any surface, photograph them, and import them in Haiku Deck for easy sharing with the class.
Haiku Deck can also be used to create portfolios for individual or group projects that take place outside of the classroom. For instance, students working on a term project involving interaction with the community in a service learning project (Fairfield, 2010) can take photos of their experiences and share them easily in Haiku Deck presentations. Haiku Deck could also be used for student self-presentations (using photos from their Facebook accounts, for instance) in both meet-and-greet and self-awareness exercises.
Constructive Analysis and Comparison
Stripped down to essentials, pros and cons become different sides of the same coin. Most of the limitations inherent in Haiku Deck are essential parts of its well-thought out design. Part slide organizer, part data miner, Haiku Deck is an outstanding hybrid between presentation software and search engine. Like big-brother Google, Haiku Deck is a web application; working within, and inseparable from, the World Wide Web. While final presentation can occur on or offline, web connection is needed to download photos and publish presentations, limiting functionality for those without regular online access.
Haiku Deck’s formatting capabilities are intentionally limited: minimal essentials for maximal impact. Haiku Deck helps users quickly find and choose relevant, impactful imagery, and the minimalist text format ensures that the slides remain a support element rather than stealing the show. The fundamental differences between Haiku Deck and old standards like PowerPoint and Keynote can be summed up by the word: plus. Where Haiku Deck offers only 4 types of slides, and 13 presentation themes, PowerPoint proffers 11 slide types, and 58 in-house presentation themes plus a veritable smorgasbord of downloadable themes online. Keynote offers 12 slide types, and 30 plus presentation themes. Haiku Deck follows a minimalist philosophy. There are no options for entering complex diagrams, smart art, tables, drawings, or organizational charts. No way to include movies, or animations of any kind, including those snappy text and transition animations made infamous by PowerPoint and Keynote, both of which offer all of these options, and more.
PowerPoint and Keynote are powerful, feature-rich programs and have been the go-to standards for presentation production for over a decade—a status that confers additional benefits. Online tutorials, forums, and content materials, both professional and amateur abound, and while there are ongoing compatibility issues between Mac and Microsoft, PowerPoint is accepted by all presentation hardware, and Keynote by most. Haiku Deck is the new kid on the podium block, which makes it harder to exchange presentations with users unfamiliar with it, and unwilling to adopt new technologies. Representative of this limitation is the fact that the Haiku Deck app is only available as an app for the iPad or through an online portal; no other platforms are supported yet.
Haiku Deck may not seem like serious competition for its super-sized predecessors, but its lack of bells and whistles makes presentation production fast, intuitive, and fun. Haiku Deck’s minimalist format helps users take point in their presentations rather than skulking behind the now traditional point-and-click method. The tendency for presenters to hide by the remote, relying more on information and sensory overload than on good story-telling skills, has made the phrases: “Death by PowerPoint” (Garber, 2001), “PowerPoint Poisoning” (Adams, 2000), and “PowerPoint Ranger” common throughout the industry.
Despite this, PowerPoint and Keynote remain excellent staples for advanced presentation production. Users who know and love the words “custom shape,” “merged layers,” and “key point manipulation” may never learn to love the simplicity of Haiku Deck. For the rest of us, Haiku Deck is an intriguing new presentation app that could advantageously replace others, being especially apt and engaging for students, presentation novices, or veterans who want to learn visual storytelling skills outlined by such experts as Nancy Duarte (2008) and Garr Reynolds (2011). For more information, readers are invited to consult Haiku Deck’s website: https://www.haikudeck.com.