Interaction Flows for a Toolbar: An Artifact

My most recent project was to reinvent the wheel that is Powerpoint for a startup in Austin. They wanted to tackle the behemoth of presentation software because they noted that it’s not intuitive to use and it doesn’t allow their core product, interactive data visualizations, to be implemented very effectively.

In the process of putting together our final workflows and wireframes, we realized our documentation needed to included action-and-reaction. These flows allowed us to demonstrate to our client how our take on presentation software would work “on rails”:

Demonstrating actions and reactions for adding text to a content box

These simple diagrams reinforced and documented the crux of what made the product a joy to use, helped everyone on the design team speak to the same feature set without mistake, and cut the time of the handoff meeting down to 1/3 of what it could’ve been.

Demonstrating a mouse-free interaction to change the data shown in presentation mode

Each flow took just minutes to throw together and garner buy-in from my team. The case study will include a couple more examples from our deliverables, including higher-fidelity versions that exemplify the UI.