Presentations shouldn’t make your audience sick

Viewers of the old version of the software sometimes complained that Prezi made them dizzy. Prezi Classic had no limitations to its transitions, so overzealous users went crazy with their zooms, tilts, and pans.  Viewers complained of motion sickness when the speaker wouldn’t stop zooming out and in. The newer software prevents this from happening by maintaining tighter control over its movement. It forces zoom-crazy users to stop zooming out and in at random. Presentation content must be placed into Prezi Next Smart Structures.  This forces all prezis to follow a fixed sequence through the smart structure.

An unchangeable sequence

The smart structure sequence makes sense. Content is arranged in a hierarchy, like an outline. Each presentation is divided into topics. Topics are divided into subtopics. When presented, a prezi zooms to a topic, then zooms deeper into its subtopics. When finished it comes back up to the surface once again. This is a very systematic and organized way to present – for some presentations. But, many speakers don’t want to conform to a sequence that won’t stop zooming out to the overview. When the overview is displayed, viewers get a snapshot of the whole presentation. Speakers often want to take their audience on a journey. They don’t want to share the roadmap until the journey is at its end. Since Prezi Next won’t stop zooming out to the overview, it keeps giving their viewers a sneak peek at what’s coming up next.

There IS a way to stop zooming out to the overview

It isn’t designed to work this way, but you can make adjust your prezi so it will stop zooming out to the overview. It’s not hard. You just have to change the way your outline works. Instead of multiple topics made up of subtopics, use multiple subtopics made up of sub-subtopics. Place all your subtopics into one, single topic. Your audience won’t get a sneak peek at the roadmap because there’s only one topic on the overview. They’ll only see the overview at the beginning of your presentation, and again at the end. Between the beginning and end, they’ll see all the subtopics that reside in that single, solitary topic. You can even change the starting point of your prezi so your viewers see the overview only once – at the very end of the presentation.

Example of how to stop zooming out to the overview

Watch the video below to see a prezi made up of only one, single topic. It will show you step-by-step how to bypass the overview and save it until the very end of the presentation.