Creating presentation slides: a study of user preferences for task-specific versus generic application software

We conducted a study to investigate the use of generic versus task-specific application software by people who create and maintain presentation slides. Sixteen people were interviewed to determine how they prepare slides, what software they use to prepare and maintain slides, and how well the software they use supports various aspects of the task. The informants varied in how central slidemaking was to their jobs. The hypotheses driving the study were that: (1) some software applications are task generic, intended for use in a wide variety of tasks, while others are task specific, intended to support very specific tasks; (2) task-specific software is preferable, but is often not used because of cost, learning effort, or lack of availability, and (3) people who infrequently perform a task tend to use generic tools, while people who often perform it tend to use task-specific tools. Our findings suggest that several factors influence choice of slidemaking software, including desired quality, production time, user skill, willingness to use multiple tools, whether people work alone or in teams, and company policy. Furthermore, the task specificity/genericness of an application program is not a simple matter of degree, because it depends on several fairly independent software design issues. We (1) conclude that developing application software that supports all aspects of a task well is extremely difficult and (2) suggest an alternative approach that may be more fruitful: providing collections of interoperable tools and services.

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