Question

Do a software evaluation of "MICROSOFT POWERPOINT" using the following criteria:

1. General Requirements and Design
2. Functional and Interface Specifications
3. Conventions
4. Requirement Traceability
5. Structures and Interfaces
6. Logic
7. Performance
8. Error Handling and Recovery
9. Testability and Extensibility
10. Coupling and Cohesion

Answer 1

Use and Evaluation of Microsoft Presentation:

When asked about occasions for use, participants described a broad range of presentation software usage (see Table 1). Overall, presentation software was reported to be used most frequently in education and teaching, followed by talks and meetings. Whereas employee’s use of presentation software was equal in both areas mentioned, students differ greatly in their uses. As one might expect, students showed the highest use in educational contexts and much fewer use in talks and meetings, which were named third after private occasions. Regarding employees, about one-third used presentation software for company or product presentations during conferences, trade fairs, and private occasions. Overall, students and employees used computer-based presentations at different occasions: Both groups showed significant differences in all areas of usage (7.01 ≤ χ 2 ≤ 148.02; df = 1, N = 1014, p < .01) except for entertainment (χ 2 (1, 1014) = 1.11, p = .32). Thus, only entertainment purposes were equally high among students and employees.

When asked which programs they used in particular for presentations, participants named Microsoft PowerPoint (96%), followed by Microsoft Excel (33%) and Adobe Acrobat (29%). Other presentation software, like Keynote or OpenOffice.org Impress, were mentioned by approximately 10% of the participants. This picture changed when participants were asked to state which software they use most for presentations. For that question, Microsoft PowerPoint was named by 83% of the participants, while no other software reached values higher than 4%. Small differences existed for program use, depending on whether the participant was an employee or a student: Employees tended to use a slightly broader range of software products, whereas students relied mostly on PowerPoint (χ 2 (1, 1014) = 7.73, p < .01). Participants reported having used presentation software for an average of 6.5 years (M = 6.44, SD = 3.81) and, on average, nearly six times per month (M = 5.85, SD = 9.30).

We asked about the participants’ satisfaction with the most used presentation software using on a seven-point Likert scale ranging from ”very unsatisfied” (1) to ”very satisfied” (7). Participants reported significant but very small differences between users’ evaluations of Microsoft PowerPoint, Impress, Microsoft Excel, and Adobe Acrobat (F = 2.66, df = 3, p = 8 .05, η 2 < .01). The four products reach values between 5.29 (Microsoft PowerPoint) and 5.62 (Adobe Acrobat), indicating rather satisfied costumers (.89 ≤ SD ≤ 1.25). However, users of Apple’s Keynote reported a much higher level of satisfaction with their preferred software (M = 6.5, SD = .73). This difference to the other users was highly significant (F = 32.65, df = 1, p < .01, η 2 = .03).

Behaviour:

Presentations were more frequently exported to a PDF than to a website; in fact, 72% of the participants stated they never exported a presentation as a website. Printing out handouts occurred only marginally, but more often than sending the presentation via e-mail. Nearly two-thirds of the respondents never or seldom used the presenter view tool (see Table 2). Except for the use of the presenter view (χ 2 (1, 1014) = 4.08, p = .40), students and employees differed in all aspects of presentation software use (13.62 ≤ χ 2 ≤ 116.27; df = 1, N = 1014, p < .01). While students tended to work with colleagues and printed handouts more frequently, they indicated slightly smaller frequencies in the remaining task activities compared to those of employees.

Functional Demand:

At the beginning of the third part of the questionnaire, participants were asked to rate the importance of different properties and additional functions of presentation software. The three properties considered most important were basic demands from usability engineering: fast loading time, independence from technical settings, and independence of the operating system (see Table 3). Interestingly, common functions such as sound effects or clip arts were reported to be unimportant. Additionally, participants were asked to rate their most frequently used software in regard to these aspects, using a five-point Likert scale from 1 (“very bad”) to 5 (“very good”). Due to the small case numbers for other products, only Microsoft PowerPoint was analyzed, and results showed mostly mediocre evaluations of approximately 3 (“satisfying”). Only the picture import function of Microsoft PowerPoint was consistently rated as ‘good’ (M = 3.95, SD = .92). As before, in the analysis of preparation time amounts, we found no or small significant differences between students’ and employees’ functional demands for presentation software. (In a MANOVA, with job status as independent variable and the preparation time ratings as dependent variables, effect sizes for the univariate differences were very small, with η 2 ≤ .01). Thus, both groups reported the same functional demands and were comparable in their needs regarding presentation software.

Requirement Tracability:

In examining the occasions when presentation software was used, we revealed some interesting findings: As expected, a high use was observed in educational settings, both among students and employees. While students use computer-based presentations during their education, one can assume that educational settings for employees refer to trainings such as work-related professional training programs or on-the-job trainings. As expected, professionals reported a frequently use of computer-based presentations in talks and meetings, for company and product presentations, and during conferences and trade fairs. However, we were surprised by the frequency of presentation software used at private occasions—by students as well as employees. However, based on the anecdotal evidence that every member of our research team remembered more than one wedding ceremony with pictures of the happy couple shown via PowerPoint or family celebrations with slide-based quiz games, the use of computer-based presentations in private settings has (to our knowledge) become quite normal. Given the broad use of presentation software, we stress the compatibility of presentation files. Users might also desire software creators to offer more design-templates from which they can choose.