Suggestions for Data Visualization and interactive presentation software?

I

Illuminator

New Member
Hey all I'm looking for two pieces of software to invest in that will help me get some kick butt visuals and presentations.

1: Data visualization

I am not looking for large scale, but to generate data visualizers for trends, graphs, charts etc for sample groups from conducted surveys

2: Presentation Software

I saw an awesome piece of presentation software today, but it retails for 12000. A ridiculous price, but it really peaked my interest. Basically, it allows users to put together presentations in a sequential format similar to powerpoints but with "branching" options, so that users can go back and forth between slides, and branch off into different sub-slides for main topics. It also had some cool gallery designs and slideshow features.

Thanks for the tips y'all
 
I've not done much in the field but I do have many of the skills needed. What background research have you done yourself? Googling "presentation software", no quotes will provide a bundle of stuff to browse through. Any software that is going to save you a lot of time is probably going to be expensive, ditto the necessary software to be really creative. In addition, it all takes a lot of time to learn and to execute the projects. Ultimately the creativity comes from the user.

Some items for presentation can be made with graphic editors but that is a career on its own.

You seem to have dismissed PowerPoint. That should be looked into first if you have it already. The spreadsheets and other trend graphics can come from Excel or PowerPoint itself. PowerPoint can do branching, interactive presentations which you seem to be unaware of. All you are creating is equivalent to a website, which is actually an alternative to PowerPoint for this sort of thing.

To find what PowerPoint can do, Google terms that you think you may need:
PowerPoint spreadsheet, PowerPoint pie chart, PowerPoint branching, PowerPoint animation etc etc.

The OpenOffice equivalent of PowerPoint is Impress. OpenOffice is open source. I quickly ran my copy - seems to have a good capability. If you don't have PowerPoint to play with, Impress is free.

Perhaps someone who works in the field can give more pointers. If you have no experience at all there is an awful lot to learn.
 
Hey Nanobyte, to be honest I am just getting the hang of Powerpoint at the moment and didn't know that I could do branching presentations (so thanks for that power tip!). I have watched videos and the like but I definitely need to look into branchign presentations.

Thanks a lot bud, really appreciate the tips
 
I had a quick go with Impress which I have never used. In 15 minutes I had put together three slides with text, dissolving pics, slide transitions, sounds, automatic page transitions and links to jump between pages by mouse. I have not run PowerPoint for years so I had a quick go at that too.

I preferred the Impress interface but PowerPoint may be better to start with as it is the standard despite its age. I happened to hit a bug in Impress - a hyperlink button cannot be edited once made. That was not very Impress-ive. Another piece of software I used briefly in the past is Macromedia Captivate which is now owned by Adobe.

I would say from my limited use that you can make some very neat presentations using your imagination and some practice. I think the effects and transitions need to be used sparingly whatever you use. No need to spend $12,000!
 
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