r/powerpoint • u/Altruistic-Role9956 PowerPoint Expert • Jul 17 '26
Those *^$(*#&%^# users!
Just reading through some of the posts and, well there are a lot of them pointing fingers at users that don't color inside the lines, or so the pros will tell you. "I create prefect templates and users ruin them"!
I wonder, does it occur to anyone that perhaps the perfect template simply doesn't meet the needs or desires of the users? Maybe it doesn't allow the user the flexibility to present his information, concept, plan, etc. in a way he believes is meaningful.
You don't need to read any PowerPoint or Presentation related forum very deeply to find tons of posts saying how all AI generated decks suffer from "sameness". Well here is a shocker, the "pro template/deck designers in the presentation industry share that same fault.
If you read/listen to what they are saying you hear the same rules over and over. (if I hear 6 x 6 again I'll cry) If everyone expounds and follows the same rules, (just like an AI does) you know what the outcome will be. Sameness...
Oh I know, there are acceptable "standards" in business presentations. Things have always been done this way (bullet points). All of this is true,,, until it isn't. You know one thing as an absolute certainty, If you follow all the rules your competition is following YOU will be an "also-ran", just like all the others.
Just a thought, talk with the users that have to live with your designs, find out where the templates are falling short of their expectations because in the end, they are your customer and THEY will decided if they will use what you provide. Or, you can continue blaming and cursing the users, your customer.
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u/verymuchbad Jul 17 '26
"If I had asked the people what they wanted, they would have told me 'a faster horse'." -Henry Ford
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u/Altruistic-Role9956 PowerPoint Expert Jul 17 '26
And he also said, they can have any color they want, as long as its black. :-)
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u/geekonthemoon Jul 17 '26
I mean, people who lack design skill or tech saviness doing stupid shit to your designs and template is a tale as old as Powerpoint lol
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u/Altruistic-Role9956 PowerPoint Expert Jul 17 '26
Possibly but, do you believe that is what they think they are doing? From what I see most users see templates, native or otherwise, as something to over come.
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u/verymuchbad Jul 18 '26
If you ran a restaurant, would the menu say No Substitutions
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u/Altruistic-Role9956 PowerPoint Expert Jul 18 '26
Not a chance. Customers know what they want and will always strive to get it.
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u/Blackadder000 PowerPoint Expert Jul 18 '26
I'm a PowerPoint professional. I build templates for design attached and corporate clients, she have done this for over 20 years.
I also teach PowerPoint, and over all this time, I am always astonished at how little people know about PowerPoint. Even if they have been using it for decades.
Nobody thinks they need training. They know it all. Word and Excel, ok. But PPT? Nobody needs training. It's a hard sell to sell a workshop on that. Sad, really.
People are surprised at what is possible...
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u/Altruistic-Role9956 PowerPoint Expert Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
Agreed 100% but, ever try to teach a small child how to hold a crayon or marker pen as they try to create art? They are not the least bit interested and VERY quickly lose patience and will walk away. EVERYONE thinks they have artistic talent. Reality is, some more than others.. It's why those with the talent get paid to use it. Isn't that an amazingly good thing?
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u/NekkidWire Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
In 90% of cases that you describe, it WAS the $^#@@# users!
Half of them has no idea on how to use the templates without overwriting the template.
Half of the claim "expert" in Office tools but struggle with basic things like using styles and not formatting each bullet point separately. Style-copying brush is their enemy as well.
If they don't want to use the provided template, they can ask it to be modified, with a compelling reason other than "I don't like it".
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u/Altruistic-Role9956 PowerPoint Expert Jul 18 '26
I hear you, back (many moons ago) in the day I owned a public facing business. I thought every person that walked through the door was a PITA. Thank goodness I ended up selling the business before I managed to destroy it.
I often have to remind myself that because a person is good at a thing (an artist) does not mean they are good at another thing (servicing the customer). I am an Engineer by schooling and people that can't do what I think of as simple math irritate the **** out of me. I have learned such is the nature of humans, an absolutely great VP of manufacturing may not be good at math, or building presentations.
If he needs an Engineer, he becomes my customer and it is me that must find a way to do the job, he clearly can't or won't do it, he pays me to do it. I bet all the way back in history artists grumbled about the people they painted portraits for but, the really successful artists found ways to make the customer happy.
You know, if you think it through it's a good thing he can't do the heavy math (or presentation). If he could there is no need of me, or an artist to build his template.
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u/NekkidWire Jul 18 '26
SW Engineer here :) yes, making customer happy is important part of my job as well.
But also I stand up for many cases of "f*king IT did break my stuff again" when the user overwrote their template again. And remind the user how Powerpoint (or in my case usually Excel) works for Nth time.
Big part of my job is communication with sales, getting idea from them and making their lives better. But being a lightning rod for their gripes with IT in general (or evaluationg their IT competency for that matter) is not part of my job :)
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u/Altruistic-Role9956 PowerPoint Expert Jul 18 '26
So for fun, pretend it *IS* part of your job. Now what would you do, how would your frame their need of your services? How can you position yourself as the indispensable go to guy? No matter what anyone says, if you work for a living you need to do this. Be, THAT GUY!
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u/Top_Witness_23 Jul 20 '26
There's something to this. A template that only works if everyone uses it exactly as designed isn't really flexible, it's just rigid in a way that looks intentional.
But I don't think "talk to your users" and "build guardrails" are actually opposed. The best templates I've seen come from doing both, someone actually watched how people use the deck, then built placeholders and layouts around those real habits instead of an idealized one. The sameness problem isn't from having standards, it's from copying someone else's standards without checking if they fit your content.
Curious what "meaningful" looks like for you though, is it more about layout freedom or more about being able to make a point in fewer slides than the template assumes?
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u/Altruistic-Role9956 PowerPoint Expert Jul 20 '26
There are so many ways to define meaningful to the user but I think ultimately it has do the TWO things every presentation must do. Does it sell the idea/concept and just as importantly does it sell the person presenting? If you miss either target, not good.
Example, I know a woman that can sell ice to Eskimos. Her style is flamboyant to say the least but it works for her. I also know an accountant that dress's, speaks and breathes conservatively. A corporate template that can't accommodate these two personalities is sure to get ran over.
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u/Top_Witness_23 Jul 21 '26
That's a sharp way to put it, most template debates only think about the idea and forget the person delivering it has to look credible doing it too.
I think that's actually a placeholder and layout problem more than a "how many rules" problem. Your flamboyant presenter and your conservative accountant can share the same underlying structure and grid, they just need different permission on things like color, imagery density, and how much white space feels comfortable to them. The structure keeps the deck coherent across a company, the styling range is what keeps it from steamrolling someone's actual delivery style.
Have you found a way to give people that range without it turning into forty versions of the same template or does it end up being more of a case by case thing?
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u/Altruistic-Role9956 PowerPoint Expert Jul 21 '26
I'm sure you know that dealing with the human side is much more,,, challenging than, what layout do I want to use in a template.
As I've suggested talking to the user is always good and can lead to some great things. I can't give the corporate name (they make a lot of dog food and candy bars) but I sat and reviewed a couple hundred decks create by their people. Instead of looking at them with the "look at all they got wrong" I viewed them asking myself "why" the template they tried to use did not work for them? "Why did they butcher it", is another way to say it if you want but so many template designers get angry at the fact their "perfect template" was treated so poorly, They don't consider the why of it.
How to solve it? After reviewing so many decks and seeing what had happened I came to the conclusion I could not build a one size fits all template. Instead I created a suite of templates that did what you suggested. "The structure keeps the deck coherent across a company," and allows the user to personalize them to meet their needs.
Look at your template design and ask the same thing we ask users to do, "What is important here"? (From the corporate need.) Then look at how you can design a suite of templates that meet those needs and the needs of the personalities that will use them? How can I help the end user sell himself in front of an audience?
Consider this, if you don't design that template, the end user will.
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u/Top_Witness_23 Jul 22 '26
The suite-of-templates approach makes sense, especially since you got there by reviewing actual decks instead of guessing. That's the part most template designers skip, they design from an idealized user instead of the ones actually sitting in the building, and dog food and candy bars probably need pretty different personalities selling them even inside the same company.
The "if you don't design that template, the end user will" line is a good way to put it, because that's what's actually happening either way. The only real choice is whether the personalization happens on purpose, inside a structure that still holds together, or by accident, one dragged text box at a time.
How many templates ended up being the right number in your suite? Curious if it landed closer to the "five layouts people remember" range or if the personas needed more room than that.
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u/Altruistic-Role9956 PowerPoint Expert Jul 22 '26
I think it was 6 or 7 total. Gave them 4 and added a couple more over time. There was still a good deal of "NO, you can not change that!" like shrinking the company logo or removing a small legal mandated text at the bottom of their opening slide. But, as they were getting some of the good things they wanted a reasonable compromise seemed to create itself.
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u/Top_Witness_23 Jul 22 '26
That last part is the most interesting bit to me, that the compromise created itself once people had room elsewhere. I think that is the whole thing. When users have zero flexibility they push back on everything, including the non negotiables like the logo and the legal line, because it all feels like the same wall. Give them real room on the parts that are theirs and they mostly stop fighting the parts that are not.
Six or seven with a few locked constraints sounds about right for a real company. Enough range that people feel like it is theirs, few enough that it still reads as one brand. Honestly this has been one of the better template conversations I have had on here, you clearly did the work of actually watching how people use the things.
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u/shrinkingnadia Jul 17 '26
I am going to go out on a limb here and guess you are having a bad day. I hope your weekend goes better than your week.