It’s been three weeks since we made the pptPlex prototype available, and it’s hard to convey just how fortunate we feel to have such a great set of users!  We’ve received a lot of high quality feedback from all of you out there trying pptPlex, which is exactly what we were hoping for.  Thank you.  These concept tests can’t be successful without your usage data and feedback.

Given all the positive feedback we’ve received, this may be a silly thing for us to say, but we actually weren’t sure if pptPlex was going to be well received.  We had our hopes, but we’re also aware that just because we like something doesn’t mean our users will like it.  That’s why we do these concept tests.

It’s also important to note that while we’re happy to see all the positive feedback thus far, one thing we look for with concept tests is staying power.  It’s great if something is cool the first time you try it, but what about the 50th time?  The 500th time?  We think pptPlex has great staying power, but here’s where we let the usage data have the final say.  It doesn’t matter what we think; it only matters what the data say.  It’s also why the usage data for these concept tests is so valuable for us.

We should also say more about what is clearly the #1 feature request: supporting within-slide animations.  Trust us, if there was a feasible way for us to provide this feature, we would.  Before we released pptPlex we spent several days investigating this feature, and we found there was no feasible way for us to do this.  That doesn’t mean it’s not possible, it just means that our very small team doesn’t have the resources required to build the feature.  Still, it really hurts not to be able to do this feature given how many people have asked for it.

In terms of pptPlex going forward, we’re actually not working on an update right now.  It’s really hard to say that, because we love working on the project.  However, we always have to walk this fine line:  do we continue to invest in a prototype where we think there are already enough features to get the feedback that will help Office make a high quality decision in this area?  Or do we start working on the next prototype?  As a team, we’ve decided it’s better to do a larger number of more limited prototypes instead of doing a small number of prototypes that do everything.

So, we’re currently working on those next prototypes.  When you see those prototype, we hope you’ll like them, but just as with pptPlex, we’re not sure what will happen.  But we can’t wait to see what happens.

And, of course, we still want to hear your feedback (everything you send us is data we provide to the Office product group), and we still have some more interesting things to say about pptPlex over the next few weeks.

We hope you’re continuing to enjoy using pptPlex!