Outline wizard: presentation composition and search

Abstract

Presentation material is a commonly-performed task. Yet current tools provide inadequate support - search tools are unable to return individual slides, and the linear model employed by presentation creation tools lacks structure and context. We propose a novel method for presentation creation, implemented in a tool called Outline Wizard, which enables outline-based composition and search. An Outline Wizard user enters a hierarchically- structured outline of a presentation; using that structure, the tool extracts user requests to formulate contextual queries, matches them against presentations within a repository, taking into account both content and structures of the presentations, and presents the user with sets of slides that are appropriate for each outline topic. At the heart of Outline Wizard is an outline-based search technique, which conducts content search within the context derived from the hierarchical structures of both user requests and presentations. We present a heuristic outline-extraction technique, which is used to reverse engineer the structures of presentations, thereby making the structures available for our search engine. Evaluations show that the outline extraction technique and outline-based search both perform well, and that users report a satisfying experience when using Outline Wizard to compose presentations from libraries of existing material. Copyright 2010 ACM.