If you have ever been subjected to or, worse yet, produced a presentation that looked like the following, this article is for you.
Sway is a new app by Microsoft that aims to make creating and sharing content easier. Think of it as a combination of Prezi, PowerPoint and a website (and FrontPage if you know what that is). It will be part of their Office suite and downloadable across a plethora of devices, including Windows, iOS, and Android. In order to really understand what it is, watch this video:
Although it hasn’t been officially released yet, I was fortunate enough to receive an invite to the preview and want to share my preliminary thoughts with you. Keep in mind this is only the preview, not the full version that will be released later.
For the Lazy and Uncreative
Truthfully, that header may be a little harsh. I understand that sometimes you may just be too busy to invest in a well-designed presentation or maybe you were simply born without the artistic gene. Well either way, Sway has you guys covered. The app is incredibly intuitive and easy to use. I spent just around 30 minutes putting together this BEAUTIFUL presentation (and that included my hummus and pita chips snack break).
Getting started was super easy and brought me to a start screen with some quick explanations, which are quite honestly all you need.
The basic skeleton is a “storyline” of cards that are classified either as the title, header, or content, and each present your content and media in different ways. It’s kind of similar to PowerPoint slides, although much more structured and “template-ed”. Yeah, that’s a real word. These basic cards are then transformed into a beautiful presentation with minimal work by you.
Adding your content is really simple and convenient. Not only can you add content saved on your device or OneDrive, but you can also pull content from social media. Facebook allows you to upload your photos, tagged photos, and even full albums. Twitter can embed public tweets and timelines. YouTube allows you to search and embed videos, one of my favorite features.
All that said, I think Sway’s true power comes from its ability to make the laziest, most unartistic presentation look sexy. There are about three major decisions you’ll have to make: structure, style, and color. Each one has a handful of presets you can choose from. It will even choose the color for you based on pictures you’ve used, another awesome feature I 
love. I mean, seriously, if you can’t make these kind of decisions, I’m not sure how you get dressed in the morning or even eat.
They also make sharing your presentation easy with options to share on Facebook and Twitter or embed on a site. To top it off, the content adapts to the device it’s being shown on (aka it’s mobile-friendly). There doesn’t appear to be a download/offline option yet.
Give A Little, Take A Little
Of course, you have to sacrifice a few things for all these features. Mainly, you don’t get nearly the level of customization as you do on other platforms. Currently, Sway doesn’t allow you to change individual fonts, text size, boldness, etc…
Although it was easy to add content, I found it frustrating at times to edit in Sway. In order to see what your content actually looks like on the Sway, you have to switch between the storyline and preview. I could not make edits directly to the preview. It was also unfortunate that there wasn’t an undo button to correct mistakes, including accidentally deleting a card.
Overall, I thought it was a great app and could definitely see myself using it again in the future. I just want to point out again that this is just a preview. It is not the full app and additional features will probably be added before release. But that’s my unqualified opinion as of now! I’m curious to see when other people will use it and how they will use it differently than PowerPoint. What do you guy think? Comment below or on social media!
If you didn’t click the link to my Sway before, check it out so you can see Sway in action: https://sway.com/OoOamRDN6lP9svV5. If you’re interested in trying out Sway for yourself, you can request an invite from their website. But you’re best bet is tweeting with them on Fridays in my unqualified opinion.
Unqualified Opinions 