I've never been a fan of animation in Powerpoint presentations, and as a result almost never use them in my own presentations - both because I don't see them used well and don't have a pattern for using them well myself. Various screen transitions are ok I guess, but I'm more interested in the animation that you can do within a slide and when.
A common animation is to "fly" bullets in as the presenter talks about each one. It always feels like - and probably is - an attempt to get the audience to stay on pace with you and not skip ahead. I'd rather take in the whole slide and let that soak in while the presenter is adding value point by point. Does that mean I might not listen as carefully? Perhaps, but my counter argument is that the slide is the unit of information delivery, we talk about one slide at a time - the collective task is to share/understand information slide by slide.
I've seen in used with bearable results when modeling workflow - we start here, then here, etc, etc. Not sure that really helps my understanding, and I think it's back to controlling me/the pace of the talk rather than really helping me understand the intent of the slide.
One exception I've come to appreciate is when you want to quiz the audience? Clunky to put question on one slide and the answer on the next if you're doing more than one question, clunky to put all the questions one slide and the answers on the next. Flying in the question - elaborating and then soliciting answers, followed by flying in the answer, I think that works pretty well.
My worry is that I'm not using animation as what is essentially a fear based decision - haven't seen/used it effectively, so I've tossed it out of the toolbox. So I'm looking for input, are there times when you've seen in slide animation that helped you understand the message? Or do you have rules/patterns about when you use it?
