As someone who works remotely and presents a lot, I have grown tired of normal Zoom meeting presentations and have started using Mmhmm. Mmhmm, which is a strange name to be sure, is a different type of presentation software that provides a bunch of cool features. In this post, I am not going to explain how the app works (you can learn more about it on their website), but rather, want to share the features that I am hoping they will add to the product. This list of features is based upon me using the product for the past week.
Add Text to Images/Gifs/Videos added to Slides In Mmhmm, you can add slides that have images, Gifs or video. When you add media, you can put a caption underneath the media, but there is currently no way to put text on top of the media. I think this would be a great addition since there are times when you want to put text right on an image to make a meme or call something out...
More Advanced Text Slides In a similar vein, what you can do with text slides is very limited. You can add a title and a body. That is it.
I think it would be nice to be able to do a bit more, like add numbered or bulleted lists, or maybe add multiple text boxes and be able to move them around. I guess the idea is that you would do this in PowerPoint and import it, but if you want to make a minor change, it is a pain to go back to the source, make the change and then re-import. For something as basic as a text slide, it seems like Mmhmm could add a bit more native functionality...
Add Slide Labels when Publishing One of the coolest features in Mmhmm is that you can publish a presentation to the web. That allows you to share a link and people can browse your presentation without having to send massive files. Viewers can even jump from slide to slide using a slide preview that looks like this:
Unfortunately, this slide preview shows a slide number beneath each slide, which is pretty useless. But within the Mmhmm product, you can label each slide with a "friendly name." Therefore, it would be great to have the option to use either slide number or the slide name label when publishing. The names under each slide would provide much needed context.
Import Google Slides Today, Mmhmm can import PDF files and Keynote/PowerPoint files. But many people use Google Slides these days. While you can export Google Slides to PPT or PDF, it would be cool if Mmhmm could connect with your Google account and allow you to import Google Slide presentations directly...
Add Versions to Takes Another cool feature of Mmhmm is that you can record different "takes" for each slide. Takes allows you to record yourself presenting a slide and then compile your entire presentation into one shared video file. Takes are great because they allow you to record one slide at a time instead of forcing you to memorize your entire presentation and do it all in one shot! And if you mess up, you can just do another take and Mmhmm keeps all of your takes so if you decide later that a previous one was the best one, you can go back to it. You can even label each take if you want.
But there is one additional feature that I think would be useful that I think of as versions. Here is the scenario. I have a 30 slide presentation and I want to have a short version and a long version of the presentation. I record a short version of each slide with the bare minimum as a take and then record a longer version as a different take. When I am done, I would like the ability to have Mmhmm compile a video or shared presentation for the short version and the long version. Today, I would have to either make the short version, duplicate the presentation and then record the long version and have it as two files. That is ok, but what if later I want to change 10 of the slides? I'd have to do that in 2 places. Instead, I think it would be cool if I could label takes and then somehow have Mmhmm allow me to dynamically compile the full presentation using any take that contains a phrase (like "short" or "long") or provide another way to assign takes to versions. That would allow me to have one presentation, but compile multiple different versions. Maybe even allow me to publish it and let the viewer decide which version they want to view...I'll let the smart Mmhmm team figure out the best solution, but hopefully they get the idea...
Teleprompter/Slide Notes When you are recording takes, it is often helpful to have a script from which you can read or at least view notes about what you want to cover. In PowerPoint and Google Slides, you can add these as slide notes and view them in presentation mode. I'd like to see Mmhmm add some sort of notes or maybe even a teleprompter option so when you are recording, you can see the words you want to say. Bonus points if the teleprompter can know what you are saying and automatically scroll with you! It would also be useful if notes from PowerPoint, Keynote or Google Slides came over to Mmhmm when you import them into the app.
Replace Multiple Slides One of the cool parts of Mmhmm is that you can make a presentation and then, if you need to, replace a slide with updated content without having to re-record any takes. You do this by opening the slide and using the Replace... button shown here:
But there are some cases in which you want to setup your presentation and then later need to replace all of the slides. Maybe there is a new font your company is making you use or a new slide template background. It would be cool if you could select all slides at once and do a global slide content replacement without affecting the takes or the slide setup. Obviously, this would need to come with a warning label since you can do some real damage if you aren't careful!
Hide Slides It would be nice if you could hide slides like you can in PowerPoint or Google Slides in case you have situations in which you want to skip certain slides when presenting.
Present Mode Once we are done with COVID, people will go back to in-person events and make presentations live in front of audiences. It would be great if they could give those presentations with Mmhmm. To enable this, Mmhmm, could add a "Present Live" mode in which the camera is off by default and slides can be advanced using a remote clicker (i.e. Logitech). Currently, it looks like Mmhmm can only handle doing presentations while sitting at a computer, but I think a "Present Live" option would open it up to more people who can use it for live presentations.
Away Screen If you turn your camera off, Mmhmm shows this screen:
It would be great if you could use your own image for this screen. That would be more professional and could include contact or marketing information while people are waiting...
So that's it so far...I am sure I will come up with more feature requests, but I highly recommend you check this product out to make your presentations more fun!!
