When Constraints Limit and Inspire: Characterizing Presentation Authoring Practices for Evolving Narratives

2026-04-22

AI Summary

This work addresses the challenge that presentation authoring is often constrained by factors such as time, audience, and communicative intent, yet existing tools offer little proactive support for leveraging these constraints. Through a qualitative user study, the authors propose the first constraint-driven, multi-session presentation authoring (CMPA) framework, reframing constraints from passive limitations into active design drivers. Based on this framework, they developed ReSlide, a prototype system that enables creators to harness constraints explicitly during narrative construction. User studies demonstrate that ReSlide significantly enhances users’ ability to utilize constraints in shaping their presentations and facilitates flexible content reuse across varying constraint conditions. The findings offer a novel interaction paradigm and design implications for next-generation presentation authoring tools.

Technology Category

• Constraint Satisfaction and Optimization: Constraint Programming
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Computational Creativity
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Action, Change, and Causality

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Consent frameworks and practices on the web
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Personalized content ranking and presentation
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Assisted, interactive, and conversational search

Abstract

Authoring presentation slides involves navigating contextual constraints that shape how content is structured, adapted, and reused. While prior work frames constraints as limitations, little is known about how presenters actively reason about them. We conducted a formative study with ten presenters to examine how constraints emerge, are interpreted, and influence authoring decisions, leading to the Constraint-based Multi-session Presentation Authoring (CMPA) framework. CMPA treats time, audience, and communicative intent as key constraints shaping authoring. We instantiated CMPA in ReSlide, a research prototype for constraint-aware slide creation and reuse, and conducted two user studies on (1) single-session behaviors and (2) multi-session workflows. Compared to a baseline tool, ReSlide helped presenters treat constraints as active design drivers that guide narrative construction. The second study further shows how presenters flexibly reuse and adapt content across authoring cycles as constraints evolve. We then propose design implications for future constraint-aware presentation tools.

Problem

• presentation authoring
• constraints
• narrative evolution
• content reuse
• authoring practices

Innovation

• constraint-aware authoring
• presentation design
• multi-session workflow
• narrative construction
• slide reuse