Presenter Pal | Devpost

Inspiration

In our academic journey, we realized that editing and formatting a PowerPoint presentation can be tedious and draining. We looked for AI helpers but found out that they just generate full slides using pre-made themes or just paste text content in your text boxes. Therefore, we decided to create a PowerPoint extension that doesn't take control of everything, but just helps make the quality of life easier for the user.

What it does

Our extension, PresenterPal, allows the user to add text boxes, edit text, add pictures, align text boxes, and generate relevant information based on the user's prompt with the use of OpenAI.

How we built it

PresenterPal was built using the following technologies: HTML, CSS, JavaScript OpenAI API, and AppsForOffice API. SInce nothing like this existed previously. Our team spent a majority of the time training the AI to execute the commands correctly. We all focused on creating functions and scripts and using GitHub to add in all our work.

Challenges we ran into

Since most of the API management was done with JavaScript, it was difficult to begin the project since most members had limited knowledge of JavaScript. We spend multiple hours looking at documentation, viewing tutorials, and seeking guidance from the mentors. We also had trouble working with these APIs since they were outdated and not very user friendly, and even some aspects of group management between tasks. However, during the learning process, we managed to learn the necessary aspects of each of the APIs to finish our project.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

One of the things that we are proud of is creating something not only we would use, but that we believe everyone else would benefit from. PresenterPal is not just a tool that solves our perspective of the problem, but helps individuals, from different academic and career backgrounds, create presentations in an efficient manner. For example, my mom wouldn't know how to use powerpoint. Is her only resort just putting a prompt and having to be okay with whatever gets generated? With the advancements of AI, our project has shown it's possible to do so much more. WIth a chatbot that lets you use all tools it makes powerpoint accessible for everyone, as well as far more efficient. We also feel proud of how we were able to take on this project. At the moment, the project is able to edit and align text, and generate images, and information based on the user prompt but we truly believe the possibilities are limitless.

What we learned

Since the main aspect of the extension relied on APIS we had to learn how to read documentation and incorporate in a timely manner. There was also an understanding that we might not all have the best understanding, so learning how to communicate effectively with teammates was a crucial aspect in the formation of this extension.

What's next for Presenter Pal

We plan to incorporate speech-to-text with the help of OpenAI, and even some other quality of life aspects such as transitions, background editing, the addition of sources, and adding tables and charts relevant to the presentation.