I Think in Text, People Need Visuals: On Hating Making Slides and Finding Tools That Help

One of my biggest pain points at work is slide presentations. I am not a visual person whatsoever. If I made the rules, I would be perfectly happy presenting in markdown—bullet points, tables, well-structured walls of text. That works for me. But apparently, this does not register well with people.

You are always in your own head with your own context. You think people will get you, but they really don't. You need to set the frame, the context first. Visuals are a great hook—they say a picture conveys a thousand words. That's why infographics work so well in capturing people's attention and conveying the message. The visual isn't decoration. It's the entry point that lets people into your thinking.

So I need to create presentations to communicate effectively. The dream process would be: structure all the text content (with the help of AI, as I figure things out, explore, and debate with myself), then hand it off to an AI to turn it into a beautiful, presentable slide deck. I'd rather outsource the part I don't like.

What I Was Looking For

I tested four tools: Kimi, Genspark, Canva, and Notebook LM. Here's what I was evaluating:

• Context understanding: Does it actually get what I'm trying to say?
• Visual quality: Are the infographics and layouts good enough to communicate?
• Editability: Can I tweak after generation?
• Time savings: Does it actually help, or does it create more work?

The Testing

Kimi looks beautiful—the templates are polished and professional. But some messages are lost in the translation from text to slides. When I reviewed the output, I realized it didn't fully capture what I was trying to say.

Genspark got the context. It's structured correctly, and no message is lost. It does exactly what I asked. The visual polish isn't there compared to the others, but it's my number 2 choice because it understands what I'm trying to communicate.

Canva couldn't structure the presentation elements in the right context. The AI didn't understand how to organize my content meaningfully, which made it hard to use.

Notebook LM kept all contexts and added a little too much in places, but the infographics are beautiful. The communication flow is a little skewed, so it needs manual adjustment after I download it as a PDF. But here's the thing: it wins this round. The context understanding is the best, and it genuinely helps me communicate my message. This is partly because the new Gemini 2.0 Flash model dropped not too long ago, and it shows.

The trade-off? Kimi, Genspark, and Canva are editable. Notebook LM cannot be edited, but it looks beautiful.

The Reflection

Does this solve my problem? It solves a big portion of it. It's not yet perfect, but it already saves me time, and the infographic is much better than I could have done myself.

What makes a "well-structured wall of text" actually good? Honestly, it's not. It's just easy for me—I don't need the extra step. I've seen it work in unique situations (like Amazon's meeting room etiquette, where preparation is a wall of text), but that's rare. I personally do not like creating visualizations, so it would be a dream scenario if I could just outsource that.

And now, mostly, I can. I can focus on my strength—structuring ideas, thinking through content, debating with myself through AI—and let the tool handle the rest. The part I hate is now handled by something that does it better than I would anyway.

Not perfect yet. But already useful.