Rapid Protoyping with Real Limitations

How I Used It

Once I had my structure finalized, I used Gamma for initial deck generation. I explained my audience and goals, chose a general theme, and Gamma created a complete first draft in seconds with content, images, speaker notes, everything.

I exported to PowerPoint and worked within my Claude project to refine the story, keeping Gamma's slide designs while changing most of the content. When I tried to re-import my refined version back into Gamma for additional design help, I hit a wall. Nothing imported correctly. As a workaround, I created dummy slides in Gamma with the structure I needed and exported those to work with in PowerPoint.

Key Learnings

Gamma is brilliant for breaking the blank page problem. That initial rush of having a complete deck in seconds gave me momentum. Even though I changed most of the content, having something to react to was psychologically powerful.

Know the tool's limitations before you commit. The import failure taught me an important lesson: Gamma works best as a one-way street. Use it to generate, but don't expect a round-trip workflow. Plan your process accordingly.

Speed isn't the same as quality, but it enables quality. Gamma didn't write my final presentation, but it got me to 30% in 30 seconds. That meant I could spend my creative energy on the other 70% instead of starting from zero.

Design templates matter more than you think. Even though I rewrote the content, keeping Gamma's visual structure gave my deck a professional polish I wouldn't have achieved on my own in PowerPoint.

Tools Used

Tool: Gamma - Where to Find It: gamma.app - Cost: Free tier available; paid plans for advanced features