How to make vertical alignment of columns different in Beamer?

Question

I try to make a frame in which I indicate a figure on the right side and add a description about it on the left side. I want the description top-aligned and the figure center-aligned, but I have difficulty in outputting like this. Here is what I first tried:

\documentclass[10pt,aspectratio=1610,t]{beamer}
\usepackage{tikz}
\begin{document}
    \begin{frame}\frametitle{Minimum Working Exaple}
        \begin{columns}[t,onlytextwidth]
            \begin{column}{.5\textwidth}
                This is the first column.
            \end{column}
            \begin{column}{.5\textwidth}
                \begin{figure}[h]
                    \centering
                    \parbox[c][\textheight][c]{\columnwidth}{
                    \begin{tikzpicture}
                        \useasboundingbox (0, 0) rectangle (5, 5); % assign a bounding box
                        \fill (current bounding box.south west) rectangle (current bounding box.north east); % fill the current bounding box
                    \end{tikzpicture}
                    \caption{Enter the caption here}
                    }
                \end{figure}
            \end{column}
        \end{columns}
    \end{frame}
\end{document}

With the code avobe, I get

To place the figure where I want it to be, I googled for solution and found this answer. I tried changing the second parameter of \parbox to .7\textheight. Then, I get

This time the figure goes upward (although I do not know whether it is EXACTLY vertically centered). However, the figure remains to be horizontally centered in the right column in spite of \centering.

How can I center the figure both vertically and horizontally?

Update

Gonzalo Medina suggested me using minipage environment instead of columns environment and this substitution output the desired result. However, I still do not know why \centering in my code (i.e. in column(s) environment) does not work well. I would highly appreciate it if anyone taught me the reason.

Answer 1

One option would be to use fixed height minipage's instead of column environments:

The code:

\documentclass[10pt,aspectratio=1610,t]{beamer}
\usepackage{tikz}
\begin{document}
    \begin{frame}\frametitle{Minimum Working Exaple}

            \begin{minipage}[t][.8\textheight][t]{.5\textwidth}
                This is the first column.\par
                This is the first column.\par
                This is the first column.\par
                This is the first column.\par
                This is the first column.\par
                This is the first column.\par
                This is the first column.\par
                This is the first column.\par
                This is the first column.\par
                This is the first column.\par
                This is the first column.\par
            \end{minipage}%
            \begin{minipage}[t][.8\textheight][c]{.5\textwidth}
                \begin{figure}
                \vfill
                    \centering
                    \begin{tikzpicture}[baseline]
                        \useasboundingbox (0, 0) rectangle (5,5); % assign a bounding box
                        \fill (current bounding box.south west) rectangle (current bounding box.north east); % fill the current bounding box
                    \end{tikzpicture}
                    \caption{Enter the caption here}
                \vfill    
                \end{figure}
            \end{minipage}
    \end{frame}
\end{document}

Using a \frame for each minipage will let you see them for minor adjustments; once the alignment is the desired one, you can remove the \frame commands:

\documentclass[10pt,aspectratio=1610,t]{beamer}
\usepackage{tikz}
\begin{document}
    \begin{frame}\frametitle{Minimum Working Exaple}

            \frame{\begin{minipage}[t][.8\textheight][t]{.5\textwidth}
                This is the first column.\par
                This is the first column.\par
                This is the first column.\par
                This is the first column.\par
                This is the first column.\par
                This is the first column.\par
                This is the first column.\par
                This is the first column.\par
                This is the first column.\par
                This is the first column.\par
                This is the first column.\par
            \end{minipage}}%
            \frame{\begin{minipage}[t][.8\textheight][c]{.5\textwidth}
                \begin{figure}
                \vfill
                    \centering
                    \begin{tikzpicture}[baseline]
                        \useasboundingbox (0, 0) rectangle (5,5); % assign a bounding box
                        \fill (current bounding box.south west) rectangle (current bounding box.north east); % fill the current bounding box
                    \end{tikzpicture}
                    \caption{Enter the caption here}
                \vfill    
                \end{figure}
            \end{minipage}}
    \end{frame}
\end{document}

The result:

Update

Regarding the \centering not working in the original code, this command is before the \parbox, so it centers the parbox inside the column, but not the contents of the \parbox, so instead of \centering\parbox{<length>}{<content>} you needed \parbox{<length>}{\centering <content>} if the width of the \parbox was equal to the one of the column or \centering\parbox{<length>}{\centering <content>} otherwise.