Scott Hanselman

The "Do My Slides Suck" Test

March 26, 2006 Comment on this post [1] Posted in TechEd | Speaking
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I'll post more on Presenting later this week as Patrick and I start creating our deck for this year's TechEd, but here's a great article called "Stop your presentation before it kills again!" The best part is the Do My Slides Suck Test:

The "Do My Slides Suck" Test

1) Do your slides contain mostly bullet points?
2) Do you have more than 12-15 words on a slide?
3) Do your slides add little or no new info beyond what you can say in words?
4) Are your slides, in fact, not memorable?
5) Are your slides emotionally empty?
6) Do your slides fail to encourage a deeper connection to or understanding of the topic?
7) Do your slides distort the data?
8) Do your slides encourage cognitive weakness? (refer to Tufte)

A "Yes" to any of those could be a huge red flag that something's wrong.

[From Creating Passionate Users]
 

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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March 26, 2006 16:23
If you haven't already, check out Garr Reynolds' Presentation Zen blog: http://www.presentationzen.com/ Sheer gold for examinging how your slides suck or don't.

Other goodness would include Cliff Atkinson's BeyondBullets.com. His pointer to Larry Lessig's and Dick Hardt's presentations (http://www.beyondbullets.com/2005/10/powerpoint_20.html) is great stuff too. The presentations from Lessig and Hardt were responsible for me completely reworking how I handle my own presentations. (Plus the P22 Typerwriter font Lessig uses is just too cool.)

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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.