Practicing PowerPoint Presentations: Testing Public Speaking

00:00 It's actually very easy to test PowerPoint slides to see which ones work and which ones don't. And it's not about some general axiom, like it must be seven points or no more than three.

00:12 That's not it. It's about your audience.

00:15 Do they understand it? Do they remember it? So here's my advice.

00:19 You're giving a big PowerPoint presentation on Friday to 30 clients.

00:23 Find three colleagues from down the hall on Wednesday.

00:26 Give them your PowerPoint presentation when you're done.

00:30 Ask them every slide they remember.

00:34 If they don't remember one of your slides, take that slide, tear it up and throw it in the trash can.

00:43 You now have empirical evidence that that slide doesn't work.

00:47 Again, the goal of your slide is to make your idea more understandable and more memorable. If your audience can't remember it 2 seconds after you gave the speech, it obviously isn't effective.

01:02 Use this rule, and I guarantee you it's going to eliminate your bad slides.

01:07 It's also going to eliminate slides with text and bullet points because people never remember those.