Crafting powerful PowerPoints

Yet professionals continue to rely on them to market ideas to customers and deliver information to employees.

If you've been guilty of using PowerPoint to bore your clients and colleagues to death, try heeding the advice of Harvard University psychology Professor Stephen Kosslyn.

In his new book "Clear and to the Point," Kosslyn offers five rules for creating powerful PowerPoint presentations:

Keep it simple. People often make the mistake of including so much nonessential information in their PowerPoint presentations that the audience loses the thread of their argument.

"Telling them too much will leave them overwhelmed, disoriented and irritated," writes Kosslyn. The rule of thumb: An effective presentation is organised around a central message and everything you include should serve to bolster that message. If in doubt, leave it out.

Tell them what they need to know. Some presenters assume too much knowledge on the part of their audience. Their presentations are long on bullet points and industry jargon, and short on meaningful information.

If your slides don't effectively relay your message, your audience members will spend all their time trying to decipher your "code" rather than listening to you. The rule of thumb: Be clear. Don't treat listeners like insiders unless they actually are.

Know your audience. If you want to engage your audience members, tailor the material to fit their interests and address their concerns.

A listener who feels personally connected with the material will be more likely to ponder it and remember it. The rule of thumb: People will only listen and remember if you're telling them something they want to know.

Only use visuals to clarify your point. PowerPoint has so many bells and whistles now that many presenters are tempted to go hog wild with charts, graphs and other visual flourishes.

But if you use too many, your audience is likely to tune out what you're saying. "If words, shapes or effects don't convey information, they distract," writes Kosslyn. The rule of thumb: Less is more.

Give your audience time to digest. To avoid information overload, it's important to build in breaks. Use well-chosen, pertinent anecdotes (or even the occasional joke) to break up the content-heavy parts of your presentation.

This will give your audience the opportunity to digest the details. The rule of thumb: Make sure your interjections help illustrate your point and don't run the risk of offending your audience.

-Dow Jones