1. Moving Beyond Bullet Points by Cliff Atkinson

3. PowerPoint is the default language of business and education

4. Like all tools, you have to figure out how to use it best

5. Our current “bullet point” approach is broken and boring

6. A new way can help understand and relate to one another better

7. Unlock the persuasive story beneath your bullets with 3 steps

9. Step 1: Write a script to focus your ideas

10. Use the story template to appeal to both emotion and reason

12. Science indicates you cannot reason without emotion

13. Business dictates you cannot operate on emotion without reason

14. Common sense tells us that we need a smart balance of both

15. Complete Acts I and III to set the emotional context

17. The protagonist statement makes it “all about the audience”

18. The Balance/Imbalance creates the gap that sparks engagement

19. The Solution maps out the action to take us from Point A to B

20. Complete Act II to frame reason in a structured and scalable way

22. Pivoting off of the solution sets the stage for the “action” of reason

23. Using a logic tree distills complex ideas into three main points

24. The 15- and 45-minute columns give you scalability without loss

26. Step 2: Storyboard your script to clarify your ideas

27. Send your script to PowerPoint to transform story to storyboard

29. It creates a clear and coherent backbone for a visual story

30. It relieves the burden on visuals to tell the whole story

31. It shifts your view to the big picture to manage chunks of meaning

32. Prepare your projected visuals and spoken words together

34. It serves as the foundation for a unified design approach

35. It keeps narrative off screen, reducing cognitive load

36. It retains information in a document in sensible form

37. “Brand” your ideas across acts and scenes for continuity & coherence

39. This applies the idea of “set” design to “ideas”

40. It helps to reinforce the top-level points in memory

41. It helps you and your audience to see the unified story

43. Step 3: Engage your audience with visual rhetoric

44. Apply three techniques to see how they feel and how they work

46. This is standard in design firms to make the process more objective

48. The headline approach offers you visual flexibility while keeping focus

49. You will tap into the power of serendipity and creativity

50. Use evocative images to draw forth meaning from you & the audience

52. They allow the audience to bring meaning to the experience

53. They serve as a visual trigger to unlock your natural knowledge

54. They can evoke both implicit and explicit interaction

55. Use juxtaposition to break open new meaning

57. It creates a dissonance that stimulates new thinking

58. It makes things interesting and dynamic

59. It leaves the “answer” open-ended for the audience to provide

60. Can we find a new way to use PPT to relate to each other?

62. We can wake ourselves up to the dawn of better communication

63. Unlock the persuasive story beneath your bullets with 3 steps

64. Unlocking your powerful potential

65. Beyond Bullet Points