Survey on Whether Bullet Points Help: Conversation with Nolan Haims

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    Nolan Haims has over 20 years of experience in the fields of visual communications and presentation, having created every type of presentation from Fortune 500 CEO keynotes to TED talks to multi-million dollar agency pitches.

As Vice President and Director of Presentation for Edelman, the world’s largest PR firm, he created and ran a department dedicated to raising the agency’s bar on visual communication and created winning pitches worth millions.

He trains organizations to think visually, speaks at national conferences, and is a co-host of the long-running Presentation Podcast. As one of only 40 Microsoft PowerPoint MVPs in the world, he works with and advises the software development team. He runs his own visual communications consultancy in Montclair, NJ. He is the author of The Better Deck Deck.

In this conversation, Nolan talks about his new survey that explores the role of bullet points in presentations.

Geetesh: Nolan, what inspired you to challenge the long-standing reliance on bullet points in presentations with this survey, and how can one participate?

Nolan: For decades, bullet points have been the default way to place text on slides, and yet there hasn’t been much science examining the effectiveness of this approach. I was inspired to put this study together after years of seeing how alternative approaches and layout can improve comprehension and retention. By testing these assumptions in a structured, scientific way, we can finally move beyond anecdote and gather real data.

Participation is simple: anyone can take the 10-minute online survey where they’ll review and respond to slides designed with different randomized text approaches. Every participant’s feedback directly contributes to building a more evidence-based understanding of what truly works in presentations.

I also want to give significant credit to my partners on this who have provided the essential scientific knowledge, structures and survey methodology without which, I could not even have attempted this: Research psychologist, Mike Morrison, survey and learning expert, Sheila B. Robinson, and scientist, Rieke Schäfer.

Geetesh: Once the survey on bullet points and slide design concludes, do you plan to share the results—and if so, how might these findings influence presentation training or design standards moving forward?

Nolan: Our intention is to make the results public. We want presenters, educators, and trainers to have access to insights grounded in data rather than tradition. The findings may validate some current practices, but they may also challenge long-held assumptions about how audiences process information on slides.

By sharing the results widely, we hope to influence how presentation training is delivered in organizations, how design standards are set, and how individuals approach creating their own slides. We also want to give people a little bit of ammunition to justify designing slides perhaps differently than they and their organizations have been.

Ultimately, the goal is to give people tools and guidance that lead to clearer, more memorable communication.

The views and opinions expressed in this blog post or content are those of the authors or the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.