Feature laundry lists

Many tech presentations contain have the feature laundry list table in them: 15-20 great things your application can do. Here is how to make them better:

• For reading: reduce the font and add more text to make the feature and its benefit explicit: from “historical overview” to “Compare usage levels over the last 30 days and spot unusual drops in demand”
• For presenting: Option 1: if you only want to show that you have lots of features, keep the text short and put 20 boxes in a nice 4x5 grid on the slide, do not even bother to go into the specifics. Option 2: if you want to go into the specifics, create 20 slides addressing one feature/benefit each, make sure you can present each slide in 10 seconds while at the same time being specific enough so people can understand things beyond a vague description.