For those of us who build presentations as part of our day jobs, it is important that we find the right balance between information (read overload) and design (read visual appeal).
The idea is for Microsoft Powerpoint to add a metric in their status bar which calculates the percentage of white space on the slide.
This could be done in a way similar to how Microsoft Word automatically shows the word count in the document. However, in the case of Powerpoint, you will need this metric at the slide level as well as the document level (unlike word count in MS Word which is only at the document level).
The key is to provide users with a simple ready-to-use metric (e.g. 27% white space) that lets them figure that they’re off the ideal standard (say, 50% white space).
If one has to go a step further, then you can derive two metrics – one for micro white space (which is the space between lines) and one for macro white space (which is the space between design elements like text boxes).