Log in or create a free Rosenverse account to watch this video.
Log in Create free account100s of community videos are available to free members. Conference talks are generally available to Gold members.
What co-speech gestures reveal about users’ thinking during interviews
Summary
Key Insights
-
•
Gestures provide a non-verbal window into users' mental models, often revealing thoughts not expressed in speech.
-
•
Representational gestures, especially those made in personal gesture space, indicate cognitive processes and implicit imagery.
-
•
Users commonly hold multiple, context-dependent mental models rather than a single static one.
-
•
In interviews, interviewer gestures increase participant gesturing and improve conversational rapport.
-
•
Video interviews pose challenges for capturing gestures fully; positioning and prompting can mitigate this.
-
•
Speech-gesture mismatches often signal ongoing mental model construction or word searching by users.
-
•
Gestures can reveal emotional attachment or disengagement with technology, influencing adoption and retention.
-
•
Mental models can be anchored by recent technology prototypes, such as chat GPT for AI understanding.
-
•
Structured interview protocols that elicit gesturing and separate talking from tool use optimize gesture data collection.
-
•
Open source motion tracking and gesture analysis tools can aid qualitative research by quantifying gesture patterns.
Notable Quotes
"Gestures are a window to the mind."
"Gesture and speech form an integrated system; they reinforce one another."
"We’re really leaving half of our data on the table by not attending to gesture when eliciting mental models."
"Gesture is not computer and smartphone gestures, but spontaneous movements people make with hands and arms."
"Four me gestures happen in that personal gesture space and serve as thinking tools for the speaker."
"When gestures and speech mismatch, it often means the speaker is still refining their mental model."
"Without looking at the gesture, we would have come to a less complete mental model."
"Users have more than one mental model; they can be constructed on the fly depending on context."
"The degree to which the user feels in control with an intelligent agent brings up conversational mental models."
"The more you gesture, the more your interviewee will gesture."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Making the invisible visible makes things move forward and create alignments."
Ben Reason Aline Horta Majid Iqbal Fabiano LeoniMaking the system visible: The fastest path to better decisions
November 20, 2025
"Users don’t just trust the advisor’s opinion; they vet it through their community networks."
Daniel GloydDesigning Warmth
February 26, 2025
"If you don’t understand how white supremacy works, everything else will only confuse you, said Neely Fuller Jr."
George AyeDesigning a New Social Contract
June 25, 2026
"The chaos of undocumented processes makes it hard to build useful AI workflows; mapping and blueprinting help."
Tina WeisserWhen AI Agents Meet Reality. Service Design Lessons from a Pilot
February 26, 2026
"Minimizing harm protects institutions, not people."
Rachael Dietkus, LCSWThe power to heal and harm
March 13, 2025
"Skills are like onboarding material for the model; you write them as simple markdown files that describe workflows or tools."
Peter Van DijckHands on AI #3: Claude Code for UX people
October 22, 2025
"Accessibility ops is like design ops but focused on accessibility, including accessible tools and vendor requirements."
Suzan Bednarz Hilary SunderlandAccessibilityOps for All
January 8, 2024
"Psychological warmth and physical warmth activate the same part of the brain, the insula."
Daniel GloydWarming the User Experience: Lessons from America's first and most radical human-centered designers
May 9, 2024
"True UX maturity means UX belongs to everyone, not just the UX team."
Deanna Washington Tim Allen Jeff Courcelle John Maeda Matt Raw Erica TjaderScaling Success: Paving the Path from DesignOps to VP
October 4, 2023
