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
"Economic opportunity puts pressure on design to justify its impact on the bottom line, which art school never prepared us for."
John Maeda Alison RandAbout Design Organizations
May 13, 2019
"Whenever someone makes a game accessible today, it’s considered an inspiring hack not a built-in feature."
Sam ProulxTo Boldly Go: The New Frontiers of Accessibility
March 11, 2022
"We use a structured rubric that evaluates expected impact and how research will be used to inform decisions."
Chris Geison Cristen Torrey Eric MahlstedtWhat is Research Strategy?: A Panel of Research Leaders Discuss this Emergent Question
March 4, 2021
"Each organization's design ops team looks a little different, but the foundations are the same."
Jilanna WilsonDistributed DesignOps Management
February 26, 2019
"We organized UI components hierarchically so designers focus on solving user needs rather than building basic elements."
George Hinchliffe Joy LiuDelivering Amazing Experiences
June 10, 2021
"The best solutions come from good questions and sitting with the problem, not rushing to fix."
Joshua GravesWe Need To Talk: Addressing Unmet Expectations (Part 2 of 3)
April 28, 2025
"User recordings are your most valuable asset but have become riskier due to biometric privacy laws."
Llewyn Paine[Demo] Deploying AI doppelgangers to de-identify user research recordings
June 5, 2024
"Design is a service profession, a humble profession, less significant than the lives of the people we serve."
Richard BuchananCreativity and Principles in the Flourishing Enterprise
June 15, 2018
"Even offering an 'other' category in gender questions implies the participant deviates from a presumed norm."
Matt Bernius Rachael Dietkus, LCSW Aditi Joshi Alba VillamilLearnings from Applying Trauma-Informed Principles to the Research Process
March 10, 2022
