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
Drs. DeSutter and Scopelitis discussed how User Experience (UX) researchers can triangulate and enrich information from one-on-one interviews by attending to users’ co-speech gestures—the spontaneous movements that humans make with their hands and body when communicating. Gestures are a “window to the mind” and can reveal unspoken information about users’ emotional states as well as the structure and composition of their mental models. They concluded with a practical guide for efficiently implementing gesture research.
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
"We had a backlog that made turnaround times at least 14 days; now teams can get answers within three days through democratization."
Jen Cardello Jennifer OttoLearning Velocity—The Insights Speedometer
September 16, 2021
"User Interviews offers multi-country recruitment at the same price, supporting Canada, UK, Germany, Australia, and South Africa."
Lily Aduana Savannah Hobbs Brittany Rutherford5 Reasons to Bring Your Recruiting in-House (and How To Do It)
March 12, 2021
"The CSS is only what’s relevant for recreating the layer; components know how to handle theming and styling internally."
George Abraham Stefan IvanovDesign Systems To-Go: Indigo.Design Overview and Exploring the Developer Workflow (Part 3)
October 1, 2021
"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
"Assume positive intent, practice a service mindset, and curiosity over ego — remember we’re all in this together."
Asia HoePartnering with Product: A Journey from Junior to Senior Design
November 29, 2023
"Setting up research ops raised team morale and retention because researchers felt valued and supported."
Saskia LiebenbergStart Small for Big Impact
May 15, 2019
"They paid a vendor $800 million and launched a single form online, which is no longer in use."
Dan WillisFilling the Void
November 7, 2018
"There’s no good answer yet for how to resolve the inequities created by differential access to digital technology."
Leah BuleyClosing Plenary: The Crisis of Digital
March 31, 2020
"Accessibility is not a single project, it’s a journey that requires continuous iteration and improvement."
Sam ProulxAccessibility: An Opportunity to Innovate
September 8, 2022