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.
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
"This is for me an amazing opportunity to see these ideas explored by brilliant people with a wonderful community."
Christian CrumlishIntroduction by our Conference Chair
December 6, 2022
"Google tried to help Black-owned businesses, but it also led to racist backlash online and offline."
Matteo GrattonCan Data and Ethics Live Together?
October 1, 2021
"Manuel Herrera is here to take the burden of note-taking off us, so you can focus on the moment."
Louis Rosenfeld Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
October 2, 2023
"The danger is prioritizing speed over rigor, which risks creating monsters of bad data or harmful experiences."
Taylor KlassmanThe Evolution of UX Research Platforms
March 10, 2026
"We are really busy right now, but it’s mostly clients who already know us coming with new roles."
Dave Hoffer Joanne WeaverUX Job Search AMA #3 with Joanne Weaver and Dave Hoffer
July 16, 2025
"ChatGPT's frameworks generate siloed insights but fail to show the connections and flows essential for storytelling."
Weidan LiQualitative synthesis with ChatGPT: Better or worse than human intelligence?
June 4, 2024
"All negative outcomes in legacy modernization can be traced back to not bringing product thinking to the table."
Meaghan Waters Fotina KoutropoulousLack of Product Thinking will Doom Your Legacy Modernization
June 9, 2021
"Successful companies are organized around what made them successful, and their past success is often their worst impediment to change. – John Pittman, Autodesk."
Nathan ShedroffDouble Your Mileage: Use Your Research Strategically
March 31, 2020
"Design is problem-solving, and part of the problem is the environment in which you’re trying to work."
Bob BaxleyLeading with Design Operations Past and Present
December 19, 2019
