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 can’t say understanding users is someone else’s job; no white knight is coming to save us."
Gregg BernsteinOpportunistic Research with Gregg Bernstein
July 11, 2019
"System fonts load faster, improve legibility, and outperform fancy brand fonts in conversion."
Erin WeigelUX Lessons from running more than 1,200 A/B Tests
July 10, 2024
"Shamus Bern will talk about how to drop into a client site and grok what’s going on quickly without sacrificing why they hired you."
Dan WillisTheme 3: Intro
January 8, 2024
"If it’s not sold at Amazon or Costco, it’s probably not in my house — not because I love those companies but because of their consistency."
Sam ProulxOnline Shopping: Designing an Accessible Experience
November 29, 2023
"I would rather have a product manager do crappy research than have no research at all."
Tala Tayebi Kelly Goto Jared SpoolVoice and influence in an age of noise
March 10, 2026
"Start small, add scaffolding, and let momentum do the rest."
Bianca JeffersonFrom Sprints to Systems: Operationalizing Continuous Discovery Through DesignOps
September 10, 2025
"A trillion dollars is enough to buy a million dollar home for a million people, and last year, voluntary employee turnover cost the US economy one trillion dollars."
Kat VellosOpener: The Other L Word
January 8, 2024
"It became a mandate this year for companies to use Astro for all applications in enterprise cross-mission ground."
Michal Anne RogondinoSaving Outer Space: The First UX Design System for Our Nation’s Satellites
January 8, 2024
"Page limits will help equity and focus and level the playing field for small and large firms."
Emily LessardRFPs Without Tears: Writing Inclusive RFPS that Don't Scare Away Talent
December 9, 2021