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
"You can’t just be a designer adapting UX workflows assuming everybody else’s workflow stays the same; everything is changing with AI."
Peter Van DijckHands on AI #3: Claude Code for UX people
October 22, 2025
"Designing for privacy is like designing for accessibility — you should aim beyond mere compliance to user-centered solutions."
Harry Brignull Mark Leiser Robert StribleyBeyond Clicks and Tricks: Why deceptive design has grown into a regulatory faultline
January 16, 2026
"We built tools that integrate naturally with existing workflows, not the other way around."
Neema MahdaviOperationalizing DesignOps
November 7, 2018
"In SAFe, product owner and product manager roles are reversed from what some teams expect, which causes confusion."
Jack MoffettSAFe or Sorry?
May 29, 2019
"If the research is going to be consistent, you still need to employ empathy and embrace the unexpected."
Amanda Kaleta-Kott Lea Martin, PhDThe Joys and Dilemmas of Conducting UX Research with Older Adults
March 11, 2022
"You are the expert in understanding the lived experiences of your users. It’s ongoing work helping those around you develop a shared understanding."
Dana ChisnellThe Sensemaking Business
March 10, 2026
"At the committed stage, executives start asking what design can do for business strategy."
JJ KercherA Roadmap for Maturing Design in the Enterprise
June 15, 2018
"AI is not really doing anything better than humans yet; it’s just faster and more efficient - Bria."
Bria Alexander Brittany Hobbs Christopher NoesselDay 1 Panel: Up to the Minute: The latest in AI’s impact on UX
June 10, 2025
"AI doesn’t feel surprise or curiosity, but humans do, and that’s a unique strength in analysis."
Maria RosalaAI-Assisted Qualitative Analysis: What to Automate and What to Own
June 5, 2026