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
"AI should augment humans, not replace them, especially given societal disparities between deep and fast thinkers."
Christopher NoesselAI of the now: Designing for Agents
July 31, 2024
"Giving senior leadership a shared language for design helped product teams better communicate what needed focus and why."
Chris MosesStretching the Definition of DesignOps with Product Development
November 7, 2018
"You have to start small, like running a marathon one step at a time, and prove success before scaling culture changes."
Steve ChaparroBringing Into Alignment Brand, Culture and Space
August 13, 2020
"The biggest security risk is human behavior, like plugging a USB stick into a copier, not nefarious hackers."
Greg PetroffEverything is About to Change: Software as Material
June 8, 2016
"I had to go back to school to solidify my creative foundation while not abandoning business and tech."
Kevin BethuneReimagining Design: Unlocking Strategic Innovation
June 8, 2022
"When teams are connected to real strategic missions and own their key results, OKRs become positive."
Bria Alexander Benson Low Natalya Pemberton Stephanie GoldthorpeOKRs—Helpful or Harmful?
January 20, 2022
"Making the business case begins by identifying the need and showing how strategic content adds value."
Natalie DunbarDesignOps and Content Strategy: Envisioning the Future Together
October 1, 2021
"Changing branding and the look and feel should be possible with very quick and easy interactions, not taking another 10 weeks to customize."
George Abraham Stefan IvanovDesign Systems To-Go: Reimagining Developer Handoff, and Introducing App Builder (Part 2)
October 1, 2021
"A design strategist role focuses on synthesizing insights and collaborating to produce design specifications rather than doing final screens."
Dave Hoffer Joanne WeaverUX Job Search AMA #2 with Joanne Weaver and Dave Hoffer
May 21, 2025