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
"The choices we make about AI are about much more than speed versus quality — they define how we value research and our relationships."
Llewyn PaineCoexisting with AI: A practical guide for researchers to navigate tools, ethics, and integration
March 11, 2025
"Historians say the past doesn’t repeat itself, it rhymes."
Steve PortigalLooking Back…to Look Ahead
March 26, 2024
"Using the umbrella term 'people of color' erases the most disadvantaged and privileges the least burdened."
Alba VillamilStereotyped by Design: Pitfalls in Cross-Cultural User Research
March 30, 2020
"The dynamic between employer and employee is changing a lot, and from a Design Ops perspective, that's something to keep our eye on."
Dave Malouf Meredith Black Farid SabitovThe Past, Present, and Future of DesignOps: a 2-part DesignOps Community Call (Part 1)
February 17, 2022
"Inviting other teams into research sessions lets us triangulate findings by combining interviews, observations, and focus groups."
Joanna Vodopivec Prabhas PokharelOne Research Team for All - Influence Without Authority
March 9, 2022
"Users don’t just consume culture anymore; they contribute to it, making cultural understanding essential to UX research."
Soma Ghosh Savina Hawkins Dave Hoffer Rob Thomas Victor UdoewaWhat emerging methods are advancing UX research [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
September 28, 2023
"Crabs grow by shedding their shells, which is uncomfortable but necessary."
Dean BroadleyNot Black Enough to be White
January 8, 2024
"We were like islands with no bridges, trying to connect while remote, but it wasn’t so easy."
Rusha SopariwalaRemote, Together: Craft and Collaboration Across Disciplines, Borders, Time Zones, and a Design Org of 170+
June 9, 2022
"If we’re going to design something and it can’t be the most simple and delightful experience, but at least minimally usable, then I will take that to get it in users’ hands."
How to Identify and Increase your "Experience Quotient"
June 15, 2018