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
"Our goal is to be AI fluent, not necessarily AI experts."
Alnie FigueroaThe Future of Design Operations: Transforming Our Craft
September 10, 2025
"With Apple, I could pick up any phone and triple-click the home button and VoiceOver would come on."
Sam ProulxTo Boldly Go: The New Frontiers of Accessibility
March 11, 2022
"Technology moves faster than policymaking — that’s the pacing problem we need to address."
Alexandra SchmidtWhy Ethics Can't Save Tech
November 18, 2022
"The moat that once protected researchers—their exclusive data access—is disappearing; now our value is enabling others to use insight."
Jemma Ahmed Megan Blocker Eduardo OrtizRedefining the research toolkit: Expanding methodologies for a changing world
March 12, 2025
"It's surprisingly hard to hire product managers and designers in government; I'm looking at how to unblock those system barriers."
Ariel KennanCivic Design in 2022
January 13, 2022
"We adapt, we innovate, or we no longer exist."
Jemma AhmedResearch at an inflection point: Adapting to a new era of collaboration, equity, and innovation
March 11, 2025
"This DP&M tool is not just another knowledge base, it’s a living database that supports managing relationships and parsing information into views tailored to user roles."
Ellie Krysl Jon FukudaPlanned Right. Managed Right. Designed Right.
June 6, 2023
"People’s brains are hardwired to pick up on status signals, even if there’s no real data."
Cheryl PlatzCollaborative Creativity through Improv
November 7, 2018
"With LLMs, the product itself is no longer a dependent variable; experiences diverge per user."
Katie JohnsonDisrupting generative AI products with just-in-time consumer insights
June 4, 2024
