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
"A gatekeeper hires to the comfort zone, a servant leader hires for potential and diversity."
Kevin BethuneGatekeepers and Servant Leadership
January 30, 2020
"The culture between buyer and user impacts feature adoption and overall satisfaction."
Amy MarquezINVEST: Discussion
June 15, 2018
"In Procore, design moved from tasting the cake to baking the cake by being involved early in strategy and planning."
Alfred KahnA Seat at the Table: Making Your Team a Strategic Partner
November 29, 2023
"Researchers have a lane enforcing best practice, but non-researchers can significantly contribute to creating intelligence."
Lija HoganDoing more with more: Lessons from the Front Lines of Democratization
March 9, 2022
"The new site had a 19% dropout rate compared to 32% on the old site, showing clear improvement."
Mackenzie Cockram Sara Branco Cunha Ian FranklinIntegrating Qualitative and Quantitative Research from Discovery to Live
December 16, 2022
"In engineering cultures, UX is sometimes seen as too vague or uncontrollable, so framing UX impact via metrics helps."
Susan WeinschenkEvaluating the Maturity of UX in Your Organization
January 15, 2020
"OKRs can sometimes suck the oxygen out of the room if they focus only on bottom-line results, missing process and experience."
Bria Alexander Benson Low Natalya Pemberton Stephanie GoldthorpeOKRs—Helpful or Harmful?
January 20, 2022
"Most of our job is education — teaching people what AI is good for and what it’s not."
Steve Krug Louis RosenfeldDon’t Make Me Think 3.0: What Endures and What Evolves in UX
March 11, 2026
"Engaging communities requires thinking beyond western-centric tools, considering language and cultural relevance for accessibility."
Xenia Adjoubei Sean BruceEmpowering Communities Through the Researcher in Residence Program
March 29, 2023