Rosenverse

Log in or create a free Rosenverse account to watch this video.

Log in Create free account

100s 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
Friday, June 30, 2023 • Rosenfeld Community
Share the love for this talk
What co-speech gestures reveal about users’ thinking during interviews
Speakers: Dane DeSutter and Stephanie Scopelitis
Link:

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."

Ask the Rosenbot
Ren Pope
Building Experiences for Knowledge Systems
2023 • Enterprise UX 2023
Gold
Kelly Dern
AI as a Design Partner: How to Get the Most Out of AI Tools to Scale Your Process
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Anat Fintzi
Delivering at Scale: Making Traction with Resistant Partners
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold
Saskia Liebenberg
Start Small for Big Impact
2019 • DesignOps Community
Bassel Deeb
Do More With Less: Equip and Lead Design Orgs Through Adversity
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Maggie Dieringer
Cutting through the Noise
2020 • DesignOps Community
Bas Raijmakers, PhD (RCA)
What Design Research can Learn from Documentary Filmmaking
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Tamara Kartoziia
Think global, adapt local: how service design accelerated B2B market entry by 6 months
2025 • Advancing Service Design 2025
Conference
Christian Crumlish
Morning Insights Panel
2022 • Design in Product 2022
Gold
Tristin Oldani
Turning awareness into action with Climate UX
2025 • Climate UX Interest Group
Dominique Ward
The Most Exciting Time for DesignOps is Now
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Nicole Bergstrom
AccessibilityOps: Moving beyond “nice to have”
2024 • DesignOps Community
Lisanne Norman
Why I Left Research
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Jemma Ahmed
Democratization: Working with it, not against it [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
2024 • Advancing Research Community
Saara Kamppari-Miller
Inclusive Design is DesignOps
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Ryan Matthew
Bridging Design and Code: AI-Powered Design System Integration
2025 • DesignOps Summit 2025
Gold

More Videos

Denise Jacobs

"Designers are change agents. This is part of your passion and what gets you up in the morning."

Denise Jacobs Nancy Douyon Renee Reid Lisa Welchman

Interactive Keynote: Social Change by Design

January 8, 2024

Cara Maritz

"Stakeholders often believe secondary research is less rigorous and therefore not as powerful as primary research."

Cara Maritz Rachel Ny

The Art of Extrapolation

March 29, 2023

Greg Petroff

"I know exactly this job, all its problems and dysfunctions, and I don’t want to do that anymore."

Greg Petroff

Exit Interview #1: Greg Petroff: From Silicon Valley Executive to Sonoma County Possibilitarian

September 24, 2025

Saara Kamppari-Miller

"If you don't have the language to talk about disability, it's really hard to prioritize and design for it."

Saara Kamppari-Miller

Theme Three Intro

October 4, 2023

Nalini P. Kotamraju

"Sharing is hustle — holding brown bags, office hours, town halls, and surveys to get feedback."

Nalini P. Kotamraju

An Organizational Story: Salesforce Lightning Design System

June 9, 2016

Satyam Kantamneni

"Taking time for visionary conversations is a mechanism to break out of incrementalism and incremental UX debt."

Satyam Kantamneni

Do You Have an Experience Vision?

March 23, 2023

Christian Bason

"After 10 years, managers who first encountered civic design still believe it’s the right approach and continue to use it."

Christian Bason

Innovating With People: Unleashing the Potential of Civic Design

December 8, 2021

Sarah Fathallah

"We formed a lived expert review board to support framing conclusions and decisions, rebalancing power from academic peer reviewers."

Sarah Fathallah

A Typology of Participation in Participatory Research

March 28, 2023

Reginé Gilbert

"Identity is not monolithic; policies should address layered experiences."

Reginé Gilbert

Asking the Right Questions: Life, Hope and Moving Forward During the Pandemic

June 10, 2022