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 sponsors offer sessions with no sales pitches, just incredibly high-quality content."
Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
January 8, 2024
"Stress makes us stupid because our creative thinking gets cloudy when under pressure."
Laura WeissTurn Down the Heat: 3 Ways to Handle Conflict in the Moment
November 20, 2024
"You’re not going to get it right first time. It’s going to look weird, that’s fine — enjoy the process."
Mujtaba HameedFrameworks for Excellence: Using Visual Thinking and Communication to Elevate Your Research
March 26, 2024
"There must be time to learn a community's history with government and time to build relationships to do this work well."
Ashley Cortez Devika Menon Nidhi Singh Rathore Danita J. Reese Mari NakanoShifting Toward Community-Led Innovation in Local Government
December 8, 2021
"Power sharing requires behavior change, reflection, and descending about expertise."
Natalia RadywylCo-Designing New Power in Australia's Public Sector
November 16, 2022
"If we balance qualitative depth and quantitative breadth, we get a yin-yang harmony that strengthens research and practice."
Mohammad Hossein JarrahiContextuality problem: Exploring the Benefits of Qualitative and Quantitative Research
January 20, 2023
"Michael became our farmer maintaining steady flow; Davis our forger bringing world-class UX; Dana our gardener cultivating quality work."
Briana ThomasThe Quiet Force: Uncovering Hidden Leadership in High-Impact Design Teams
September 24, 2024
"Control is the prerequisite for communities to form connections and have agency collectively."
Anil DashDesigning with power in the age of AI
June 10, 2026
"Artifacts capture our decisions and give us a place to point back when misalignment happens."
Scher Foord Corey Greenltch Sarah RoweTurn the Ship Around: How to Apply Design Thinking Across Your Organization
June 10, 2021
