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
"It’s important not to fall in love with a feature but stay open to new information and feedback."
Product and Design at Bloomberg: A 15-year Evolution
December 6, 2022
"You don’t know how hard it is until you’re leading a user research session yourself."
Anna AvrekhUser Research, Design, and Product - A Love Story
March 11, 2021
"When you’re smashing silos, the first wall you try to break through always gets bloody."
Kristen Honey"Let’s Talk About Data and Crisis”: Public Digital Service Delivery = Open Data + Human Centered Design
November 18, 2021
"Every report should say this research is tied to this KPI, here’s the outcome we want to address."
Renee BouwensLanding Product Impact: Aligning Research as a Foundational Driver for Delivering the World’s Best Products
December 15, 2023
"Talent is everywhere. You find talent when you look for it without skepticism and bias."
Husani OakleyBias Towards Action: Building Teams that Build Work
June 14, 2018
"Data quality is multifaceted, subjective, and can't be reduced to simple profiles alone."
David ConradThe Feeling of Data
September 14, 2023
"We need to factor in the specifics of the social situation when designing interaction models and gestures for smart glasses."
Lukas Moro“Feels Like Paper!”: Interfacing AI through Paper
June 11, 2025
"We don’t call them UX designers or front-end designers or visual designers. They’re all just designers."
Adam Cutler Karen Pascoe Ian Swinson Susan WorthmanDiscussion
June 8, 2016
"It’s better to err on the side of kindness and emotional support toward colleagues who might be struggling."
Louis RosenfeldWelcome / Housekeeping
June 7, 2023
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
How can I unify multiple solar system apps into a single cohesive home energy management interface?
What roles can information architects and service designers play in the emerging field of AI context engineering?
What are the challenges of demand charges in residential solar rate plans and how can they be managed automatically?