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.
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
"If 71% of people self-identify as gamers, why aren’t you learning from the video game industry?"
Cheryl PlatzEmbrace Your Fun Factor: Game Development Best Practices for Product Design
January 9, 2026
"Take advantage of the digital swag bag — it’s our way of replicating in-person perks in a virtual world."
Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
September 9, 2022
"No one wants to use a calendar; they want to be organized. Protect users from having to engage with complexity."
Dem Gerolemou Alexis Oh Neef RehmanClimate technology fundamentals
May 15, 2024
"In our desire to see the big table, we often forget that sometimes it’s more important not to seek validation at the table but to offer it to someone else."
Kit Unger Lada GorlenkoTheme 3 Intro
June 10, 2022
"Women are 47% more likely to be seriously injured and 17% more likely to die in a car accident because crash test dummies are modeled after the average male."
Candace MyersStandardizing Design at Scale
September 9, 2022
"Most product teams stay on the bottom rungs of evidence, relying on opinions or observational data instead of randomized trials."
Erin WeigelGet Your Whole Team Testing to Design for Impact
July 24, 2024
"Talking about outcomes first is a really powerful technique for people who have had bad experiences."
Adrian HowardSturgeon’s Biases
September 25, 2024
"Sentient design is about proposing direction without imposing it—laying a road in front of the user, but letting them choose."
Josh Clark Veronika KindredSentient Design: New Design Patterns for New Experiences (3rd of 3 seminars)
February 12, 2025
"I relied very largely on just qualitative information and looking for patterns from talking to over 100 people in a 9,000-employee company."
Steve Baty Richard Dalton Maria Giudice Harry MaxDiscussion
June 9, 2016
