Rosenverse
What co-speech gestures reveal about users’ thinking during interviews

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
Robin Beers
Beyond Insights: Researchers as Organizational Change Catalysts
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
Bilan Hashi
The Tension Between Story Collecting and Story Telling in Research
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Samuel Proulx
From Standards to Innovation: Why Inclusive Design Wins
2025 • Advancing Service Design 2025
Gold
Aras Bilgen
Who does the math: A designer’s journey in building an AI-based tutoring app
2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Gold
Rachael Dietkus, LCSW
Leading through the long tail of trauma
2022 • Advancing Research Community
Ricardo Martins
Unlocking the power of advanced quantitative methods
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Sean Baker
Weaving Knowledge Management into the Fabric of Our Design Practice
2025 • DesignOps Summit 2025
Gold
Alberto Ferreira
Making it Count: Developing a custom digital metric framework that works
2021 • QuantQual Interest Group
Feyikemi Akinwolemiwa
Uninvited, Not Unwelcome: What Researchers Bring When Nobody Asked
2026 • Rosenfeld Community
Dan Willis
Enterprise Storytelling Sessions
2019 • Enterprise Experience 2019
Gold
Bria Alexander
Opening Remarks
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Beth Chappell
Leading through ambiguity: Supporting a design team relearning their craft
2026 • Designing with AI 2026
Conference
Harry Brignull
Beyond Clicks and Tricks: Why deceptive design has grown into a regulatory faultline
2026 • Rosenfeld Community
Aurobinda Pradhan
Introduction to Collaborative DesignOps using Cubyts
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Shipra Kayan
How Tess Dixon Facilitates Team Engagement and Collaboration at Condé Nast Using Miro 
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Erin Hauber
Design is Not the Frosting on the Scaled Agile Layer Cake
2019 • DesignOps Summit 2019
Gold

More Videos

Jose Coronado

"Results don’t speak for themselves. We have to speak for what we do or others will frame it for us."

Jose Coronado

From Zero to Hero

September 8, 2022

Doug Powell

"Designers have a set of superpowers that give us a unique ability to envision a better future."

Doug Powell

DesignOps and the Next Frontier: Leading Through Unpredictable Change

September 11, 2025

Prayag Narula

"When UX researchers and product managers collaborate, the product speaks to users’ hearts."

Prayag Narula Hannah Hudson

Empowering Designers to do Good Research

March 11, 2022

Nathan Shedroff

"Design and business are different worlds with different concerns, languages, and issues about what they care about."

Nathan Shedroff

Redefining Value: Bridging the Innovation Culture Divide

May 14, 2015

Saara Kamppari-Miller

"I want you to pay close attention to these talks to get the frameworks and language to include these topics."

Saara Kamppari-Miller

Theme Three Intro

October 4, 2023

Kate Kalcevich

"Rapid iteration with three to five user interviews is often enough to inform design and validate accessibility effectively."

Kate Kalcevich

Integrating Accessibility in DesignOps

September 23, 2024

Meghan Hellstern

"Zane’s team works life-centered, collaborating with plants, animals, and ecosystems, expanding Civic design beyond human systems."

Meghan Hellstern Joanne Dong

The Next 100 Years of Civic Design: How Might We Better Rise to Meet the Challenges of Today and Tomorrow?

December 10, 2021

Bassel Deeb

"Being comfortable with ambiguity means having team members who can bring structure to uncertainty."

Bassel Deeb Will Osborn

Do More With Less: Equip and Lead Design Orgs Through Adversity

October 2, 2023

Angelos Arnis

"Communication and processes are the core focus areas where design ops teams invest most of their efforts."

Angelos Arnis

State of DesignOps: Learnings from the 2021 Global Report

October 1, 2021