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
"We can’t innovate until we’re aligned over what works and what doesn’t."
Adrian HowardSturgeon’s Biases
September 25, 2024
"Research isn’t about producing reports, it’s about meeting teams where they are so that they can make better decisions."
Julia CowingFrom Researcher to Builder: Vibe Coding Tomer Sharon's Method Finder
July 23, 2026
"If you have an unmet need, pairing can help address it by matching offers and needs within the team."
Christopher Taylor Edwards Valerie RoskeDesign as a Team Practice, A Practical Guide to Cross-functional Collaboration
September 30, 2021
"The lesson isn’t that AI was wrong, but that you still have to test it against your users."
Kritika SonyMoving AI offscreen: Exploring failures, constraints, and recovery in physical game design
June 10, 2026
"If there is no structured way to move from data to concept, you often end up with just a brainstorm, not a grounded concept."
Anne MamaghaniHow Your Organization's Generative Workshops Are Probably Going Wrong and How to Get Them Right
March 28, 2023
"Brian Chesky does what Brian Chesky wants — he tweeted our blueprint, and we had nothing to do with that."
Rebecca GimenezWork in Progress: Service Design at Airbnb
December 3, 2024
"Market research is a hundred-year-old multidisciplinary field with many qualitative and quantitative methods supporting business decisions."
Nicole Aleong Michaela Mora Prayag Narula Brianna SylverWhat UX research can learn from other research practices [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
September 14, 2023
"Diverse teams build diverse products that work for more people."
Sam ProulxAccessibility: An Opportunity to Innovate
September 8, 2022
"It’s irresponsible to keep our heads in the sand; we can’t ignore the noise and uncertainty around us."
Julie Norvaisas Pert Eilers Mina JonssonBack to basics, or start from scratch?
March 12, 2025