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
Steve Chaparro
Bringing Into Alignment Brand, Culture and Space
2020 • DesignOps Community
Jon White
Unsticking Research for Better Information Flow
2026 • Advancing Research 2026
Gold
Neil Barrie
Widening the Aperture: The Case for Taking a Broader Lens to the Dialogue between Products and Culture
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
Christopher Taylor Edwards
Design as a Team Practice, A Practical Guide to Cross-functional Collaboration
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Jack Behar
How to Build Prototypes that Behave like an End-Product
2022 • Design in Product 2022
Gold
Llewyn Paine
Coexisting with AI: A practical guide for researchers to navigate tools, ethics, and integration
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Adam Thomas
Survival Metrics – Making Change in a Fast, Data-Informed, and Politically Safe Way
2022 • Design in Product 2022
Gold
Doug Powell
DesignOps and the Next Frontier: Leading Through Unpredictable Change
2025 • DesignOps Summit 2025
Gold
Louis Rosenfeld
Coffee with Lou
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Vanessa Varin
Tools are moments. Capabilities compound.
2026 • Rosenfeld Community
Rikki Teeters
Concept to code: Transforming ideas into functional products with Kiro
2026 • Designing with AI 2026
Conference
Corey Long
Hiring in DesignOps: A Critical Study on How to Hire and Get Hired
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Kristin Skinner
Opening Keynote: Org Design for Design Orgs
2017 • DesignOps Summit 2017
Gold
Yalenka Mariën
Designing for Digital Inclusion in the Belgian Government
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Lisanne Norman
Why I Left Research
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Dave Hoffer
UX Job Search AMA #2 with Joanne Weaver and Dave Hoffer
2025 • Rosenfeld Community

More Videos

Tina Weisser

"Lots of people have agents running, but they don't feel they’re really useful yet."

Tina Weisser

When AI Agents Meet Reality. Service Design Lessons from a Pilot

February 26, 2026

Kate Towsey

"Researchers are shy about sharing work because they worry about being judged — peer and management support help."

Kate Towsey Jake Burghardt

ResearchOps AMA with Kate Towsey & Jake Burghardt

October 16, 2025

Aras Bilgen

"We used design principles like look but don't copy, this is a calculator not a person, and no gamification to guide tough decisions."

Aras Bilgen

Who does the math: A designer’s journey in building an AI-based tutoring app

June 10, 2025

Mark Interrante

"The challenge of prioritization increases when decisions are adaptive, systemic, and dynamic."

Mark Interrante Harry Max

AI for Prioritization (3rd of 3 seminars)

July 11, 2024

Megan Blocker

"I realized that dedicating my time and energy into something that wasn’t going to be used was not a good use of my time."

Megan Blocker

A Selectively Scrappy Approach to ResearchOps

November 8, 2018

Bruce Gillespie

"Sounding authentically like you, while professional, is more engaging than robotic business writing."

Bruce Gillespie

Learning from journalism: Balancing impactful communication with compassionate storytelling

March 13, 2025

Rachael Dietkus, LCSW

"Workshop content is equivalent to a one-day in-person event spread over 10 virtual hours with coaching and support."

Rachael Dietkus, LCSW Victor Udoewa Jennifer Strickland

Everything You Need to Know about the Civic Design 2022 Call for Presentations

May 17, 2022

Jackie Velasquez-Ross

"Sometimes you have to take a chance and hire someone because they have the ability to grow into the role."

Jackie Velasquez-Ross

Talent Acquisition and Our Responsibility

June 16, 2020

Jesse Zolna

"Having a huge appetite for research and a huge manner for research is a good problem to have. So let's lean into it."

Jesse Zolna

Inviting the Whole Org to Come See For Yourself

March 30, 2020