Rosenverse

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
Erika Flowers
The Handoff is Dead: Design-Led Engineering with AI Agents
2026 • Rosenfeld Community
Jim Kalbach
Jazz Improvisation as a Model for Team Collaboration
2019 • Enterprise Experience 2019
Gold
Bria Alexander
Opening Remarks
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Sam Proulx
To Boldly Go: The New Frontiers of Accessibility
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Jorge Arango
[Demo] How to re-categorize content at scale using LLMs
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold
Kara Kane
Theme One Intro
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Dorelle Rabinowitz
The Magic Word is Trust
2018 • Enterprise Experience 2018
Gold
Paula Bach
Improving Legacy Software: How Much Better Does it Have to Be?
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Christian Crumlish
Introduction by our Conference Chair
2022 • Design in Product 2022
Gold
Jennifer Strickland
Fireside Chat: How Design Addresses a World on Fire
2022 • Civic Design Community
Cornelius Rachieru
Handling Complexity: Framing a Scale of Design
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Dave Hora
Advice for Establishing Research
2022 • Advancing Research Community
Maria Rosala
Research Repositories
2026 • Advancing Research 2026
Conference
Rachel Radway
The Many Paths Of Design Operations
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Alnie Figueroa
The Future of Design Operations: Transforming Our Craft
2025 • DesignOps Summit 2025
Gold
Eduardo Ortiz
Day 3 Theme Panel
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold

More Videos

Mike Brzozowski

"Design should offer tangible co-benefits like saving money or time to motivate sustainable choices."

Mike Brzozowski Laura Palotie Steve Isley Nancy Tsang

UX in everyday products: Empowering climate conscious choices

July 17, 2024

Luke Roberts

"Designers have to be brave enough to speak truth to power, even when it’s uncomfortable."

Luke Roberts Christian Bason, Ph.D. Amanda Woolley Ben Reason

Panel Discussion

December 4, 2024

Matt Webb

"It’s actually embarrassing how little code there is and you get these incredible emergent effects."

Matt Webb

Context Window: Five Futures for AI

June 11, 2025

Erika Flowers

"Start small and learn in low-stakes ways so you can train the organization to think, act, and react to AI."

Erika Flowers

AI-Readiness: Preparing NASA for a Data-Driven, Agile Future

June 10, 2025

Jim Kalbach

"Each first take was the only take, which got pressed on the album."

Jim Kalbach

Jazz Improvisation as a Model for Team Collaboration

June 4, 2019

Luca Rager

"Instead of overrides, we swap out entire theme files to customize components for different product teams."

Luca Rager

Empowering Gaming at Scale: How Xbox Builds Powerful, Automated, and Distributed Design Systems with Sketch

September 30, 2021

Jemma Ahmed

"By bringing truth to power is how we bring excellence to our craft and define our value."

Jemma Ahmed

Theme 2 Intro

March 26, 2024

John Cutler

"These aren't linear; every circle or box has multiple lines into it—our work does not fit neatly into trees or pyramids."

John Cutler

The Alignment Trap

November 29, 2023

"Burnout isn’t just an individual issue; managers must actively help employees say no and manage workload."

DesignOps and The Great Talent War of 2021

August 19, 2021