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
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
"A library that contains everything is not necessarily useful because everything is not useful."
Kate Towsey Jake BurghardtResearchOps AMA with Kate Towsey & Jake Burghardt
October 16, 2025
"Invite yourself to the table by bringing actual deliverables, like storyboards and prototypes."
Gretchen AndersonScaling the Human Center
June 8, 2017
"If you begin to add interruption, you’ll see a big difference in what comes out of that study."
Marc Majers Tony TurnerInterrupted UX - Add A Dose of Reality To Usability Testing
March 11, 2022
"Research run rampant — anyone feeling empowered to do research can sometimes cause quality challenges."
Nalini P. KotamrajuTwo Jobs in One: Being a “Leader who is a Researcher” and a “Researcher who is a Leader"
March 10, 2021
"I tend to avoid the term localization because it’s often mistaken as mere language translation; I prefer culturalization—it’s a deeper, ongoing process."
Chui Chui TanGlobal insights: Embracing international and intercultural research for innovation
March 12, 2025
"If the folks who design LLMs don’t know exactly how they work, it’s okay if you don’t either."
Jonathan Fairman Kevin JohnsonIntegrating generative AI into enterprise products: A case study from dscout
June 5, 2024
"I am in the land of the traditional territory of many diverse indigenous nations."
Sarah BrooksTheme 3 Intro
December 10, 2021
"People work longer hours because of the fear of saying no and fearing job loss, not because it's sustainable."
Alla WeinbergWorkers Are Sick of Change: The Cure is Psychological Safety
June 6, 2023
"The wrong learning pedagogy might be fueling impostor syndrome among design researchers."
Yoel SumitroActions and Reflections: Bridging the Skills Gap among Researchers
March 9, 2022
