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
Briana Thomas
When Design Ops Comes in H.O.T. : A Tale of a Transformed Design Org
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Cennydd Bowles
Day 1 Panel
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold
Laurent Christoph
Scale the impact of DesignOps in 3D: Diligence, Decision, Discipline
2025 • DesignOps Community
Ned Gartside
Navigating accessibility and climate
2024 • Climate UX Interest Group
Courtney Kaplan
Taking it to the next level: Career paths in DesignOps
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Dantley Davis
Leadership & Diversity—A Fireside Chat with Dantley Davis
2020 • Enterprise Community
Bob Baxley
Theme 4: Intro
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Deanna Zandt
The Unspoken Complexity of “Self-Care” with Deanna Zandt
2022 • Civic Design Community
Frances Yllana
D.E.A.R.R. Diaries (Discipline, Experience, Architecture, Reflection + Revolution)
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Sheryl Cababa
Day 2 Panel
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold
Nicole Wright
Democratizing Research at HoneyBook
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Matt LeMay
You Don’t “Get” Anyone to Do Anything
2022 • Design in Product 2022
Gold
Lisa Welchman
Cleaning Up Our Mess: Digital Governance for Designers
2018 • Enterprise Experience 2018
Gold
Josh Clark
Sentient Design: New Postures for AI-Mediated Experiences (2nd of 3 seminars)
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Ebru Namaldi
Designing the Designer’s Journey: Scaling Teams, Culture, and Growth Through DesignOps
2025 • DesignOps Summit 2025
Gold
Smitha Papolu
Theme 3 Discussion
2019 • Enterprise Experience 2019
Gold

More Videos

Peter Boersma

"I took roughly three months to get the first shareable version of the roadmap, including onboarding and interviews."

Peter Boersma

How to Define and Maintain a DesignOps Roadmap

October 3, 2023

Peter Van Dijck

"There’s a lot of steps behind the scenes to make conversations useful and safe."

Peter Van Dijck

Building the Rosenbot

June 4, 2024

Lori Muszynski

"Ambiguity is considered a problematic in design, but ambiguity can be a feature."

Lori Muszynski Peter Merholz

Keeping Design Weird

October 2, 2023

Ted Neward

"Being nice and empathetic at the executive level is critical to get results and maintain trust."

Ted Neward

Theme 4: Enterprise Organizational Journey

June 4, 2019

Indi Young

"Your thinking style while caregiving might be ‘Give dignity and agency’ but change as resistance grows."

Indi Young

Thinking styles: Mend hidden cracks in your market

January 8, 2025

Bob Baxley

"Design always means change; if it amplifies what’s already working, that itself is change."

Bob Baxley Sara Asche Anderson Sharon Bautista Frank Duran Jamie Kaspszak Abbey Smalley Sylas Souza

Theme 4: Discussion

January 8, 2024

Husani Oakley

"I worked at an interactive information rich, dynamic customer relationship management firm — that was my way to explain making websites."

Husani Oakley

Theme Two Intro

June 6, 2023

Dianne Que

"Being scrappy means being determined to get shit done without letting perfect get in the way of better."

Dianne Que

Real Talk: Proving Value through a Scrappy Playbook

October 23, 2019

Matt LeMay

"When we say if only I could get that executive to think differently, we’re actually giving them power over us."

Matt LeMay

You Don’t “Get” Anyone to Do Anything

December 6, 2022