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
"You can refine your scope and run the analysis loop multiple times in one or two hours to explore an entire domain."
Joerg Beringer Thomas GeisScaling User Research with AI: Continuous Discovery of User Needs in Minutes
June 10, 2025
"I was much more interested in talking to clients, understanding the scope, and translating that into what designers would build."
Courtney KaplanTaking it to the next level: Career paths in DesignOps
November 8, 2018
"Having sponsors who put in a good word made my hiring manager comfortable despite my lack of formal experience."
Joseph Williams Nepani Birondo Matt Readman Allison NgoUnlocking impact and influence through inclusive hiring in research
December 16, 2021
"Making sustainability embedded in every job function, with OKRs aligned, is the future we need to head toward."
Jamie Beck Alexander Nina Gregg Shawn Petersen Bill DeRoucheyHow can you find your role in climate?
January 17, 2024
"Democratization means people without 'UX researcher' in their title are doing the research work—a 4:1 ratio compared to formal researchers."
James LangHopeful Futures for UX Research
January 30, 2026
"Communication over communication and creating safe spaces for people to disagree leads to healthy exchanges and minimizes detractors."
Steve Baty Richard Dalton Maria Giudice Harry MaxDiscussion
June 9, 2016
"Cohorts are consistently one of the highest rated parts of the conference — they’re a fantastic way to learn together."
Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
September 9, 2022
"Organizations say they want to break down silos but often create new ones in product teams; service design helps reconnect them."
Lavrans Løvlie Ben ReasonAsk me anything – Authors of Service Design: From Insight to Implementation
November 19, 2025
"The urgent and important stuff competes with the important but not urgent, and we have to sort that out."
Harry MaxPriority Zero: Some Things are More Equal than Others
June 9, 2016