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.
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
"Research in science fiction helps make research real and creative all the time."
Ana Maria Montero Barrantes Aditi Dhar Michelle Kaplan Nate Osborne Matt LaurenceThe Authentic UX Talent Show
January 8, 2024
"We can’t expect all researchers to switch seamlessly across methods without training and time."
Jemma AhmedBringing together market and user research
October 17, 2019
"We cannot ignore the ethical implications that come with the power of AI."
Vincent BrathwaiteOpener: Past, Present, and Future—Closing the Racial Divide in Design Teams
October 22, 2020
"Companies with strong user experiences had twice as many designers as product managers, often with senior design strategists."
Kaaren HansonStop Talking, Start Doing
June 9, 2017
"Be honest with yourself: it won’t always be fun, it will be slow and full of blockers, but the impact is real."
Charlotte Vorbeck Shahzma Esmail Edward Alton Sarah McArthur Ariel KennanPipeline to Civic Design
December 9, 2021
"Biases out of sight are biases out of mind — facial recognition misidentifies Black faces leading to false arrests."
Dr. Jamika D. BurgeBroad Strokes: Connecting Design, Research, and AI to the World Around Us
June 7, 2023
"Design is a third way of knowing, different from science and humanities, involving making and artifice."
Jorge ArangoDesign as an Antidote to VUCA
May 9, 2019
"It’s never over; it’s a continuous process of improvement."
Sharbani DharBreathing Room for Delight
January 8, 2024
"Try to make your component hierarchy as flat as possible because tall, nested structures become hard to navigate."
Jaime CreixemsBest Practices when Creating and Maintaining a Design System
June 7, 2023