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
"If we deeply understand outcomes and advocate for impact, we’ll be the ones making real change happen in the enterprise."
Greg PetroffSoftware as Material—A Redux
June 6, 2023
"Many ethical and practical issues prevent us from conducting longitudinal research with children under 18 in foster care."
Sarah FathallahA Typology of Participation in Participatory Research
March 28, 2023
"A company needs a triple win cultural role speaking to its commitment, user needs, and wider cultural tension."
Neil BarrieWidening the Aperture: The Case for Taking a Broader Lens to the Dialogue between Products and Culture
March 25, 2024
"Ethical stress testing subjects AI to hypothetical morally challenging scenarios to ensure alignment with ethical norms."
Jay BustamanteNavigating the Ethical Frontier: DesignOps Strategies for Responsible AI Innovation
October 2, 2023
"Share early, share ugly—that’s our mantra for this entire process."
Cassandra PiesterDeveloping and Deploying Your Design Operations Strategy
September 24, 2024
"Influence is the real goal as a designer—over people, processes, and culture."
Uday GajendarThe Rise of Meta-Design: A Starter Playbook
May 19, 2022
"A centralized model for design systems can be problematic because it distances the team from end users."
Dan DonaldDesign Systems as a Vehicle for Systemic Change
June 1, 2023
"We learned that hiring for the specific design team’s needs works better than a one-size-fits-all DPM approach."
Brennan HartichCommunicating and Establishing DesignOps as a New Function
November 7, 2018
"Our existing software is becoming adaptive, allowing end users to vibe code features themselves."
Matt WebbContext Window: Five Futures for AI
June 11, 2025
