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
"One of the most important questions before starting is what tools do I have to work with."
John DonmoyerShipping your code generation experiments to production
June 11, 2025
"Mobile interaction with gestures and touch was revolutionary for accessibility."
Sam ProulxMobile Accessibility: Why Moving Accessibility Beyond the Desktop is Critical in a Mobile-first World
September 8, 2022
"When someone gives you their phone number or interview with you, you become a steward of their data."
Amy Brana StuartRest in Peace Fly-in-fly-out Design
June 9, 2022
"Any sufficiently advanced neglect is indistinguishable from Alice."
Sha HwangThe Lost Year
June 11, 2021
"Figma natively only allows 40 variable modes, but our client required around 90 different modes to handle age groups and device types."
Ryan Matthew Alex KurchevDesignOps without Boundaries: Building More with What You Have
September 10, 2025
"We don’t want to list every single customer activity; we need to abstract behavior patterns to manage interruptions."
Cheryl PlatzDemystifying Multimodal Design: The Design Practice You Didn't Know You're Doing
April 4, 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
"Customers benchmark your company to their last best experience, often outside of your industry."
Landon BarnesAre My Research Findings Actually Meaningful?
March 10, 2022
"The world really needs what researchers like you bring to the table."
Louis Rosenfeld Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
March 27, 2023
