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
"An experiment coach spends about 10 to 20 percent of their time helping the team change mindsets and actions."
Alissa BriggsHow to Coach Enterprise Experimentation
May 14, 2015
"No s**t designers burnout more than any other function."
Peter MerholzThe 2025 State of UX/Design Organizational Health
November 12, 2025
"FIC data delivers stories and stories become very important for strategy."
Kelly GotoEmotion Economy: Ethnography as Corporate Strategy
May 13, 2015
"A thousand paper cuts add up: many small frustrations can lead to someone leaving your digital experience."
Andrew Custage Michael MallettThe Digital Journey: Research on Consumer Frustration and Loyalty
March 29, 2023
"Our goal is to automate routine tasks so designers can focus more on research, creativity, and innovation."
Farid SabitovAutomatization for Large Enterprise Teams
January 8, 2024
"If you show something that looks ready to ship too early, you may miss exploring 30 other concepts quickly."
Billy CarlsonPrinciples of Team Wireframing
October 2, 2023
"Buy-in is critical: stakeholders need to believe the team can move through change and support them."
Dharani PereraThe mandala of service design: unlocking alignment and action through service design
November 20, 2025
"Collaboration among technologists, ethicists, and healthcare professionals is key."
Vincent BrathwaiteOpener: Past, Present, and Future—Closing the Racial Divide in Design Teams
October 22, 2020
"These AI models are not one hundred percent perfect, so you must stress test the output and watch out for bias."
Kelly DernAI as a Design Partner: How to Get the Most Out of AI Tools to Scale Your Process
October 3, 2023
