NEW BOOK! We Need to Talk: A Survival Guide for Tough Conversations
Body Talk Cover

Body Talk

Using Gestures to Rethink Human-Centered Products

By Dane DeSutter & Stephanie Scopelitis

To be published: 2025

Human thinking and communication include more than words alone. By honing attention to non-verbal actions such as gestures, body posture, and gaze in a rich social-material environment, we show you how to attend to the subtleties of unspoken language and rediscover the human in Human-Centered Design. In Body Talk, we carry the reader through the end-to-end product arc with a focus on how attending to yours and others’ gestures deepen meaning. Explore the role of the body in enriching foundational research, supporting collaborative ideation, advancing and validating designs, and facilitating technical conversations to ground nascent technology in complex human experiences.

Human thinking and communication include more than words alone. By honing attention to non-verbal actions such as gestures, body posture, and gaze in a rich social-material environment, we show you how to attend to the subtleties of unspoken language and rediscover the human in Human-Centered Design. In Body Talk, we carry the reader through the end-to-end product arc with a focus on how attending to yours and others’ gestures deepen meaning. Explore the role of the body in enriching foundational research, supporting collaborative ideation, advancing and validating designs, and facilitating technical conversations to ground nascent technology in complex human experiences.

Table of Contents

Part I: Foundations

Chapter 1: The Need To Go Deeper
Chapter 2: Gestures & What Do They Do
Chapter 3: How To Look at Gestures
Chapter 4: Interview People Deeper
Chapter 5: Observe People Holistically
Chapter 6: Analyze Your Data
Chapter 8: Build Inclusively
Chapter 9: Ideate Together More Effectively
Chapter 10: Build Prototypes Together

Part IV: Putting Gestures to Use With Technologye

Chapter 11: When Gestures Meet Technology