Dane Desutter / Stephanie Scopelitis
You already use gestures naturally. Everyone does. But most product teams rely too much on what people say—in interviews, meetings, and documents—missing a rich layer of how people think, communicate, and coordinate the world around them through the body. Body Talk teaches you to see and use gestures more intentionally, giving you practical guidance to drive human-centered product work. Who Should Read This Book Do you talk to users and customers, drive product design or strategy, or facilitate the teams that do? Whether you call yourself a researcher, designer, engineer, or product manager, you’ve probably got stories of a product or feature that seemed really promising but failed to land. Being unable to read and interpret gestures could be the reason behind that failure. If so, this book is for you. If you’re a researcher, designer, leader, educator, healthcare professional, or facilitator whose work depends on understanding people and getting things done with them, this book is for you, too. Pull up a chair and listen to what the body has to say. Takeaways Learn how gestures help people think and reveal their mental models. See how gestures communicate what words can’t capture. Learn how the thinking, communicating, and coordinating body work together. Discover how to “see” and spot gestures that matter. Evaluate and analyze gestures for communication and impact. Understand how gestures build belonging in teams and enable richer collaboration and design together. Understand the context of gestures by knowing your goals, the relationships at play, and how ideas move through collaboration. Prototype and build the right thing together. Learn how to analyze and interpret gestures in videos. See how AI and software can help you locate movement at scale and make video easier to search. 6
