Why Do People Talk With Their Hands?

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There is a whole bunch of different things that we do that really can't be accounted for unless we if everything is a pragmatic action. Why do you talk with your hands when you're phone or, say, on a podcast? You can't see the other person, but people still make these gestures. We actually use these gestures to shape and facilitate and grease our internal cognitive mechanism.

Karl Fast is an independent scholar, information architect, and futurist. He's the co-author of Figure It Out: Getting From Information to Understanding alongside Stephen Anderson, who was featured in episode 39 of the show. In this conversation, Karl tells us about what interaction designers can learn from cognitive science. We had a lot to discuss, so this episode is the first of two on the subject.

Show notes

@karlfast on Twitter
Karl Fast on LinkedIn
Figure It Out: Getting From Information to Understanding by Stephen P. Anderson and Karl Fast
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Stroop effect
The Extended Mind by Andy Clark and David Chalmers
Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension by Andy Clark
HCI Remixed: Essays on Works That Have Influenced the HCI Community, edited by Thomas Erickson and David W. McDonald
On Distinguishing Epistemic From Pragmatic Action by David Kirsch and Paul Maglio (pdf)
The Intelligent Use of Space by David Kirsch
Hearing Gesture: How Our Hands Help Us Think by Susan Goldin-Meadow
Things That Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes In The Age Of The Machine by Don Norman
The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition by Don Norman
Hans Moravec

Disclosure: I received Karl’s book for free as a previous Rosenfeld Media/Two Waves author.

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