Thoughtless Acts

thoughtlessacts.com

observations on intuitive design

thoughtless acts? is a book by Jane Fulton Suri and IDEO that invites you to notice the subtle and amusing ways that people react to the world around them. These "thoughless acts" reveal how people behave in a world not always perfectly tailored to their needs and demonstrate the kind of real-world observational approach that can inspire designers and anyone involved in creative endeavors.

thoughless acts.com allows you to preview the book as well as contribute observations of your own.

preview the book

Thoughtless acts are all those intuitive ways we adapt, exploit, and react to things in our environment; things we do without really thinking.

The dozens of pictures in thoughtless acts? are glimpses of this kind of interaction. They show a range of examples from the physical and functional to the social and cultural where we use space and objects in particular ways. There is no definitive interpretation of these observations, or those in the outside world. The value is in looking.

The book's closing essay discusses seven important ways that this kind of observation can inspire and inform design and offers real-world examples.

• reacting? We interact automatically with objects and spaces that we encounter.

• responding? Some qualities and features prompt us to behave in particular ways.

• co-opting? We make use of opportunities present in our immediate surroundings.

• exploiting? We take advantage of physical and mechanical qualities we understand.

• adapting? We alter the purpose or context of things to meet our objectives.

• conforming? We learn patterns of behavior from others in our social and cultural group.

• signaling? We convey messages and prompts to ourselves and other people.

-- from http://www.thoughtlessacts.com

See Also

• IDEO 홈페이지의 책 소개: 사진이 몇 장 나와있음

• The IDEO's Thoughless Acts Flickr Group

CategoryLecture