I just received the book thoughtless acts?: observations on intuitive design by Jane Fulton Suri of IDEO. This is a small book of mostly pictures of - you guessed it - thoughtless acts. According to her,
"Thoughtless acts are all those intuitive ways we adapt, exploit, and react to things in our environment; things we do without really thinking."
Thoughtless acts are simply the way we cope with our world. Just imagine if coping with the simplest thing like walking across the room took thought? We'd never get anything done.
Thoughtless acts are not careless acts. Thoughtless acts are acts we do to take care of our concerns and ourselves. Take as an example this mail carrier resting his legs.
Until we die (and who knows, maybe beyond), our life is a never-ending string of thoughtless acts ... except when we have a breakdown. In the occurrence of a breakdown, our acts are no longer thoughtless. As we've explored before, breakdowns open the space for new designs. And new designs are openings to new thoughtless acts once they are embodied.
As leaders, designers, and coaches, the study of thoughtless acts is a study in how and how well we cope with breakdowns. In Fulton Suri's book, she present various kinds of thoughtless acts - reacting, responding, co-opting, exploiting, adapting, conforming, and signaling.
The picture above comes from IDEO's Thoughtless Acts flickr pool. Fulton Suri reminds us that there is no definitive interpretations of these thoughtless acts. The value is in what you see. So, what do you see?
What do thoughtless acts reveal about our way of being?
Have fun with it!
-Steve
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