Boing Boing have blogged a recent book from design consultancy IDEO called Thoughtless Acts. It’s basically a collection of photographs that show how people unconciously use and interact with elements in the environment – from using the top of a square post to place a square milk carton to using a window as a mirror. It’s a project that Naoto Fukasawa, a Japanese industrial designer that I recently interviewed, has taken pictures for – he calls the concept “affordance”: these things in the environment “afford” us certain unconscious actions.

They’re strange and beautiful images. Though many have been taken in Japan, the behaviours they record are instantly recognisable. We show a few more in the profile I’ve written for icon. It will come out in a couple of weeks.