Reading about thoughtless acts, affordances, and constraints made me think about my daily interaction with ordinary objects much more in depth. I usually give no attention to how I use things in my daily life, but reading into thoughtless acts made me evaluate how specific object designs have allowed us to make new uses out of them. If we only used things for the sole purpose they were made for, we’d have too many objects that we’d have to keep around just to get through the day. I appreciated how Suri encouraged us to pay attention to our ordinary daily functions, because normally these things are so overlooked that it was even a bit challenging to think of thoughtless acts within our lives, even though they are everywhere around us. It takes paying close attention with the purpose of picking them out that we can be thoughtful of how we act thoughtlessly.
Design is integral in affordances and constraints. Conveying perceived affordances as actual affordances is key for people to be able to easily and thoughtlessly use a product. If a person perceives a door to be pushed but it actually must be pulled, this is a bad design. However, many objects are designed to stray from the perceived affordance to be used in more interesting and different ways, which paves the way for more cultural change, for instance a Tesla car door opening upwards rather than horizontally. Constraints are interesting to think about, since many existing constraints today are defied in fictional works, such as Black Mirror, to indicate future progress. What can’t be done now can be done in these books and movies. So, people following along with these new lifted constraints indicates changes in conventions.