I had a chance to see Jane Fulton Suri speak about a year ago at the Rotman School of Business.  I was really really impressed.  She was speaking about "thoughtless acts", a topic she had explored over some 20 years and published a picture-book on called -- not surprisingly -- thoughtless acts.  You can get on Amazon (at imason, you'll find it on our bookshelf).  There's even a website - www.thoughtlessacts.com. 

I was really inspired after her talk, and the book is really awesome too - it's not what you're thinking.  Suri doesn't catalog the litany of bad things that people do; rather this is an walk through all the millions of things that people do to meet their needs without thinking.  Most of it appears trivial in the extreme - resting a shopping cart against a pole so it doesn't roll away; using a squared railing to rest a coffee cup; using the book you're reading on the beach to shade your eyes from the sun.

What can we learn from this?  Tons!  What I took away from this is the realization that humans are amazingly adaptive and very innovative in their use of the physical world.  If it suits our needs, we'll 'misuse' nearly anything!  There's so much for the Interactive Design people that we have at imason to learn from people like Suri who cut their teeth in the Industrial Design world.

What I'd love to know, and what I'm thinking about is "how do we allow the same 'misuse' in software?"