Monday, July 20, 2015

Mind Mapping - Brian

My first idea is an unsolvable puzzle to evoke frustration. The idea is pretty simple--to make someone really frustrated because they simply cannot solve a puzzle. The best way to achieve this, of course, is to get someone invested in the puzzle in terms of interest (make it interesting) and time (make people spend some time on the puzzle) before they realize that there's some piece of missing information or contradiction that means they cannot find a solution. This is basically my worst nightmare as someone who likes problem solving; the only thing possibly worse than giving up after a while on a difficult problem without finding an answer is knowing that you've wasted time on a problem that has no answer.

Another idea I had to create frustration was a locked transparent box with the key to the lock inside. The initial idea came from the frustration of locking yourself out of somewhere. The feeling could also be emulated using a combination lock and a folded sheet of paper with the combination inside, which might give people false hope of reading the combination without unlocking the box (by holding it up to light or shaking it) and end up being more frustrating. I'd probably also need to put something else in the box to give people incentive to open it.

My final idea creates a completely different reaction: minor awe or amazement. It's a bit specific because I thought of the object before the experience itself; I like to balance random things on top of each other, and often do so with my friends and roommates, and it's always fun to see people's reactions when they notice the tower of pens and erasers or bottles and cans on the table. It's not quite a mind blowing experience, just a moderate amount of awe, but it's usually enough to get an audible "whoa" or "what."

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