The idea behind my box is pretty straight-forward: I wanted to create something to frustrate people. It works by drawing in victims with the promise of green tea KIT KATs in some sort of a puzzle box, but never actually delivering on the promise.
The full experience involves finding the locked box with KIT KATs inside, noticing that the lock has a note on its backside stating that the combination is inside the box, then extracting the paper clips from inside the box (intentionally or accidentally) and using them to try to unfold the sheet of paper within that presumably contains the combination. The final step is either giving up on the paper or successfully opening it, only to realize that the combination isn't there.
I got a mesh box to let people see and interact with its contents without actually being able to pull them out of the locked box. I would've liked to have a sturdier box (you can see it's already a bit bent in the picture) that I could lock directly without needing to use chains, but this was the best thing I could find on the internet. It's actually meant to be a pencil box, which is why I decided to put the pen inside. (The pen serves no other purpose except to distract people, a purpose that it served pretty well for a short while.)
The chains were necessary to lock the box. It was actually really really hard to figure out how to keep the chains from sliding off the box easily, and even with all the time I spent struggling to keep it locked, the chain could still be pulled off.
I initially wanted to use a lighter chain because I felt that wrapping something so heavy around such a light box would feel weird, but my lighter chain was half a foot too short for the box so I ended up buying this one instead.
In the end, I actually feel that this chain adds a weight to the box that makes it feel more substantial, and in a way more satisfying to hold and shake (like the difference between a real coin and a plastic one). It's also doesn't feel quite as weird as I thought it would because the weight is distributed evenly around the box; it's hard to tell that the weight comes from the chain and and not the box. Unlocking the box and taking off the chain still feels really weird, but it's fine because the box isn't supposed to be openable. :P
I put the paper clips in the box to give people a way to interact with the sheet of paper. I was originally going to put paper clips off to the side, outside of the box, but then I thought that it might be flavorful to put some inside the box as another red herring, like the pen. (It didn't occur to me that people would try to count the number of paper clips and KIT KATs in the box in hopes of figuring out some code, though.)
However, when I was trying to lock the box, I realized that the paper clips could fall out of the box while it was closed. It occurred to me that this would be an interesting mechanic that would add another level of complexity to the box. I also realized that a little bit of complexity is actually good for a frustrating experience--the tangible progression makes people feel that they are actually moving towards a realistic goal and keeps them trying to open the box without getting bored--so I decided to just put all the paper clips inside the box.
I included both regular and jumbo-sized paper clips in the box; the regular ones fall out more easily when people turn the box upside down or shake it and could be used to pull out the jumbo ones, which are longer and easier to use to unfold the paper.
The lock was just a regular Master lock. I opted for a combination lock because I needed a way for people to be able to unlock the box using its contents. (If I locked a key inside the box, it would be impossible to unlock it, whereas a combination can be locked in the box but still be used to unlock it.) Also, locks with dials are nice because they're hard to brute force by trying every possible combination.
I put a sticky note on the back of the lock that indicated that the combination was somewhere inside the box; otherwise, people would have no reason to interact with the box. I made sure it stuck out just a little bit so that it was conspicuous without being too obvious in order to add another, lesser layer of complexity, giving people the feeling that it's a puzzle box that they should examine closely, but without risking people missing the note entirely.
It also served the double purpose of encouraging people to turn the box upside down (the lock is held in place tightly by the chains, to the point that it's hard to get a good look at the note without rotating the box a bit) to get paper clips to fall out in case people missed them in the box, as Jane did; they're the same color and blend in really well.
The paper was a standard sheet of 8.5 × 11 inch, college-ruled paper that I wrote the combination on, then erased to leave only a light impression. I wrote "JK" over the numbers to distract people from looking more closely, hopefully making them feel very frustrated from being lied to and having wasted a bunch of time and effort. Even on the off chance that someone decided to look very closely at the paper, I figured it would be difficult enough to read through the mesh box to generate a good amount of frustration.
I also made sure to fold it so that it wasn't too easy to open with the paper clips and so that the text inside wouldn't be visible through the paper.
The KIT KATs were just candy I happened to have that I figured people might like (and that may have melted a bit in my room before I got to present... I probably would've checked more closely if the box was meant to be opened). I had a bit of trouble thinking of ways to get people to initially want to open the box, and I certainly never expected the KIT KATs to be such an effective motivator, but I'm glad it worked out.
In the end, I my box was more successful than I imagined it could ever be; basically everything went according to plan, from Jane immediately wanting the candy to the paper clips falling out randomly. I suppose that with a goal as easy to accidentally achieve as frustration, even a slight oversight such as not realizing that people would try to count the box's contents or would suggest that the combination was hidden in the pen would work almost as well as the original plan. However, I feel that the addition of the paper clips that fall out of the box and the subsequent sense of progress gave people a reason not to give up on the box after their frustration began to eclipse their initial desire for candy, allowing me to leave people with more frustration after taking away the hope of retrieving the candy from the box. I suddenly feel the need to graph this. Enjoy this graph I threw together in five minutes in paint.net.
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