Ways to think about boxes as materials and metaphors:
- "Black," "closed," or "opaque" box: the processes hidden or concealed by tested technologies (see Science and Technology Studies for related theories)
- The phrase, "Think outside the box" (or why think inside it?)
- Containers, or practical objects for keeping or housing materials
- Conceptual frameworks, or boxes as ways of organizing ideas and creating taxonomies
- Hiding materials, or presenting projects as clean, neat, and polished
- The "unboxing" phenomenon, or the role boxes play in packaging and distributing commodities, gifts, gadgets, and the like
- Building blocks, or boxes as structural components of a project
- Rules, or boxes as constraints
- Design, or boxes as ways of presenting projects
- Form, or boxes as ways of expressing simplicity
- Installation, or boxes as key materials for exhibiting physical computing and fabrication work