How do you get people’s attention?

What catches people’s attention? Out of all the things that we are exposed to everyday, how do you design ways to stop and make people interested?

We installed these boxes around campus in groups and quietly watched (and recorded) people’s reaction to them. The openings are installed aiming upwards so that makes it difficult for people to see what’s in them. We put candy and mirrors. An ipad displaying a video live stream of the position of the ipad. (so you are looking at your back in real time) And a tail sticking out of the bottom of the box and the entire box shakes when you pull the tail. We also put up an empty box and left and blank sheet of paper asking people to write down what they wish to see in the box.