Functional fixedness is a term thrown around in a lot of psychology circles- it's the concept that a human views a tool as only what it's meant to be, not what it can be. The Hax was designed to challenge functional fixedness. It's a multi-tool with no immediate purpose, but has a number of design affordances that allow a user to adapt it to a multitude of situations. Modern multi-tools are "all in one" tools that are really a dozen or so tools put together. The Hax is different. It's just one tool, just one piece, but it does many things.
The actual design relied heavily on user interaction, so a solid steel functional prototype was made and tested in the wilderness. Users found a number of uses for it that were quite unexpected, but all overwhelmingly positive.
