You will likely design something adjacent to these products this semester. Before you can question their assumptions or imagine territories beyond them, you need real time inside them. Not five minutes of clicking around.

The goal is not to find what’s broken. Notice what’s there, what’s assumed, what’s missing compared to your defaults, what it feels like inside this product world.

Pick one product. Mediathek or SOUNDS, whichever pulls you more, or whichever you know less well. We’ll compare across the group next session.

Two devices, minimum. Pick from:

• Phone (app)
• Desktop / laptop (web)
• Tablet (app or web)
• Smart TV / set-top box, if you have access
• Smart speaker, car, anything else where these products live

At least one mobile. The second meaningfully different in posture, screen size, or context.

45–60 minutes of real use per device. Not auditing. Actually try to find something to watch or listen to, then watch or listen to it. Let yourself get lost.

Use it like a real product, not a test subject. Find something. Watch or listen. Abandon it. Come back. Search for something specific. Browse without a goal. Create an account and log in for the full experience. Share something. Switch devices mid-content. Try whatever else the product offers (downloads, favourites, notifications) and notice what it doesn’t.

Take pictures. A lot. Screenshots, but also photos of the device in context: phone on the tram, laptop at 11pm, TV across the room. The device-in-situation matters as much as the screen.

Keep a running field note. Not a form. A stream of observations, frustrations, surprises, comparisons. Voice memos work. Timestamps help.

A loose lens, not a checklist. Skip what doesn’t apply. Add your own.

First contact

• First 60 seconds: what does the product assume you already know?
• What’s on the home screen, and what is it trying to make you do?
• What’s the first piece of content shown? Who does the product seem to be talking to?

Finding something

• Try to find something without knowing what you want. Where does it lead you?
• Try to find something specific. How does that feel?
• How does browsing here differ from Netflix, Spotify, YouTube, TikTok?
• What organising principle structures the content? Time, Sender, genre, mood, popularity? What’s privileged, what’s hidden?

Identity, personalisation, memory

• Does it know you? Does it want to? What does it remember, what does it forget?
• Compare logged-in vs. logged-out. What changes?
• Does it feel like your product, or a shared public one? Where does that feeling come from?

Cross-device

• Switch devices mid-content or mid-session. Does it follow you? Should it?
• How does the same product feel in two postures: lean-in vs. lean-back, public vs. private, alone vs. with others?

What’s missing, what’s surprising

• What do you expect from your default platforms that isn’t here? Is its absence a loss or a relief?
• What’s here that you’ve never seen on YouTube, TikTok, Spotify, Netflix, Twitch, Reels?
• One moment of friction. One of surprise. One where you actually wanted to keep going.

Context and constellation

• Where did you use it? Who else was around? Did the product fit the moment, or fight it?
• Could you imagine using this with someone, or only alone?
• Where does this belong in your day, if anywhere? When would you reach for it instead of your defaults?

Reference grid

• What does this product remind you of, and what does it definitely not remind you of?
• Compare across Netflix, Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram Reels, Twitch, podcasts, linear TV, radio, group chats where people share clips.
• Where does ARD’s product want to sit in this landscape? Where does it actually sit, for you?

Optional theme lens (at the end only)

After real time inside the product, look at the five project themes once. Does anything you observed connect to one as a tension, an absence, an opening? Don’t force it. If nothing connects, that itself is data.

Put your work on the FigJam board, with your name on it. Structure suggestion, adapt freely:

• Cover: product, devices, time spent, where and when you used it
• Image wall: your best photos and screenshots, each captioned with one line. Not what it shows, but what struck you about it.
• Three observations that surprised you, with evidence (image plus 2–3 sentences)
• Three absences: things you expected and didn’t find, with reference to what platform set that expectation
• One feeling: in 2–3 sentences, what does it feel like to spend time inside this product? Tone, mood, social register, sense of who it’s for and whether that includes you.
• One open question the time leaves you with. About the product, about public-service media, about your own habits, about a theme.

• Don’t critique the interface. Surface the assumptions the product makes about its viewer: what it expects you to know, to care about, to already be doing. Name the assumption, show the evidence.
• Notice your own reactions. When something pulls you in, write down why. When something pushes you away, write down why.
• More pictures than you think you need.

• Solo, one product, two devices, 45–60 min real use per device
• Plenty of images, captioned
• Field notes (any form)
• Work on the FigJam board, with your name, ready for next session