Assignment 1

Isolate one binge-watching mechanism from weeks 2 to 6 of the course and show, in a design of your own, exactly where it operates in a real streaming interface.

Due: 29 March 2027 · Weight: 33%

The brief#

Pick one mechanism this course has named in weeks 2 to 6 — the thing that gets a show picked in the first place, or the thing that keeps a habit going once it has started — and show exactly where it lives in a real streaming interface.

This assignment is released in Week 4 and due in Week 6 — but the material it draws on runs from Week 2 onward. It opens partway through its own content window on purpose: by Week 4 (Autoplay) you have already seen enough of the pattern (starting cues, cliffhangers) to recognise it, and Week 5 (Rewards & Reinforcement) and Week 6 (Time Perception) still land before the deadline, so all five weeks are fair game by the time you submit, not just the ones taught before release.

Weeks 2 to 6 each isolated a single mechanism: the cue that gets a show picked in the first place, the open question a cliffhanger leaves hanging, the default that removes the decision to continue, the unpredictable payoff that keeps a habit going, and the gap between elapsed time and time as it’s felt. Pick exactly one of these. Then find, or build, a small, concrete example of it: a screenshot or short written description of where a real streaming service already uses it, or a mockup, storyboard, or working prototype of your own that demonstrates it. Write a short analysis connecting what you’ve shown back to that week’s lecture.

A strong response does what this site’s own weekly experiments try to do: it isolates one mechanism cleanly rather than gesturing at several at once, and it takes seriously what a single example can and can’t prove. The judgement being tested isn’t whether you can name a mechanism in the abstract — it’s whether you can point to a specific, working instance of it and explain precisely what makes that instance an example of that mechanism, and not just “binge-watching in general.”

Weeks covered#

Assignment 1’s assessed content is Weeks 2 through 6 — not the whole first half of the course, and not just the week it’s released in:

1. Week 2 — Why We Start Watching
2. Week 3 — Cliffhangers
3. Week 4 — Autoplay
4. Week 5 — Rewards & Reinforcement
5. Week 6 — Time Perception

Week 1’s own mechanism — the friction that makes stopping feel like work — isn’t part of this assignment’s assessed window; it’s picked up again, alongside everything else, by the final project. Weeks 2 through 6 are what’s in scope here.

What you submit#

• The artefact — whatever shows the mechanism at work: an annotated screenshot of a real streaming interface, a mockup or storyboard of your own, or a small working prototype if you have the skills to build one. Whichever form it takes, it should isolate the one mechanism you chose rather than trying to cover several.
• A short written analysis — naming the mechanism, the week it comes from, and connecting your artefact back to the specific language that week’s lecture used for it.
• A short reflection — what your one artefact does and doesn’t show, the way every “What this demonstration can’t tell you” note on this site does for its own experiment. One example isn’t evidence about viewers in general, and the analysis should say so rather than overclaim.