SYS 3023

For a class claiming to be about usability and ergonomics, 3023 was, ironically, the least user-friendly class I've taken. Huge group project dominates the class, and can be an overwhelming task if you don't get a cooperative group. Lectures are crushingly boring, especially when Donahue is up there. Nevertheless, the subject is interesting and fresh, and I learned a new coding language in the process, so not a total loss.

A necessary class for Systems majors. A fairly difficult course but a course that you get a lot out of.

What a waste of a required class for Systems majors. The material in this class was disorganized, difficult to follow, and even more difficult to apply. I expected to learn principles of good design and to have a chance to generate innovative ideas, but instead was forced to memorize psychological principles with very limited scope and do an unsatisfying group project with an absurd amount of documentation. This class was nothing like I expected, and I was sorely disappointed.

This class has been changed (as of fall 2014), and based off of past reviews probably for the better. Instead of having one large project over the course of the semester, there were 6 individual assignments and 4 group assignments. The material is interesting and not particularly challenging (very little math compared with most engineering courses). That said, a lot of work is required, and Professor Gerling has fairly high standards for the quality of the work. For Systems Engineers, this should be an improvement. Not sure if I'd recommend it to anyone else considering the time required to do well.

Human factors is a very interesting topic but this class is super boring. You can bring in a cheat sheet to the midterms and finals. Hint: the test material is all from the powerpoints, dont bother combing through the textbook. The grading can seem very arbitrary, especially for group assignments.

For a class focused on the importance of clearly conveying information, this was a pretty unnecessarily confusing class. Contradictory information in some of the messiest lecture slides I've ever seen combined with arbitrarily/inconsistently graded projects and exams leads to a pretty sad class experience. Disappointing, as most systems majors are at least somewhat interested in this field and there are some promising moments and assignments. Know the definitions that the professor(s) want you to know, but might not say in lecture, and especially not the ones you might find online after you turn there upon encountering a term mentioned just once in a set of slides that aren't ever presented in class. Get started early on group assignments.

This class finds the rare balance between being interesting and so trivial that it is relentlessly pointless. The class is co run by two professors. Naturally only one of them has any real say in how the course is constructed. It is basically impossible to ensure that you get good grades on the group assignments (basically everyone is clustered at the same place because every design has tradeoffs [no shit], therefore can't be perfect). Basically what this means is that you need to do well on the tests. The tests are easy but you should actually prepare well for them because 1) random info the professor only mentions once could be on it and 2) they have the only controllable impact on your grade.

This class is literally common knowledge, but the professors make it incredibly difficult so that they can keep their job and create a grade distribution. DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS IF YOU ARE NOT A SYSTEMS MAJOR BECAUSE YOU COULD LEARN IT ONLINE IN 5 minutes. Group projects are graded randomly and it is hard to succeed.

This class seems exciting because you get to apply the content and actually make designs, but Professors Gerling and Kim did not execute very well. First, I found it hard to pay attention in lecture because so much of the material seems intuitive. The individual assignments were easy points but very ineffective to get you to learn the material. The 3 group assignments conversely demanded about 15-20 hours of work and were graded questionably. For one of these projects (which are 10% of your final grade each) he gave out scores as low as 4/10 when 7/10 is clearly defined in the syllabus as: "clear signs of lack of effort and understanding." Tests are typically about what you would expect but they knit pick when grading to get some variation in scores.

For a class that appeared very promising, it managed to be quite confusing and poorly led. The information was not presented in any sort of intuitive manner and there were some topics they covered over and over and over and it was still confusing. 4 minutes of googling and it was like "Oh.. That's it? That's all they needed to say?"
The project could have been so much more interesting if they had given a little more insight into what was actually expected. Projects were graded extremely harshly for how open ended they were. Same with the exams. Questions would be phrased in a very vague, open-ended manner, but then you'd lose all the points because you didn't mention 1 very specific design element.