CS 4501

I actually quite liked this class. The beginning was very frustrating, as the blogs took me 5-10 hours to do per week, and I wasn't even sure if they were acceptable examples by his standard. He was very knit-picky about them and just uptight in general. He's very resistant to feedback and almost takes offense to it. On top of that, the quizzes were very subjective and I had trouble with them. Beware, this class might take you waaay more than 10 hours a week, and he. doesn't. care. He even said so in an email: "My job is not to make your lives easy. My job is to help you learn. And learning takes time and effort. ... I fully understand the discomfort of working for 10 hrs and still not coming up with a satisfactory set of examples. This is intentional ... there's no other way around it."

After the first few weeks though, he loosened up a bit and the class was more enjoyable. The homeworks and assignments were so much fun! He's a really nice professor if you get to know him. You learn really useful things, like usability guidelines, how to conduct user tests without bias, how to make design tradeoffs and consider context, how to ideate and make design artifacts, and the like. Lectures are fascinating, especially the first half when he goes over the cognitive and psychological stuff. If you're into design, this class is one of the only ones that you'll get the opportunity at UVA to learn about it and practice it, so if this is what you're interested in, definitely take the class! The knowledge I gained was worth it, but just beware that it may take a lot more time out of your week than a 3 credit class.

I took Usability Engineering with Prof. Apostolellis for its first time being offered. The course is great and exposes you to the concepts of UI/UX, testing, and more. You have weekly blog posts due, which take a bit of time, but once you get into the routine of things, it's manageable. The homework assignments are pretty easy as well. There's a semester-long project you work on which helps you apply the concepts you learned to real-world applications. Prof. Apostolellis knows a lot about the industry and is truly a great professor. He responded well to our suggestions on improving the class. This was honestly one of my favorite classes I've taken at UVA so far. #tCF2020