CS 3205

Professor and lecture:
Professor Panagiotis is just not a very engaging professor. It also doesn’t help that room Rice 130 just swallows up his voice. He is disorganized and often makes mistakes on due dates and due times. There are times when the quizzes are not open when they need to be. He also gets due dates confused, or he will still have due dates from last semester in slides for the current semester. Some assignments don't have "hard" due dates (i.e. the various journal entries) but that wasn't communicated well to us. He is also not very flexible and grades harshly.

Update: He is also a terriable person. My friends and I somehow continue to have terrible experiences interacting with him even after the semester ends. He does not care about students. I do not want to speak more on this here, but he really have no regards about ethnics and being a good person.

Course:
I find the course content quite interesting, particularly because of my pre-existing interest in UX/UI design. I appreciate the opportunity to delve deeper into the UX design cycle. However, despite these positive aspects, I must say that this class has been my least enjoyable experience at UVA.

Almost all assignment deadlines were set at noon rather than midnight. This makes it challenging for students like me with morning classes to make final revisions on the due date. The workload for this class is substantial, consuming well over 12 hours per week on individual assignments, readings, quizzes, and group projects. Unfortunately, my group experience was less than ideal, with only a few members actively contributing, leaving most of the work to me and one other person. We hesitated to address this with the professor, as we doubted any effective intervention. Even if action were taken, we anticipated a generic request for increased contributions from non-participating group members who lack comprehension of the course material. This means that I will need to put in extra effort to either edit or rework what they have "contributed."

Moreover, many assignments are unrelated to the course material, such as the journals that we are required to write and course reflection essays. Reducing these tasks would alleviate the stress associated with the already demanding workload, especially when grouped with uncooperative group members. The TAs lack sufficient knowledge and occasionally provide incorrect information. The professor needs to address his communication issues with the TAs.

Project grading is strict, and there are often undisclosed requirements in project descriptions. For instance, in Phase 3, we discovered a critical requirement about addressing breakpoints only by reading feedback from a previous semester’s graded project.

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If you lack a genuine passion for HCI or UX design, avoid taking this course. The experience is going to be challenging, particularly if you end up in a bad group. If you are determined to enroll, consider not taking another demanding or time-consuming course during the same semester. Be prepared to dedicate extensive hours of work if you are aiming for an A.

#tCFF23

I was worried about this class because of all of these poor reviews, but was convinced to take it as someone who wishes to go into UI/UX. Overall I'd probably say that these reviews are a little harsh, but they aren't unwarranted. Most of UVA's CS department is back-end based, and I think this class surprises these people who are so involved in the code. The class is definitely what you put into it, as it is a lot of work, but you can get good general information about UI/UX and the process. You're able to be more creative with a technology side which is nice. You also get a good project done for the portfolio which is also pretty cool.

That all said, for a design class many people agree with me that this class is poorly designed. Each phase of the project has this long list of requirements and there are things not on the rubric that are still graded and it is overall quite confusing. You're practically forced to go to office hours which are inconvenient for those of us with evening commitments. He also asks you to essentially read the entire textbook which is kind of insane, but the quizzes aren't bad and you don't really need the textbook for the class as his slides are basically all from the textbook itself. There's also always something a little crazy that he does that might make you doubt your choices up to this point. All this is quite disappointing and I do wish UVA had better design course options.

People say a lot of negative things about the professor, and maybe he's changed but he also isn't too bad. It worried me at first when he said in the first class that he is old and from another country and will say things that we disagree with, but nothing too worrisome happened in that regard which could have just been luck. He's generally a friendly guy and tries to get energetic class participation. However, I heard he wasn't the happiest about a student who publicly stated that the class was poorly designed. I digress.

Overall if you are genuinely interested in design, you should probably take this class. It isn't hard to get an A or A-, and you'll get a good project under your belt. You just have to be ready for all the crazy curveballs thrown your way.

TL;DR: Not as bad as everyone says, but not the best. If you want to go into UI/UX this class would benefit you but be prepared.

#tCFF23

Do not take this class. I made the horrible mistake of taking this class my spring semester of my first year at UVA. Let's just say there is a reason this class has a small waitlist. I know computer science majors need electives and registration sucks. However, do not take Panagiotis. The lectures teach you nothing. He claims that "cultural differences" ie. him being Greek is why people do not like him. The truth is that he is just a dick. He will nitpick your submissions, pair you in groups intentionally but not take any responsibility when your group members do not do anything and at the end of the year when you try and discuss group issues, he will gaslight you by saying concerns should have been raised BEFORE the end of the year (I raised concerns like 5 times).

Do not take this class. This professor is a terrible teacher (and a shitty researcher too). How this person ever became a tenured professor will forever be a stain on UVA.

The class is structured around a semester-long group project. The professor uses CATME to form the teams at the beginning of the semester, and it takes into account factors like schedule availability and how much effort and time you want to put toward the coursework. I got a really good team, and it absolutely made the class. Most people had alright teams, but you definitely need to be prepared to put the time into the project. It is a really big undertaking, but you absolutely get out what you put in. If you really try to learn the material and create a meaningful project, then you get a great final product that you can add to your portfolio. I would definitely say that this class was one of the most fulfilling experiences during my entire time at UVA, and I was so glad that I stuck with it. The deadlines are pretty strict, but honestly they work really well because they keep you on track during such a large and long project. I've found that people have a lot of negative things to say about this class, but I honestly think if you go into it with the right mindset (interested in learning and working with HCI, instead of just trying to get easy elective credit), you'll find that this was one of your favorite classes in your college career. There were also weekly quizzes, but they were less really short (< 10 minutes), and were usually word-for-word from the lecture slides or textbook.

The who and why of taking this class:
ONLY, and I really mean ONLY, take this class if you are VERY interested in learning about HCI and UX. Genuinely, stop reading reviews for this class and pick another one if you're not passionate about learning about UX and HCI. Not UI and pretty front end, but fundamental UX principles. UX/HCI in this class is taught in a boring way, through a wordy textbook. This class delves into the nitty gritty of HCI and UX. Think of it more about learning how to do research than learning how to do UI/UX, because honestly, you'll spend over 3/4 of your time outside of class doing research. This makes the class a massive time sink. On the level of the hardest CS classes, if not more. The prof makes this very clear in the first few classes, which is why the drop rate is so high. Listen to his advice and drop the class if you aren't prepared to basically make it your life for the entire semester.

Importance of your group:
Your entire grade is basically dependent on your group. I had a very good group and everyone was willing to meet multiple times a week to work on the project. If nobody in your group is taking initiative and you have even the slightest sense that others won't contribute, drop the class. Seriously, it isn't worth it and I recommend trying next semester for a new group.

Good things about the class:
You learn a lot of UX research skills. UX research is an entire career path, and this class (if you contribute to your group's work) gives you a very solid project for a portfolio if you want to go down that career path. It's a genuinely solid class if you like UX/HCI, and it's the only option at UVA to get your toes wet in the field.

Bad things about the class:
All the other reviews sum up the prof's behavior pretty well. One of my group members went to office hours to discuss a grading issue we had, which was because there was inconsistency between his slides and what he actually said in class, and he wouldn't budge. He gets very annoyed when discussing stuff like that, and he just thinks he's right no matter what. Grading is very harsh.
The class is an absolute truckload of work. Like 4x more than CS 3240 (where you had to develop an entire app!), in this class, you do that amount of work in one phase (there are 4 phases). You have multiple presentations/showcases, extremely lengthy reports, prep for exams, frequent quizzes, mandatory attendance (for quiz passwords), and so much more.
The exams are complete crap and honestly should not be required. They're based on memorizing crap in the textbook and are annoying because even if you know UX and HCI, you won't do well on the exam just because you didn't read a footnote in the textbook.
The prof also just isn't that up to date with UX/UI trends and tech, making the class feel outdated.
I don't really remember how much time this class takes outside of class, but it'll almost certainly be the most out of any class you've taken at UVA by an order of magnitude, especially if you're aiming for an A.

My take as someone knowledgeable about UX and UI:
I wish UVA had more classes that teach front-end dev and design. Good software is only good if it's usable, and it's often overlooked by CS majors. It's a shame this is the only class offered because its poor structure and teaching style makes it one of the least appealing electives in the department. Only take this class if you're willing to put in the work and if you find this stuff really interesting. I found it worth the struggle, but most won't.

This is by far the worst course I have ever taken at UVA. It is very disappointing, as the actual topic is very interesting and should be very useful in real world scenarios.

However, Professor Apostolellis doesn't seem to display any particular level of care for the topic, nor does he seem to care for the students at all. He has a very strict "I am right, you are wrong" policy and is not open to discussion about any topic beyond what you agree with him on. He doesn't even seem to communicate well with the TAs, who frequently supplied information contradictory to what he would later say. His feedback on every assignment is not at all constructive, simply saying "this was wrong" in as many different ways as he could without explaining what specifically is wrong, what the correct answer is, or why the correct answer is correct. His rubrics are always incredibly vague, to the point that I'd say many of them are intentionally misleading. The textbook is also completely useless, which he cites numerous times as having the "correct information" despite often contradicting it in his own lectures. Even if he didn't contradict it, though, it's a very poor educational tool. It amounts to telling you "this is this, because it is." In hindsight, perhaps that's fitting for a textbook assigned by Apostolellis.

The only thing this class is good for is wasting paper. I highly recommend you seek out another elective.

Pretty much all of the reviews I've seen below for Apostolellis still hold true in Spring 2022. He grades incredibly harshly on every assignment, taking off points for requirements that were never given beforehand, and nitpicking every single aspect of a submission. My team spent 10+ hours per week per person on the final project. He tells you he won't grade based on attendance to the "optional" TA office hours but does everything he can to get people to go to them, grading extra harshly for those who don't attend. This class is a three-credit class that he tries to make a four-credit class with two 75 minute lectures and a lab section. The amount of writing and drawing in this class is obscene for a CS class, and in week 10 out of 16, we have yet to write a single line of code. The textbook for this class is mind-numbingly boring and costs $68 through the UVA inclusive access, just to discuss basic UX ideas and processes that most people who've used more than three websites in their life could come up with. Multiple people warned me about this class and they were right. If you enjoy spending obscene amounts of time on busywork for an elective and then still getting points off for bs requirements you had no clue existed, I highly recommend this class. Otherwise, avoid it at all costs.

I was told this was an easy A and even though the reviews on here told me otherwise, I still took it. Do not make this mistake. There is a massive semester long project that took up at least 5 hours a week, plus a reading quiz every week, plus an In Class Assignment every week that always went longer than the class time, plus random other homework assignments. The rubrics are either not shared or very abstract and yet the grading is very hard and based on specific criteria. The material itself is interesting but the work you do will make you resent it. The Professor basically wants you to do a 40 hour workweek as if it is your only job (but he knows you are taking other classes), and it is graded extremely harshly. Even if you have a good group for the project, which I did, the class is still utterly terrible. Do not take this class unless you literally have no other options.

Aside from the anti-Semitic and sexist allegations, take these with a grain of salt. I feel these were over-exaggerated to reason poor performance in the course. The professor is a good guy and means well. The course has lots of busywork that may seem useless, the textbook is really boring, but is core foundation to understanding the field of UX. This is treated more of a process rather than meet these deadlines and do all the work at the last second. If you put forward the effort, you should be fine.

From what I have gathered, the class had a rough first two years, but it has significantly improved. It is a high workload, but manageable if given the due attention. The class did give me a useful insight into HCI and the professor has made a discernable effort to be more understanding and helpful in this class. He was responsive to all of my questions, and the TA's were helpful with any of my confusions. This is a high group work class, and from what I have heard, the only groups that failed were those that didn't communicate/were not able to meet up. My group had a member that contributed nothing whatsoever and we still managed to all get A's as a group. TLDR; this class in very involved, but not hard. It is much better than what the 2018/2019 reviews say.

I took this course during Session 1 Summer Session 2021. To be completely honest, I liked the course. Even though it was a lot of work, I think it was more like a "learning experience" instead of stressing out about assignments. I am highly interested in UI/UX design and I feel that this course exceeded my expectations. Overall, it was a rewarding experience and I am glad that I took it. The professor is SUPER nice and his research experience with UX design is super interesting. This course was a nice balance from all of the coding I had to do last semester and if you are interested in business or marketing, you may enjoy this course. The only thing I did not like is the reading. There were 10 quizzes in total and the readings were over 100 pages.

This review is for summer 2021 (it wasn't an option to input). It was a compressed, 3 week, class.
Okay, I have a fair number of comments.
I loved the material in this class. Honestly, I think that this should be a required class if you want to get a computer science degree. All the other classes I've taken have taught me how to code. That's important. This class taught me how to make products that people will actually use. That is equally if not more important. To use a construction metaphor, all the rest of the classes I've taken have taught me how to use tools (hammers, chop saws, steamrollers). This class taught me how to actually build a house. If you know how to use all the tools to build a house you might think you can build a house. You can't. You need to actually learn how to build a house. This class teaches you how to build a house.
Because I like this class so much there are many things I see in it that need improving. If I cared less about it then I wouldn't be as critical. Here are some of those critiques:
This class was too hard. I took this class in a compressed summer class so that might have contributed to the difficulty. The professor, at one point, said that he had to balance the difficulty of this class with how much we learn. I understand that balance. I have learned so much from this class. But I think the professor's metaphor was that if you increase the difficulty of a class then the students will just learn more. This is not the case. This class was so difficult that it decreased the amount I could learn from it. It decreases the amount I learn if I grind myself into the dirt through studying. This is what happened. So I think decreasing the difficulty would, in fact, increase the amount students learn.
The professor speaks in a very blunt manner. This could make his words feel like a personal attack when I don't think they are. He seems like an actually pretty nice dude.
The collab site layout is fairly unintuitive. It would often be difficult to find the material we were looking for as it could be in places we wouldn't think to look. It is a little bit frustrating that a class on human-computer interfaces would have such a poor interface.
Despite all my problems with this class, as I said, I think it's an amazing class. I believe it is essential for any computer scientist who wants to be more than a code monkey. Um, no disrespect to code monkeys. If you want to keep your head down, just write code, and have no say over what you're writing and why then totally don't take this class. Anyone who has higher aspirations than that, absolutely should. This class teaches you how to build products people will use and will want to use. This is an amazing class.

Worst course ever! DO NOT TAKE. I REPEAT DO NOT TAAAAKKKKEEEE!!!!

It's been a few months since I've been in this class. I'm sitting in my bedroom laughing about how terrible this class was. Like it was so bad. I had a good group which saved a lot of the experience but seriously do not take this class. Take peepee poopoo 1010 instead, seriously you will probably learn more.

Probably the worst class I have ever taken. Apart from the TA's being unclear and not knowing the material themselves, QUIZZES WERE 20% OF THE GRADE

Although Professor Panagiotis is not the BEST professor in the CS department, this class was bearable and actually quite interesting for someone who has only taken CS classes about programming. First off - every other class, the professor will go through a long and boring powerpoint about a topic in HCI - and at the end, you get to take an open-note quiz. First off, these quizzes mostly suck. Sometimes the questions are really tricky, sometimes they're easy. If you pay attention, you'll be mostly fine. But yeah, don't do the readings - they're a waste of time and he goes over the important concepts from the readings in class. The other days of the week, you'll do an interactive activity with either your group members or a partner. These are sometimes completely not worth it (but you do get 3 skips) but some activities are easy and do help you understand the concepts. I have used the in-class activities to help with the actual project work a few times!
The groups. You are put into a group at the beginning of the semester, and you get to request up to 3 people! BUT, you probably won't get them all and you'll definitely end up with some randos in your group. In my case, I ended up with 2 friends and 2 randos and it went mostly okay... at times, it was extremely obvious who didn't care about the project. Some people think that their lives are more important than yours but that leads to the downfall of the project lol. The project is split into 4 phases throughout the semester, and they're all based on different parts of the UX process. At first you will have no idea what you are doing, so ask the TA if you can see his/her old website so you have some kind of an idea of what to do. Even if you bomb one phase, it's still possible to make up for the grade by doing better on the other phases.
Next up, exams. These exams can literally be the worst lol... even though you're given the opportunity to make a cheat sheet, a lot of the questions are extremely random and tricky. I didn't do well at all on the first exam, but I did amazing on the final exam. There is no standard with this class but if you actually try to understand the concepts by going through the powerpoints, you will be okay! I ended the class with an A somehow, despite getting consistent 80-90s on the quizzes and my group getting a C on Phase 1 of the project. My group was able to do well on the last two phases and we also did well on the presentation! The extra credit really gave me a boost (course review, taking videos of my notetaking, doing a small research paper) and I would really recommend doing it all. My tips are to go to office hours and be friendly with the professor - he is smart and has a lot to say, you just have to listen to him. Don't be disrespectful and try to argue for points back, because that will just make him mad. Also, go to the TA office hours and talk to the TAs. They've gone through the course and have the best idea of how to succeed in the class. Usability and UX Design are great fields to explore and I wish UVA offered more classes. Although this one is mediocre, you can still make the most out of it, despite what other reviews say.

Echo all the negative comments on this class. His extra credit policy is super unclear, the class adds no value to your life, and my biggest regret is not dropping the class when I had the chance to.

- Honestly the professor isn't that rude of a guy unless you're a sheltered snowflake lol. He means well, but this class is total horse ****. It is easy (no coding at all), but SUPER tedious.
- You work on a semester long group project, 4 phases: 4 long, tedious, typed reports. Lots of office hours so the TAs know you "tried", weekly quizzes that are basically free points -> makes lecture mandatory or else you miss a quiz grade or in class activity grade
- If you're unlucky like me, you'll be placed into a group with random strangers that are the most braindead, lazy, and apathetic people you will ever have to work with. I highly recommend to drop the course if you don't get a group with someone you know.
- This course did get me a pretty sweet internship in UX, helped me a lot with the interview. People seem to think that this course is "100% useless", but that's mainly because all SWE people take this course for an "easy A"... usability and UX is actually important, and a high paying field, but since no one respects the professor no one really respects the course either. The textbook sucks, but the information is valuable and helpful for job interviews
- SHOULD YOU TAKE THIS? If you're trying to do UX full-time post graduation, then yeah probably. Employers will want to see you took the one HCI class offered at this damn school. If you just want an "easy A", please drop and don't make your teammates suffer since you won't be putting 100% of your effort into the course. Go take databases or something lol. This class would've been so much more enjoyable if I just had a better group.

This course could have been fun, but instead was extremely tedious and not enjoyable. It's not that difficult of a class, but it just has a lot of work. Prepare to make endless sketches day in and day out.

This was probably the worst Computer Science class i took at UVA. Highly recommend you find another elective.

This course was unfun and tedious, do not recommend

If you're really passionate about drawing, wasting paper, unclear instructions, and spending a couple of hours writing nonsense paragraphs, this class is for you. This class was seriously useless and a waste of time. I'm the type of person who usually doesn't mind doing busywork however this whole entire class was basically just busywork. Additionally, the professor graded quite harshly. All the project guidelines had 2 different set of instructions that each said different things which made things extremely difficult to determine what you had to do. Furthermore, the TA's and professor would take points off for things they never mentioned in the rubric/in class and for other arbitrary reasons. For example, during our final presentation the professor took off a decent amount of points for making eye contact with him. For the actual projects itself, I have never done so much drawing and writing for one class. You literally have to write paragraphs on paragraphs and draw everything out to get a decent grade, which is still difficult as it is unclear what exactly they're looking for to grade. All in all, this class requires some serious bullshitting.

This class was the woat!! I literally cannot believe I wasted an entire semester on learning nonsense.. the textbook was essentially useless, lectures just repeated everything in the textbook or defined random UI buzzwords, and concepts were never really explained.. I literally feel like I walked out learning less than I did before lol. The worst part of this course was the professor himself. Not to be mean but he was pretty unreceptive to class feedback despite asking for it several times and would always ignore questions and would literally come for students' necks over everything. Honestly the sexist remarks he made at the start of the semester should have been an indication of how the class was gonna go. Anyways, onto grading. We were literally never told what the grading guidelines were and what the graders were looking for. Anytime we got our grade back, my group always lost points on arbitrary things or things we were never told we had to include. It would've been helpful to see the rubric used for grading before hand so we could make sure we knew what we were doing. In terms of final grade, he added a 7% bonus if you completed course evals and one other extra credit assignment so that was the only positive and the only reason I got an A in this waste of time of a class. The structure of this course needs a ton of work (honestly just bring back floryan). There's a lot more I could say but I'm gonna stop here as the other reviews mostly cover it.

Apostolellis was one of the worst CS professors I have ever had, and I am a 4th year in my last semester of college. He puts on a facade of being self-reflective and accepting of feedback (asks for it constantly), but is rude and defensive when you suggest anything. Students pointed out sexist remarks he made during lecture on Piazza, and he denied them and spent the next 20 minutes of the next lecture defending himself, spouting reasons why he thought the remarks were not sexist. He also made a Holocaust joke once (I think he called the things they did to Jews "beautiful experiments"). Ironic because HCI is supposed to be an empathic process, too bad it's taught by a professor who makes sexist remarks and horrific comments about the Holocaust and thinks it's okay. His assignments are full of busy work and have really harsh grading and are full of unclear expectations. Our group consistently got Cs, despite going to office hours for almost every assignment and having the TAs tell us they were okay. His book is full of HCI terms that all sound exactly the same, even though they are supposed to describe different things. Not an easy A class at all, please bring Floryan back to teach it!!!

Stay as far away from this class as you possibly can. Professor Apostollellis is highly condescending, rude and presumptuous. His teaching style (which he loves to brag about) consists of doing useless busy work littered with buzz words about UX/UI while also teaching absolutely nothing. He and the TAs make this class so much harder and more complicated than it needs to be while failing to make grading guidelines clear. You won't learn anything from this class so don't waste your time. Simultaneously the worst and most boring class I've taken at UVa. Choose a different elective.

Started off easy, but he changed the policies and grading midway through the semester. Content isn't difficult whatsoever, but grading guidelines were super unclear and unfair. Lectures were painfully boring and I learned absolutely nothing of use, and attendance is required. Don't take this class, as long as Apostolellis is teaching this

He is condescending, rude, and mean. Completely disorganized and not an effective lecturer in the least. I can honestly say I've learned nothing from this class. Stay away.

Rubrics are incredibly vague and does not give out the final rubric for any parts of our project until he released the grades for it. Lost points for things he did not tell us he wanted. Not willing to give back points. Project and In-class activities are useless. Did not learn anything from this class. Absolutely no coding, so I can't really talk about this project done in interviews.

I initially wrote a really nice review for this class because my group was doing fairly well by doing little to no work, but that caught up to us quickly and now I despise this class. It's boring, it's confusing, and overall completely useless in the large scheme of computer science. This class sucks, the professor sucks, the TAs suck, everything sucks.

worst class ever. do not take. you do not learn anything. The projects are just hours of busy work, yet somehow apostolellis finds a way to give you a terrible grade. Take literally any other elective!

....it was interesting -ish

There's a lot of negative feedback in the comment section, but my personal view is more moderate to positive about him and the class. He's transparent and open to feedback. He holds public discussions about improving the class during lecture, through Piazza, during his OH, and with a private survey. He even hosted a brunch at his house. He intends well, and I respect the dude for letting us speak up. He has really great use of interactive technology. Instead of pure lectures, we get to express ourselves with his mentimeter polls and see everyone else's ideas on a big screen. He also likes to incorporate fun facts about animals and occasionally toss out granola bars. What's not so fun though was the initial lack of clear guidelines and expectations for projects. For this semester, in particular, he tried out a lot of different things, but uncertainty and inconsistency subtracted some of the fun for me. Granted, he's a new professor. In terms of workload, it's harder than it has been historically, but it's hard. It was just hard to navigate this semester with changing guidelines and structure of classes. The breakdown of how much time I spent was: 30min-1hr of skimming the chapters, 3hrs with 2 group meetings per week, and 1 hr spilled over if I couldn't finish what was needed during group work. There are also 8-10 question quizzes on readings/lectures on Tuesdays and in-class activities on Thursdays. I would recommend the class if you're interested in UX/UI because the professor not only specializes in this area but is also really passionate about the subject. Overall, it's a really interactive class with a lot of collaboration. It might take some time to get used to abstract and vague concepts than what you're used to though. If you like working in groups, reading for classes, and going to lectures, I think you'll enjoy the class. Give this course a try, it's not that bad.

I took this class on the recommendation of many of my peers. Whatever the course once was it has seriously deteriorated under Professor Apostolellis. He pretends he wants feedback but is insulting and aggressive when given negative feedback. His expectations are entirely unclear and when asked to clarify he will give different responses at different times. He provides a list of deliverables for the projects but they do not even remotely encapsulate the amount of work he expects. You are intended to track and record every second you spend on your project and provide him with all of that information as well as the actual deliverables. He sends out subsequent emails after posting assignments that just add more things that he expects to be turned in. He has been called out multiple times for making inappropriate and uncomfortable sexist remarks. I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere but when learning about the ethics of human research (at least that's what I think we were talking about) he made a reference to "the beautiful experiments the German's performed on the Jews." I would assume it was just an awful joke but it was entirely inappropriate. It was quiet but my group partners and I heard it and considered doing something about it but his response to criticism is harsh and we were worried about our grades. On top of Apostolellis being an awful professor, the book is beyond boring and uninformative. If you want to lose some IQ points, give it a look and read the step by step description of a man buying a ticket from a ticket vendor that appears multiple times throughout the book. DO NOT TAKE THIS COURSE. DO NOT TAKE ANY COURSE WITH PROFESSOR APOSTOLELLIS.

Honestly the class is fine, somewhat interesting but I think a lot of the hate is unfair. I think people are mad because this was known as an easy elective, which is why I took it, but this new professor obviously came in with his own curriculum which nobody expected. Class isn't great but it's nowhere near as bad as these comments make it out to be. Overall Panagiotis is a cool guy in my opinion but at times unclear and confusing

if I can give this class a negative ZERO i would!

Honestly probably the worst professor I've had at UVA. I originally was excited to take this class as I was going to take it the previous semester with Floryan but dropped to take another class. Apostolellis has no idea what he is doing in this class and it is completely different from previous semesters. The whole class is a semester long project based on a topic that is selected with your group the second week of class. There were a limited amount of topics which were first come first serve which causes a lot of groups to have to select topics they are not interested in and unable to change.

The focus on this class isn't even about Human Computer Interaction but is only on User Experience. The book for the class is terrible, it is the most boring book I have ever read and extremely hard to read. Every vocab term is defined in a light blue background with white text which is extremely hard to read, you would expect better for a class about User Experience and design. Every vocab term is also extremely similar to five other vocab terms which have almost indistinguishable definitions.

Apostolellis is not receptive to feedback and seems like he thinks he can't be in the wrong. He refused to add an anonymous feedback section to collab after students suggested it. Around halfway through the semester he gave us an "anonymous" feedback survey. When completing this survey we had to supply a username that was associated with our survey answer and we had to submit a screenshot of the survey on collab for extra credit with the username. He was almost completely unresponsive to the feedback, saying that a lot of students were being disrespectful to him when there was definitely some good feedback he received.

He has also said sexist things that were not acceptable. I would NOT recommend taking this class with Apostolellis unless he basically changes the whole way he teaches or how the class is structured.

The teacher for this class was rude and honestly kind of a jerk. You don't actually code anything and spend the entire semester doing annoying busy-work for a project you don't actually see to completion. I couldn't tell you a single thing I have learned in this class, besides how to control-F a textbook more efficiently for the tedious 10 minute weekly quizzes. Would not recommend this class to anyone.

This is easily the lousiest professor I've had the displeasure of meeting. He has no idea what he's doing, yet takes himself far too seriously. His lectures are rushed and difficult to follow, and he never stops to ensure the class knows what he means. The constantly-assigned readings are overloaded with unnecessary, dull fluff. The entire course content is not what I'd hoped; instead of a class about designing technological interfaces with human intuition in mind, it's an absurdly detailed description of ONE particular process of user experience design, which I'm certain I will never use in my life. The bulk of the work consists of one semester-long project with several deliverables, but Apostolellis is mind-blowingly unclear about what he wants at every step of the way - his rubrics and assignment summaries are wildly vague, yet he's incredibly picky about things he never mentioned when it comes time to grade. I could go on and on, but just save yourself the trouble and never take a class with this man until he learns how to teach.

I took this course in the hopes that I would get to do a big coding project that I could talk about in interviews. Unfortunately, this is not the case. This course focuses on UX design, which does NOT include implementation. We draw a lot of pictures by hand every class. We don't learn any new technology. I personally wish I took another class. I feel that the material isn't particularly relevant to students who want to work on more hands on coding projects. The professor himself is really rude. He encourages students to ask questions but when they do, he accuses them of not paying attention or will yell at them for starting a project later than he thinks you should have. The material itself isn't difficult, but it's very tedious. The readings can be over 100 pages for a week and you are quizzed on the readings every week. The readings are overly detailed. For example, one chapter had a long section on color coding sticky notes. This class would be okay if it was at least an easy A, but the graders are harsh and the instructions are very unclear. The professor isn't understanding and is reluctant to admit that his instructions are unclear. The professor also tries to make everyone go to TA office hours at like 8 PM on weekdays to work on their projects. The in class activities themselves are disorganized and required. So if you plan to take this course (which I do NOT recommend), be prepared to draw a lot and make diagrams with sticky notes because you aren't going to learn any new technology. He only gives you 10 minutes to take in class quizzes when there are 8 questions, and the quizzes are worth 20% of your grade. He takes some feedback into consideration, but for the most part, I feel like he's mad when someone gives feedback even though that's what he asked for. I've only had uncomfortable interactions with him. I'll ask a question that he doesn't answer and basically just rebuffs me.