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.