CS 3205

....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.