Skip to main content
Sponsored
CS 3205 HCI in Software Development
☆ Rating
Difficulty
GPA
Instructor
Enjoyability
Difficulty
Recommend
Reading
Writing
Groupwork
Other
Total Hours

Grade Distribution

No grade data available

Average GPA
Students Measured
Review Summary Updated April 07, 2026

This class is a heavy time commitment centered around a semester-long group project that prioritizes UX research, documentation, and design over actual coding, so nail down your team dynamics early. You will only get real value out of it if you are genuinely interested in human-centered product thinking and willing to treat the coursework like a startup build rather than another technical elective. Past semesters drew harsh, often justified criticism for disorganization, vague rubrics, and unnecessarily harsh grading, but recent iterations have significantly improved the structure and now deliver much clearer, more practical feedback. Treat it as strictly what you put into it: pick a project topic you actually care about, communicate consistently, and lean into the research process, or else the dense readings and relentless deliverables will quickly burn you out.

43 Reviews

Add Review
Spring 2019
1.0
Average

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.

Instructor 1.0
Enjoyability 1.0
Recommend 1.0
Difficulty 3.0
Hours/Week 10.0
Spring 2019
2.0
Average

- 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.

Instructor 3.0
Enjoyability 1.0
Recommend 2.0
Difficulty 2.0
Hours/Week 11.0
Spring 2019
1.3
Average

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.

Instructor 1.0
Enjoyability 1.0
Recommend 2.0
Difficulty 4.0
Hours/Week 15.0
Spring 2019
1.0
Average

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

Instructor 1.0
Enjoyability 1.0
Recommend 1.0
Difficulty 3.0
Hours/Week 10.0
Spring 2019
1.3
Average

This course was unfun and tedious, do not recommend

Instructor 2.0
Enjoyability 1.0
Recommend 1.0
Difficulty 3.0
Hours/Week 10.0
Sponsored
Fall 2018
1.3
Average

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.

Instructor 2.0
Enjoyability 1.0
Recommend 1.0
Difficulty 4.0
Hours/Week 5.0
Fall 2018
1.7
Average

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.

Instructor 1.0
Enjoyability 2.0
Recommend 2.0
Difficulty 3.0
Hours/Week 8.0
Fall 2018
1.0
Average

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!!!

Instructor 1.0
Enjoyability 1.0
Recommend 1.0
Difficulty 3.0
Hours/Week 15.0
Fall 2018
1.0
Average

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.

Instructor 1.0
Enjoyability 1.0
Recommend 1.0
Difficulty 2.0
Hours/Week 6.0
Fall 2018
1.0
Average

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

Instructor 1.0
Enjoyability 1.0
Recommend 1.0
Difficulty 4.0
Hours/Week 8.0
Sponsored