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CS 3205 HCI in Software Development
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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

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Fall 2018
1.7
Average

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.

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

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.

Instructor 1.0
Enjoyability 1.0
Recommend 1.0
Difficulty 3.0
Hours/Week 7.0
Fall 2018
1.3
Average

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.

Instructor 1.0
Enjoyability 2.0
Recommend 1.0
Difficulty 4.0
Hours/Week 10.0
Fall 2018
1.0
Average

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!

Instructor 1.0
Enjoyability 1.0
Recommend 1.0
Difficulty 4.0
Hours/Week 4.0
Fall 2018
2.3
Average

....it was interesting -ish

Instructor 3.0
Enjoyability 1.0
Recommend 3.0
Difficulty 4.0
Hours/Week 0.0
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Fall 2018
3.7
Average

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.

Instructor 4.0
Enjoyability 4.0
Recommend 3.0
Difficulty 3.0
Hours/Week 5.0
Fall 2018
1.0
Average

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.

Instructor 1.0
Enjoyability 1.0
Recommend 1.0
Difficulty 4.0
Hours/Week 7.0
Fall 2018
3.3
Average

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

Instructor 3.0
Enjoyability 4.0
Recommend 3.0
Difficulty 3.0
Hours/Week 11.0
Fall 2018
1.0
Average

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

Instructor 1.0
Enjoyability 1.0
Recommend 1.0
Difficulty 3.0
Hours/Week 9.0
Fall 2018
1.0
Average

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.

Instructor 1.0
Enjoyability 1.0
Recommend 1.0
Difficulty 4.0
Hours/Week 15.0
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