Taken semester 1 2020 (wouldn't let me select that in the Semester taken category)
This course covers a lot of content but only at a very surface level. You might learn a little bit about user experience but not from the lectures or tutorials - from Wikipedia instead, as you'll struggle to understand them on any useful level from the contact time alone.
The semester I took the class in was unexpectedly interrupted by covid, and the course's transition to online learning was executed very poorly. A 45% assignment that was meant to be assigned to groups of 4-5 was made an individual assignment, and majority of these assignments were still over 50 pages long, not including references and appendix (which were often 20+ pages on their own). The content of this assignment isn't hard - I got a distinction (6) and felt like I was writing bullshit most of the time - but finding 5-10 people not in the course willing to take a 10 minute survey of the UI you designed was something I found almost impossible as a rural-based first-year student. You absolutely need a good social life with people you trust to give you useful feedback on your UI if you want a good mark on this project.
The tutors are absolutely lovely and very approachable, but the advice they give in terms of assignments often conflicted depending on who I asked, and got me marked down. In their defense, their workload was increased almost 4-fold due to receiving 4x the volume of assignments to mark. I feel very sorry for the tutors in Semester 1 2020, they had it rough for sure.
The marking scheme they follow leaves a lot of room for flexibility, which is a blessing and a curse. For my big assignment, it benefitted me because although I sometimes felt I didn't meet the criteria to the degree I wanted, my explanations and justifications in the report were enough to get me a decent grade. For the final exam, I felt as though I met the criteria to get a really good grade, but got an unexpectedly low one. That's probably on me, but in any case, I felt the mark I got depended a lot on who marked it.
I chose to take this class as an elective as I knew it was heavy on group work and I wanted to make friends and connections with other people in my field of study. Instead, due to covid, I felt very alone doing this course. I think for semesters where group work is reinstated, your experience with this course will be HEAVILY dependent on who you get for your group assignment, the tutors you get for studios (the majority of compulsory contact time) and who marks your work.
I wouldn't recommend taking this class unless you have friends to take it with. The coursework is very time consuming but not intellectually stimulating enough to make it feel worthwhile. The course coordination seemed quite poor with their COVID response and general cohesiveness in terms of marking and assignment advice. Avoid if you can.
