Low Effort class. The topics were silly though not sure if I learned anything useful. Gave me some interesting perspective though and background behind design I’d seen before. Literally do the work and you’re good.

Is this an easy GE? Yes. Do you really learn anything? No. I really tried hard to pay attention in class, but being a 3hr lecture at 9am and the fact that the lights were dimmed, I slowly started to just do other work during lecture or sleep. There are three pop quizzes (lowest score is dropped) throughout the quarter, and attendance is taken either at the break or at the end of class. There's a midterm paper that is individual (it was about our opinion on if ornamentation is considered a crime), the "UCLA game" which is basically a scavenger hunt across campus with a group done instead of a midterm test, and a final group paper (this year we had to write about the design of a place we liked in Westwood). You will need to get the course reader because we have to use the readings in there as our sources for our essays. Huhtamo also used concepts from the readings in some quiz questions. If I paid more attention I would have gotten more out of the class, but it is easy to get an A without listening to lecture.

I am probably not the only one get offended when the professor characterize his lamp as "look like an Asian figure" because of the "eye shape." He could have been more sensitive given the amount of Asian students in his class.

I could go on and on about why I would never take this class again and why I would never reccommend this atrocious class to anyone, but in short:

- Huhtamo has probably the worst communication skills I have experienced from a professor
- not lenient towards any type of extensions (got an extremely rude email response back for asking for a ONE day extension because I was sick for an entire week)
- expensive textbook that is required, you cannot complete assignments or write essays without the ereader
- homework is just busywork (you could easily answer each question in at least three sentences but each question required a minimum of 100 words so you found yourself repeating yourself multiple times)
- usually I enjoy GEs, but this class drained every ounce of happiness from me
- it is extremeley boring (you would think a design class would be interesting and engaging but no, it's shocking what Huhtamo can do to you) I would honestly forget about this class a lot
- you would also think that since this class is focused on design they would design this class better
- only good thing is that it is an easy A

TLDR: DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS... INSTEAD you should try PORTSGE 46 (actually interesting, engaging, you learn something useful, you don't waste a quarter, still an easy A)

I really enjoyed this class. I found the topic interesting, but only because I was already interested in design. If you're on the fence about whether you like it beforehand you might be a little bored. Still, the lectures and reading are quite interesting. The readings are really long and sometimes boring, but you don't really have to read all of them to finish the homework (which is just 100 word responses, easy to write by just skimming the articles). I read most of the readings because I found them genuinely interesting.

Loved this class and Prof Huhtamo. Wish I could've taken it in person, as it was asynchronous this quarter. Interesting topics. Prof Huhtamo is a very interesting guy and it's clear that he's passionate about design- you should go to his office hours and talk to him!

Like many others, I took this class since it was an "easy A" GE and recommend it to others. The material was interesting and I enjoyed learning about design. The workload wasn't too heavy and grading was generally lenient/easy depending on TA.

I started out pretty bored with the class but soon grew to like it a lot! The information is actually super interesting! I took the class at first because I was thinking of switching to be a DESMA major, and I had already gotten my art GE done in the past, so I basically took this class for no reason. But, luckily, it was a real GPA booster. It was super easy– no tests just two papers and I did them the night before without even breaking a sweat. It was interesting, easy, and Erkki is such a cute lil old man. Definitely take it if you want an easy GE. Also, all lectures were asynchronous so I just watched them on 2x speed, and then the discussions were mandatory but I just turned them on and didn't pay attention because you don't need to know that material and just did the participation things they give you during the discussion and just left it on in the background while I did other things. so yeah, def take if you need an easy GE and also are interested in design.

A friend of mine took this in fall 2019 and said it was an easy ge for pre-med. It was definitely one of my easiest classes in my course load this quarter. During covid he doesn't have any exams or quizzes. All you have to do is write two papers that are pretty easy. I'd say my average hours per week spent working on this class was about 2 hours probably. Highly recommend

Online edition. Has a light workload but not so light. Had to write a 200-word report weekly about the lecture and readings (didn't buy the book cuz some nice students posted it on google drive). We attended 4 events for pretty successful people (which i found to be really cool) and wrote a 200-word report about the events. We got 2 more events for extra credits. The midterm was a paper of 1200 words and the final was 1200 words if written independently or 1400 if with another person (both graded reasonably). Had to attend a discussion almost weekly and filled out a form for attendance. Overall, easy class and good for a GPA boost but the content was basic things that I kind of knew before.