good

Nice

good

good

good

cool

good

Good

Good

GOOD

good

Good

Good

good

Good

Good

yes

no

No

ok

x

While I think this course was built with good intentions and good ideas, there's a fundamental imbalance between the amount of time and energy students spend executing the exercises, which are primarily research based, and the results students have to show for those exercises. Week 5 felt like a lot of work especially, and ultimately also felt like wasted effort - there is a very insufficient amount of guidance in creating the audit chart, while simultaneously not nearly enough time is spent reviewing it. (For example, the exemplar project uses fictional companies and websites for its audit, but does not explain that beforehand, or at least did not do so in a way that was clear to me at the time. Not enough time is spent on comparing the features of real-world websites to learn what key features and pain points students should actually be looking out for when doing their audit. The concept is useful, but for it to be the end of the course feels really frustrating, and poorly executed on. Crazy eights was a fun, welcome break, but for our first actual hands-on exercise came way too late, and does not come alongside sufficient executable problem statements - I had to search for a problem statement generator of my own.

While this was the least exciting portion of the course, it was very necessary. This was like a sequel to the introduction. You will not begin working on prototypes or even wireframing. You will not begin working on actual designs. It's just mostly more definitions and a lot of Google reminding you over and over again that everyone has bias. While this is true, it feels a little condescending and off-putting. Why aren't we told that some bias is healthy? Does Google understand that we all live different experiences that shape us into the individuals we are? I suppose so, but why doesn't Google recognize, or mention, that our differences are often times what makes our teams more diverse and inclusive? I don't know the answer to these questions, but it's not really much of a big deal. You got yourself here, so go ahead and trust yourself, no matter what anyone anywhere tells you, and just keep pushing forward till you finish.