According to Professor Blank, the goal of this class was to "challenge you, but not tank your grade". Given the grade distribution of the class (63% As, according to the end of the quarter email that he sent out), I'd say that he succeeded pretty well with the second part of the goal (maybe even better than he expected). However, keep in mind that he was very lenient due to the circumstances (COVID, George Floyd, etc.). For example, he had 4 different methods of weighting the assignments for the final grade, and our assignments were weighted with the method that resulted in the highest final grade. Also, he lowered the grade cut offs (88% was the cut off for an A).
Although he was lenient with grading, I'd say that this class challenged me pretty well. I loved the material, but sometimes concepts were difficult connect. The 6 written assignments were difficult as well; for these assignments, you basically read 3 scientific papers and answer questions about them. Personally, sometimes I had to think long and hard about how the questions were even related to the papers; however, once you understand this, the questions were not too bad. It was also nice that only 2 of these written assignments were graded, and you got to choose which two.
Group projects were okay; they were actually easier than the assignments, and I felt like I spent only a bit more time on my part of the project than on an individual written assignment.
Overall, Professor Blank is super passionate and knowledgeable about the subject. You can tell he puts a lot of effort into his lectures and that he loves teaching.

This was a hard class with a lot of assignments with different formats, attendance requirements, etc, but the material was thoroughly engaging.

One of the best professors at UCLA hands down

This class was alright up until I tested positive for COVID-19 fall of 2020. While the professor seemed nice and accommodating during lectures, he became difficult to reach when I actually needed help and accommodations. Between my extreme respiratory symptoms and my inability to focus during the course, the professor was more or less unwilling to provide me extensions longer than a week while I was sick ( I was sick with COVID for 4 months after infection with a prior chronic respiratory illness ), did not help me with class participation credit and did not provide accommodations when it came time to taking the final. While I was nearly unable to participate in the group project (he didn't accommodate for that either) I maintained an A throughout the quarter, until the end, wherein he failed me on the final exam and politely wrote in an email that "it wouldn't matter in the long term regardless." While I was keen on reporting this to the dean of students initially, I just hope to warn other students of signing up for this class and maintaining any kind of contact with Idan Blank and his TAs.