Web Designers are typically thought to only solve design problems and create trendy sites. Little credit is given to the subtler role we play in commercial sites.

Viewers’ focus and time are an increasingly rare commodity that pays for the vast majority of free content online — through ads, sponsors, product placements, and other means. Though many don’t realize it, often one of our primary roles as designers is to direct focus to the advertisements and sponsors that monetises the site.

But what is the best way to go about doing that, without seeming excessively forceful? Below I’ll dive into what white noise is and how it affects your users’ experience.

White noise: How it affects your user’s experience

When you hear the term white noise, you typically think of the gray “fuzz” your TV presents to you when the signal is lost. However, the term can also apply to nearly anything:

White noise: noise containing many frequencies with equal intensities.

According to the Google definition, white noise can also be interpreted to mean a loss of focus or direction. In terms of web design, that would mean the user isn’t correctly directed to your website content and thus, loses interest or focus.

It’s a popular notion within the web design & development community to present a content-first approach; with advocates such as Jeff Zeldman, Luke Wroblewski, and Alex Morris writing about the subject. The idea being that with a content-first approach, it’s less likely to have the content fight for attention among advertisements, or worse, the website design itself.

Everyone using the web with some frequency will have experienced this scenario at some point: You casually browse to a website, and immediately find yourself more drawn to the “extras” of the website rather than the stuff you actually came for.

Being assaulted with ads and product placements when you simply came to read an article is not a friendly user experience. At worst, the user may even leave the website with a bad image of the brand itself.

Commonly, users in these scenarios don’t even attempt to sort through the mess to find the content they came for — they leave almost immediately. So as you can see, effective placement of sponsorships and products is essential to the success of a website. Getting it wrong can result in a loss of website views, poor brand reputation, or an overall unprofessional demeanor.

While getting advertising wrong is quite easy, doing it right is actually fairly straight forward as well. Many popular websites employ advertising, and yet they still have very professional and appealing reputations to boot. It’s more a manner of approaching your own website as a viewer rather than the owner than anything else. Ultimately, you want to leave a website thinking about the brand and the content they provided, not the advertising it served up. Below are a few trends, with examples, of how websites do this today from the good… to the bad.

Common advertisement solutions

Advertisements have earned their place on the web as the primary means of paying for content. Users without an adblocking plugin will be bombarded with countless ads throughout their daily web surfing. Although it may sound like a miserable and poor experience, you may not even realize many of your favorite websites use ads as a revenue model. That isn’t because those websites do it infrequently — it’s because they do it right.

When advertising and product placements don’t interfere with your users’ website experience, you’ve done it right.

Blending content and sponsorship

Frequently you’ll venture across websites, such as Twitter, that blend their ads in with the main content. This technique is generally well accepted if done correctly.

The key to getting this right, is making the advertisement look fairly similar to the content, but to obviously designate it as a sponsorship. Otherwise, users will feel mislead into visiting the sponsor and lose trust in the parent website.

Other popular websites to employ this technique are Reddit, Tumblr and Facebook.

Subtle placement outside content

While the blending techniques has grown to be a popular solution, many websites employ other solutions. Dribbble for instance, places advertisements in the footer and sidebar of their website. They’re tucked away enough and designed to not be noticeable to those in a hurry, but to casual visitors the ads are still hitting their mark.

While this solution is generally well accepted, some sponsors feel it isn’t a direct enough approach. These type of advertisements should still look like they belong, and not unreasonably encroach upon the main content. Dribbble does a great job of keeping the content as the main focus point, but also serving up ads in off areas to bring in revenue.

Commercial advertising

Some websites have kept the traditional advertisement feel to their sponsorship placement. Youtube has options for preroll, endroll, and “commercial” type placements. Generally speaking, these types of advertisement look and feel a lot like TV. They’re very commonly found on video hosting services and typically force the user’s focus rather than acquire it naturally.

While sometimes these types of solution leave a bad taste in users’ mouths, making sure the sponsorship content is relevant will go a long way to increasing interest. Hulu does a great job of surveying user’s interests to offer up more personalized advertisements.

Blatant, non-designed advertisements

These type of placements are generally the worst for a website viewer. Advertisements are thrown on wherever they fit, with minimal effort made to make them relevant or feel “included” with the website style.

Websites offering these type of placements typically have higher sponsorship revenue — but at the cost of a lower quality looking website. Frugally Sustainable is an example of this, with nearly the entirety of the sidebar dedicated to ads. This type of solution is almost always avoided by those looking to present a professional or welcoming demeanor for their website. Sometimes a website can scrape by with such poor placements, but the sense of ad space being oversold still may linger with the user like in Yahoo’s case.

In conclusion

A lot has changed over the last few years with web based advertising and the user experience. Now more than ever, websites are attempting to present ads in a more appealing and approachable manor. In turn, this pays the bills whilst keeping the user’s focus primarily on the content.

If you’ve had an adblocking plugin since the dawn of the web 2.0 days, I highly encourage you to disable it for a while.

Many websites now don’t simply plaster “personal” ads on every available area, but rather opt for more focused and content-relevant advertising techniques. Along with this emphasis on the UX of advertising, Web Designers have also grown to require vast skills in the User Experience area; which is a good thing for casual web browsers!

How do you handle adverts on your sites? Is advertising a good way to fund free content? Let us know in the comments.

Featured image/thumbnail, white noise image via Shuttrstock.

Add Ornamental Elegance with the Fleuron Font – only $12!

Home Team

Retriever Fever and spirited fans lift UMBC Men�s Soccer to even greater heights.

The sun rises and crews get to work cutting the plush Riviera Bermuda grass, repainting lines and repairing divots with green dyed sand.

UMBC has the only Bermuda grass field in the America East Conference and it has to be pristine for the next game. Plus, with the growing success of UMBC soccer, there�s a good chance the field will see a lot more action throughout the fall.

As the defending America East champion, UMBC men�s soccer team is familiar with the thrill of victory. However, the 2013 season marks a lot of firsts for the team, including cracking the top ten in both the National Soccer Coaches Association of America (NSCAA) and Top Drawer Soccer rankings. The team currently ranks 7th in NSCAA and 6th in Top Drawer Soccer, and have already clinched a spot in the six-team America East championships. UMBC women�s soccer is seeing similar success, completing the best turnaround in conference history by going from last in the conference a season ago to capturing its first-ever regular season title.

�We have maintained a quality program for quite some time, but these are heights we have not scaled before and this marks an exciting, new era for our team,� said Steve Levy, Associate Athletic Director.

UMBC�s unprecedented success comes at a time when soccer has never been more popular in the United States. With the 2014 World Cup less than 12 months away, that interest will only continue to grow. But if you were to visit UMBC campus on a game night, you�d think the Cup was just days away.

Our students and alumni have a strong tradition of supporting the UMBC soccer program. Each fall, �Retriever Fever� sweeps the campus community, bringing with it a surge of school spirit and camaraderie. Halls are decorated, events are planned and thousands of students converge on the campus for Homecoming week, all leading up to the men�s soccer match. This year, more than 1,700 attended the Saturday game.

�Every year we draw more and more fans and alumni back to campus as a community, while the events and support get better and better,� said Anthony Adams, Men�s Soccer Associate Head Coach. �I would challenge anyone to come to a men’s soccer game and not see tremendous school spirit.�

Despite having fewer resources when compared to other top university programs in the country, UMBC has continued to consistently rank well in game attendance and participation. During the 2012 soccer season, the university was 13th in attendance nationally, and numbers are up from 995 to 1,228 per game in 2013.

Nowhere is this school spirit and support more evident than right on the sidelines. Each home game, thousands of students, alumni and fans turn out�complete with banner flag, rally drum, matching apparel and organized chants. Lot 17, named for the original spot where fans would gather before and after each game, has been a way for UMBC�s soccer fans to get organized. Following the 2010 season, men�s soccer saw a significant rise in attendance at home games after an appearance in the 2010 NCAA tournament, advancing to the second round. With help from an enthusiastic men�s soccer club team, Lot 17 was formed and is a now quintessential part of the school�s soccer heritage. The fan-based group often travels to away games and can be found taking over opposing stadiums with their cheering.

Soccer is a sport I am very passionate about,� said Edward �Teddy� Tibert, a UMBC club soccer player and lead organizer for Lot 17. �I think that�s what makes it great�we’re so unique from other schools in the sense that the greatness of soccer isn’t taken away by all the shine that football brings.�

This Saturday at 1 p.m., the America East Conference action continues as UMBC men�s soccer travels to UMass Lowell to battle the River Hawks. Women’s soccer will host their America East semifinal game this Sunday at 1 p.m. at Retriever Soccer Park. For tickets and more information, visit www.umbcretrievers.com.

(10/30/13)

� 410-455-1000 �
UMBC is an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Institution

The Body Electric

UMBC researchers forge links between tech and medicine

Monitoring significant developments in a patient�s health outside a hospital setting can be challenging, but two UMBC researchers � Tinoosh Mohsenin and Gymama Slaughter � have won separate grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to help meet those challenges.

Mohsenin received a $100,000 grant from the NSF to develop signal processing architecture to detect seizures. The award of $150,000 to Slaughter from the foundation was to pursue work on nanoelectric probe arrays.

Not only does the work done by these two UMBC professors have important implications for basic medical science, but it is also research that may also provide more insight into how we think and feel, or improve how people with disabilities navigate in the world.

Watch and Wear

When patients are in a hospital, they often are connected to a myriad of monitoring devices attached to various parts of their body. Any changes are noted quickly by doctors or nurses.

Outside the hospital, however, it is more difficult to monitor for important warning signs of distress. The parent of a child with juvenile epilepsy, for instance, must watch until their child goes to sleep and be ready to act for signs of distress � because just before sleep is usually when such seizures occur. The fear and uncertainty of epilepsy for both patients and caregivers puts limits on their independence and reduces their quality of life.

Research pursued by Tinoosh Mohsenin � an assistant professor of computer engineering at UMBC � aims to give those parents (and patients everywhere) monitoring devices and systems as good as those provided in a hospital.

Mohsenin runs UMBC�s Energy Efficient High Performance Computing Lab, which is involved with the design and implementation of various signal processing algorithms and hardware that require real time processing within a limited power budget. Working with professor of computer science and electrical engineering Tim Oates at the computer science department and researchers at the University of Maryland Medical Center, she is developing wearable monitors to detect when someone is having a seizure no matter where they are.

A wearable seizure monitoring and alerting system could provide greater independence for patients with epilepsy. The technology available at present to monitor for seizures outside hospitals is bulky and uncomfortable. The current devices usually are worn in caps with electrodes attached to the head. They use a great deal of power, all drawn from batteries.

Worse yet, these devices are subject to a lot of noise due to movement of cap and a high number of false positives � and may not distinguish between a seizure and the patient brushing their teeth.

�There are not very efficient devices for people who suffer from epilepsy or those people whose epilepsy cannot be treated with medication,� she says.

At present, the only physiological signals measured by most of epilepsy monitors are electroencephalograph (EEG) signals. But Mohsenin envisions a device that measures even more indicators � including heart rate, oxygenation, and sweat/sudomotor response. She also wants to add an accelerometer for motion detection, which would pick up shaking and recognize if the patient falls.

What Mohsenin envisions is a monitor with a comfortable headband that would measure EEG signals, and an arm band that would contain an accelerometer and could measure other signals such as pulse.

�It has to be very accurate,� says Mohsenin, who even has ambitions for the device to call for medical assistance when it detects a seizure in a patient who is alone.

Each device would have to be trained for each patient because seizures and patients vary. And the device must also work within a �power budget� that uses as little power as possible with long battery life.

Presently Mohsenin and Oates are working on the variety of representations and machine learning algorithms to extract useful information from multi-physiological signals for such a device. The amount of computation the devices have to do is daunting, she says. She is concentrating mostly on creating the processor hardware and its low power implementation.

Mohsenin and colleagues at Georgia Institute of Technology are also working on another personalized wearable biomedical project � a wireless and wearable intraural device in the form of dental retainer that allows individuals with tetraplegia to access computers, drive wheelchairs, and control their environments.

Going for Gold

One of the key problems in monitoring brain activity is physiological. To place brain monitors on a patient requires major surgery, in which holes are drilled into the skull and part of the skull is lifted up. A relatively large, flat, and rigid device is then inserted. It is a process is fraught with peril.

Gymama Slaughter, an assistant professor of computer science and electrical engineering, is exploring how nanotechnology might produce a device that can monitor brain activity without such risk.

In the Bioelectronics Lab she created from the ground up at UMBC, Slaughter is working in the nano-scale on artifacts so small they are at molecular or near molecular scale.

The brain monitoring device she is working on is like a pyramid, literally one cubic millimeter in size with a tip pitch of 20 nanometers. (A millimeter is 4/100th of an inch.)

She is using gold for the device because it is an excellent electrical conductor, perfect for measuring electrical activity, and yet causes no adverse reaction in the body.

The device is also small enough to be inserted with a conventional syringe and flexible enough to be comfortable. It can also conform to the shape of the brain and be placed between the brain and the skull.

�A seven-gauge syringe will do it,� she observes, �and [the device] will enable large number of neurons to be interfaced simultaneously,� she said. The result is a monitor that will enable hundreds, thousands, or even millions of simultaneous electrophysiological recordings.

These neurosensors will collect data on brain activity, including what happens when a patient acquires Parkinson�s disease, strokes, epilepsy, brain damage, or Alzheimer�s.

�It might eventually measure how people behave,� says Slaughter. �What happens in the brain during anger, jealousy, or sadness?� It may also help understand researchers understand brain disorders such as obsessive compulsive disorder.

Slaughter is also working on a number of other projects: one monitor will give a running count of blood sugar in diabetics and deliver insulin when blood sugar is high to help people with diabetes avoid the usual complications, and another monitor tracks what happens when brain cells react to the brain toxins involved in Parkinson�s disease.

She is also pursuing a project to harvest energy from within the body to power bio-implantable devices without using external battery with the hope to improve individual�s well-being. Slaughter adds that the realization of energy harvesting from within the body is an attractive proposition not only for sensing and actuating, but also may have uses for electronics and defense technologies.

� Joel N.Shurkin

(10/30/13)

THE BODY ELECTRIC

UMBC researchers forge links between tech and medicine

Monitoring significant developments in a patient�s health outside a hospital setting can be challenging, but two UMBC researchers � Tinoosh Mohsenin and Gymama Slaughter � have won separate grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to help meet those challenges.

Mohsenin received a $100,000 grant from the NSF to develop signal processing architecture to detect seizures. The award of $150,000 to Slaughter from the foundation was to pursue work on nanoelectric probe arrays.

Not only does the work done by these two UMBC professors have important implications for basic medical science, but it is also research that may also provide more insight into how we think and feel, or improve how people with disabilities navigate in the world.

WATCH AND WEAR

When patients are in a hospital, they often are connected to a myriad of monitoring devices attached to various parts of their body. Any changes are noted quickly by doctors or nurses.

Outside the hospital, however, it is more difficult to monitor for important warning signs of distress. The parent of a child with juvenile epilepsy, for instance, must watch until their child goes to sleep and be ready to act for signs of distress � because just before sleep is when they usually such seizures occur. The fear and uncertainty of epilepsy for both patients and caregivers puts limits on their independence and reduces their quality of life.

Research pursued by Tinoosh Mohsenin � an assistant professor of computer engineering at UMBC �aims to give those parents (and patients everywhere) monitoring devices and systems as good as those provided in a hospital.

Mohsenin runs UMBC�s Energy Efficient High Performance Computing Lab, which is involved with the design and implementation of various signal processing algorithms and hardware that require real time processing within a limited power budget. Working with professor of computer science and electrical engineering Tim Oates at the computer science department and researchers at the University of Maryland Medical Center, she is developing wearable monitors to detect when someone is having a seizure no matter where they are.

A wearable seizure monitoring and alerting system could provide greater independence for patients with epilepsy. The technology available at present to monitor for seizures outside hospitals is bulky and uncomfortable. The current devices usually are worn in caps with electrodes attached to the head. They use a great deal of power, all drawn from batteries.

Worse yet, these devices are subject to a lot of noise due to movement of cap and a high number of false positives � and may not distinguish between a seizure and the patient brushing their teeth.

�There are not very efficient devices for people who suffer from epilepsy or those people whose epilepsy cannot be treated with medication,� she says.

At present, the only physiological signals measured by most of epilepsy monitors are electroencephalograph (EEG) signals. But Mohsenin envisions a device that measures even more indicators � including heart rate, oxygenation, and sweat/sudomotor response. She also wants to add an accelerometer for motion detection, which would pick up shaking and recognize if the patient falls.

What Mohsenin envisions is a monitor with a comfortable headband that would measure EEG signals, and an arm band that would contain an accelerometer and could measure other signals such as pulse.

�It has to be very accurate,� says Mohsenin, who even has ambitions for the device to call for medical assistance when it detects a seizure in a patient who is alone.

Each device would have to be trained for each patient because seizures and patients vary. And the device must also work within a �power budget� that uses as little power as possible with long battery life.

Presently Mohsenin and Oates are working on the variety of representations and machine learning algorithms to extract useful information from multi-physiological signals for such a device. The amount of computation the devices have to do is daunting, she says. She is concentrating mostly on creating the processor hardware and its low power implementation.

Mohsenin and colleagues at Georgia Institute of Technology are also working on another personalized wearable biomedical project � a wireless and wearable intraural device in the form of dental retainer that allows individuals with tetraplegia to access computers, drive wheelchairs, and control their environments.

GOING FOR GOLD

One of the key problems in monitoring brain activity is physiological. To place brain monitors on a patient requires major surgery, in which holes are drilled into the skull and part of the skull is lifted up. A relatively large, flat, and rigid device is then inserted. It is a process is fraught with peril.

Gymama Slaughter, an assistant professor of computer science and electrical engineering, is exploring how nanotechnology might produce a device that can monitor brain activity without such risk.

In the Bioelectronics Lab she created from the ground up at UMBC, Slaughter is working in the nano-scale on artifacts so small they are at molecular or near molecular scale.

The brain monitoring device she is working on is like a pyramid, literally one cubic millimeter in size with a tip pitch of 20 nanometers. (A millimeter is 4/100th of an inch.)

She is using gold for the device because it is an excellent electrical conductor, perfect for measuring electrical activity, and yet causes no adverse reaction in the body.

The device is also small enough to be inserted with a conventional syringe and flexible enough to be comfortable. It can also conform to the shape of the brain and be placed between the brain and the skull.

�A seven-gauge syringe will do it,� she observes, �and [the device] will enable large number of neurons to be interfaced simultaneously,� she said. The result is a monitor that will enable hundreds, thousands, or even millions of simultaneous electrophysiological recordings.

These neurosensors will collect data on brain activity, including what happens when a patient acquires Parkinson�s disease, strokes, epilepsy, brain damage, or Alzheimer�s.

�It might eventually measure how people behave,� says Slaughter. �What happens in the brain during anger, jealousy, or sadness?� It may also help understand researchers understand brain disorders such as obsessive compulsive disorder.

Slaughter is also working on a number of other projects: one monitor will give a running count of blood sugar in diabetics and deliver insulin when blood sugar is high to help people with diabetes avoid the usual complications, and another monitor tracks what happens when brain cells react to the brain toxins involved in Parkinson�s disease.

She is also pursuing a project to harvest energy from within the body to power bio-implantable devices without using external battery with the hope to improve individual�s well-being. Slaughter adds that the realization of energy harvesting from within the body is an attractive proposition not only for sensing and actuating, but also may have uses for electronics and defense technologies.

� Joel N.Shurkin

(10/30/13)

Despite limitations, the Firefox OS-running ZTE Open shows promise for low-cost smartphones.

While the word “smartphone” usually evokes images of pricey iPhones and Android handsets, plenty of inexpensive smartphones are also hitting the market—ripe for the millions of cell phone owners who want a smartphone, but can’t (or don’t want to) pay hundreds of dollars for one.

What must you have to be beautiful?

Ask any of the young women who belong to internet “thinspo” communities and they will tell you two words: thigh gaps.

Thigh gaps have become the most recent obsession of these young women because of their supposed indication of thinness.  The concept is that when the feet touch, a visible gap should be seen between the upper thighs.

So what’s the problem? Isn’t this a sign of slender and; subsequently, healthy legs?

Doctors say otherwise. Having a thigh gap is only a result of two things: having a genetically predisposed structure of wide set hips and pelvis or  being so extensively malnourished that the muscles on the thigh waste away leaving a gap.

This internet obsession that has plagued the pages of Tumblr, Instagram, and Pinterest raises alarm for those in the medical community.

“The issue of focusing on a particular body part is very common, what is new is these things have taken on a life of their own because of the Internet and social media.” –

Claire Mysko from the National Eating Disorder Association.

These “thinspo” communities share pictures of emaciated women as “thinspiration.”

This distorted sense of beauty is becoming more accessible and widespread due to social media. Thankfully, public figures such as plus-size model Robyn Lawley have started to advocate against the glorification of thigh gaps and instead are emphasizing having healthy, strong bodies.  

We’re hoping more will follow their lead and help thinspiration reach its expiration.

In WordPress, AJAX requests go through wp-admin/admin-ajax.php. Despite the name, you don't have to have administrator privileges to use it. Rob Gravelle describes how to add our JavaScript files to the page in such a way that we can reference the path to admin-ajax.php on the server.