Bu Kyung Park, MSN, RN PhD Student Nursing Informatics School of Nursing University of Maryland

Date/Time: Friday, November 1, 12 pm Location: ITE 456, UMBC

Abstract: In this presentation, Ms. Park will introduce her dissertation project entitled "Healthy Teens," which is supported by the Sigma Theta Tau International, Pi Chapter.

The prevalence of adolescent obesity has more than tripled during the past three decades. Adolescent obesity increases risk for a number of comorbidities and creates economic burden for families and the nation. Given that using social networking sites (SNSs) has become ingrained in adolescents' daily life, obesity prevention education via SNSs for lifestyle modification can be an innovative and promising approach.

Although current obesity prevalence among Korean American (KA) adolescents is relatively lower than the national average, acculturation to American lifestyle increases the risk of obesity for the second and the third generations of KA immigrants compared to the first generation immigrants. Therefore, obesity prevention education tailored for KA adolescent lifestyle is important. The purposes of this proposed study are to (1) develop a social cognitive theory-based "Healthy Teens" program on Facebook for KA adolescent obesity prevention, which includes physical activity and healthy eating modules, and (2) conduct usability testing of the "Healthy Teens" program for a future randomized controlled trial. Usability testing will be conducted using two usability assessment methods: (1) heuristic evaluation by three experts, which will identify usability problems based on Nielsen's heuristics; and (2) user testing, which aims to assess usual users' performance on the Healthy Teens program using observation, a think-aloud method, and a questionnaire by 20 KA adolescents (13-17 years old). Using a convenience sampling method, participants will be recruited from two Korean language schools in Maryland. Both qualitative and quantitative data will be collected and analyzed. The expected impact of this proposed study is two-fold. First, this proposed study will develop an innovative Facebook-based KA adolescent obesity prevention program that will be used for a future larger scale study. Second, the findings will provide important ground work on how to use an SNS to develop a structured, theory-based health education program for adolescents and contribute to other investigators' research that uses similar technologies.

Brief Bio: Ms. Bu Kyung Park is a PhD student in School of Nursing at the University of Maryland. Her research focuses on the use of Web-based interventions to prevent obesity among children and adolescent. She has participated in various studies (conducted by her advisor, Dr. Eun-Shim Nahm) as a research assistant including mHealth, qualitative, and usability studies as well as randomized controlled trials. During her years in the PhD program, she has found advantages to adapting SNSs for adolescent health research. She recently published "A systematic review of social networking sites: innovative platforms for health research targeting adolescents and young adults" in the Journal of Nursing Scholarship based on extensive review of the literature.

A system used by ships worldwide to broadcast their location for safety purposes lacks security controls and is vulnerable to spectacular spoofing attacks, researchers show.

A system used to track shipping vessels worldwide has been shown to be easily hijacked. Researchers found that it is possible to cause fake vessels to appear, real ones to disappear, and to issue false emergency alerts using cheap radio equipment.

A big day for Microsoft, in one major realm they have the release of Windows 8.1 and more importantly, the release of Visual Studio 2013.

Update Includes New Cross-Platform Integration, Cloud Data Storage and Management,
Deep-Dive Analytics, and Visual Studio 2013 Support. 

Every so often, we highlight the importance of student scholarships by introducing you to the very students they help to succeed. Today, we’re speaking with Polly Muangrat, information systems and English literature, who recently received the Aol Advertising.com Scholarship.

Name: Polly Muangrat ’14
Major(s): Information Systems B.S. and English Literature B.A.
Scholarship(s): NSF SFS CyberCorps Scholar, Aol Advertising.com Scholarship, COEIT Vijay Jose Scholarship, Alumni Association Award

Q: Why did you decide to attend UMBC?

I wanted to attend UMBC most of all because of the environment and the programs offered. By environment, I mean that when I visited, the first thing I saw was the staggeringly enormous Humans v. Zombies team thundering across Erickson Field. And I loved that. Just walking around the Commons, I saw so many different groups of people, different ethnicities and languages being spoken. I knew UMBC would be a school where you could be yourself and do the things that made you happy, which transcends across to the freedom in educational pursuits here as well. I get surprised looks during interviews when recruiters see that I’m both in STEM and Humanities, which is made possible by UMBC’s truly inspiring and challenging English courses and IS courses.

Q:  What has been the most amazing discovery you’ve made so far as a student here?

The amount of resources UMBC offers its students, especially in terms of post-graduate career seeking, internships and research opportunities. Different departments offer a lot of help, like Career Services, or the Office of Institutional Advancement. As a first generation college student, I never really knew how the corporate world worked, except for what I saw in “The Office.” My parents are not part of the corporate world, so my first internship was an invaluable experience to me. I find myself thinking about all of the career fairs and UMBCworks posts that I should be taking advantage of, and remind myself that without these resources, I would be desperately combing Craigslist or Monster.

Q:  Tell us about a class or club that has really opened your mind (and why)…

I have a great admiration for usability, interface design and the general field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI), all topics covered in my IS 303 and 403 classes, taught by Dr. Ravi Kuber and Dr. Shaun Kane, respectively. I think a lot of developers and programmers forget a certain human factor in the designs of everyday hardware or software, which can lead to wasted time and unfortunate future consequences. This missing step fascinates me, and these two classes really helped me see the glaring problems in technology design, and challenged me to create solutions.

Pretty much any English Literature course I take inspires me, and really reminds me how to think and communicate. There is a way that novels can access all of the human thought process that textbooks cannot.

Q:  What do you hope to do after graduation, and why?

After graduation, I hope to obtain a position within the US Department of Defense, which is a part of my scholarship requirement. I would really love to understand more of the crucial vulnerabilities in national information security, and to be a part of generating working, long-term solutions and defenses. It will also be a great starting point for me, first to help decide whether I prefer the private or public sector.

Q:  How important is it to you as a student to get scholarship support?

Scholarship support is the reason that I can hope to receive higher education, both financially and mentally. Mentally, a scholarship acts to me as a commendation of my academic and personal achievements. Receiving an award is the support and figurative “high five” that keeps me going; it assures me that I am on the right path, that I am doing the right things. I’ll remember this feeling of gratitude and pride, and hopefully be able to give another future student, somewhere, the same feeling.

Q:  What would you say to the people at the company who provided your scholarship?

I would just like to say, first, a very warm thank you. Thank you for giving me the ability to pursue my educational goals, and for investing interest and support in me. Just knowing that hard work will pay off, and has paid off, is instrumental in motivating me forward to work harder, accomplish more achievements and set strong, reachable goals.

I was recently quoted in a tweet about this and I thought it might be worth a revisit and new discussion.

Re Art Direction "This is more than just a trend, it's just a good idea." ~ @chriscoyier Still? And, is AD plugin the best way in 2013?

— James Burgos (@JamesBurgos) October 13, 2013

The idea of an "art directed article" is that it is designed specifically for the content of the article. It might share some characteristics from the parent site (it probably should), but lots of design elements change to suit the specific article. Layout, colors, type, backgrounds, images, interactions... all custom just for the article.

Here's a simple example on Jason Santa Maria's blog (who has championed this idea):

Was this just a trend?

I'm going with: yes and no.

Yes

• I see far less of it these days then in its hayday (2009-2010). I totally jumped on the bandwagon at the time. It was fun, but I didn't stick with it.
• There used to be two dedicated "gallery" sites dedicated to the idea: Blogazines and HeartDirected. Both offline.
• Some examples have deteriorated over time. For instance this post that is about posts like this.

No

• The sites doing it have shifted somewhat from individuals to large organizations.
• The sites that are doing it these days are taking it to all new levels of impressiveness. See the examples section below.
• Good design is good design. If you can design a page that enhances the content, that's a good idea that transcends a trend.

How do they hold up over time?

Let's see if we can collect some real data. This article lists 20 sites with art-directed posts, with two examples per site. Let's rate how they held up in the four years since 2009.

Art direction only survived on 18/40 articles. Less than half.

Of course this is a very small sample size and there is nothing to compare it to. It would be interesting to compare against another roundup from 2009 of a totally unrelated topic and see what shape those URL's are in.

Did responsive design influence things?

2009 was a bit before responsive web design was "a thing" as we know it today. It's easier to customize a design in a fixed environment than a fluid one.

Want the text "Kapow!" lined up right next to Batman's fist in an article about old comics? That's fairly easy to do when you can count on that fist being at the exact same place at all times. But likely you'll need that graphic to shrink and grow to accommodate the screen size. Now you'll have to get tricky with how you position that text. And likely about 50 other little minor adjustments you have to make as the the screen size available goes from tiny to huge.

It multiplies an already time-consuming job.

Did a focus on performance influence things?

Often what happens with art directed articles is:

1. Serve everything you normally do
2. Plus more stuff! (e.g. extra images, extra fonts, extra CSS, etc)

There is definitely a more-is-worse vibe going on on the web right now. A common theme in art directed articles is adding stuff like interactive maps, scrolling effects, animations, and super large images. All of that stuff is heavy and slow when it comes to web performance.

That doesn't mean you can't do it right and progressively enhance, but that's yet-another-difficulty. That may be contributing to less enthusiasm for art-directed posts.

How can you plan for the future with your art-directed articles?

Websites will change. It's going to happen, so you need to plan for it. The customizations to an article you make now might not make any sense to that same article in a new template. Did you change the background on .article-wrap { } - well maybe that's an <article class="module"> now, so that custom CSS doesn't do anything.

The trouble is, redesigns are generally for the better. They accommodate a new advertising structure. They make a non-responsive design responsive. They increase performance. Whatever. We might want to be totally gone with the old design and totally in with the new.

Here's some options for various scenarios:

• Preserve the article exactly as is. This is how Jason Santa Maria's site works. Posts that were art directed under a certain version of the site get served under that version forever. He's doing it, so clearly it's doable. There are WordPress plugins that change themes with a URL parameter, so I can imagine you could code something that shows a different theme based on a publication date.

  In talking to some folks from The Verge (and companion sites), they plan to either serve a legacy template specifically for these URL's, or "flatten" the page into a one-off static page. Either way, they design remains forever.

• Update the design. It shouldn't be off the table that you just revisit the articles when you redesign and fix them up to work with the redesign. Time permitting, this is probably the best option.
• Build them outside the template/theme/CMS from the start. If the article doesn't rely on a template anyway, it won't break when you update that template.
• Revert to a normal template. Worst case, just remove all the custom art direction. It's a fairly common approach to just add assets to customize a page anyway, so removing them will hopefully allow the content to drop back to a normal looking article. Hopefully the markup wasn't so customized that it breaks. The lesson here: use namespaced classes that will likely have no future meaning.

Whatever you do, don't just nuke the article or redirect it to something unrelated. Because.

More Recent Examples

New York Times: Snow Fall
The Verge: John Wilkes Booth
New York Times: Russia
Travis Neilson: Fun with jQuery .show()
Complex: Danny Brown
The Washington Post: Great Falls
LA Times: Concrete Risks
New York Times: Tomato Can Blues
New York Times: The Jockey
Daniel Mall: Entertainment Weekly Site
Trent Walton: Human Interest
Polygon: Watch Dogs

Let's check these out in another four years!

So what's up?

Is it / was it a trend or not? Do you dig it? Have you done it? Is art directing a post the kiss of death for it over time? Can you think of other ways to handle an art directed post over time? Any more interesting examples?

And to answer James' question from the tweet up top: I think Dave's fork of the Art Direction Plugin is still the best way to go in WordPress-land, if what you are trying to do is essentially add CSS and JS.

Oh and I'm totally mis-using "art direction" here. Sorry about that, but I feel like it's kind of the name that's been applied to this thing.

Art Directed Articles. Still a Good Idea? is a post from CSS-Tricks