Daniel Ashbrook

Senior Researcher, New Mobile Forms and Experiences
Nokia Research Center Sunnyvale

Personal Information

I care about how people and technology interact, and how we can create new technology to ease peoples' lives or to give them new abilities. I like to make new things. More specifically, I'm an expert on human interaction with mobile and wearable devices. My current research focuses on creating new interaction modalities for using technology while on-the-go.

I finished my PhD in Computer Science at Georgia Tech in 2009. My thesis concentrated on microinteractions, which are interactions with a device that are typically under four seconds long. Examples include checking the time on your watch, glancing at your current speed on your car's dashboard, or shutting off your cell phone's ringer. I'm working on interfaces for microinteractions on wristwatch computers, and creating a tool to help designers build gesture-based interfaces to on-body devices.

In the past I have done many things, such as helping to create a system for commanding officers to understand what's happening with their soldiers in the field; automatically learning peoples' daily schedules through GPS tracking; working on the first commercially available open-hardware wearable computer; and creating a device that allows elderly people to gesture to control lights and media equipment rather than use remote controls.

I am now a Senior Researcher in New Mobile Forms and Experiences at Nokia Research Center's Multimedia Technologies Lab, located in Sunnyvale, California. You can contact me at <first name>.<last name>@nokia.com.

Publications

Theses

Daniel Ashbrook. Enabling Mobile Microinteractions. PhD Thesis, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009.

Journal Papers

Daniel Ashbrook and Thad Starner. Using GPS to learn significant locations and predict movement across multiple users. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 7(5):275–286, October 2003.

Books & Parts of Books

Daniel Ashbrook, Kent Lyons, James Clawson and Thad Starner. Methods of evaluation for wearable computing. Smart Clothing: Technology and Applications. Gilsoo Cho, editor. CRC Press, 2009.

Conference Presentations

Felix Xiaozhu Lin, Daniel Ashbrook, and Sean White. RhythmLink: Securely Pairing I/O-Constrained Devices by Tapping. In proceedings of ACM symposium on User interface software and technology (UIST), Santa Barbara, CA, 2011, 9 pages. (25% acceptance rate.)

Daniel Ashbrook, Patrick Baudisch, and Sean White. Subtle and Eyes-Free Mobile Input with a Magnetically-Tracked Finger Ring. In Proceedings of SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), Vancouver, BC, Canada, 2011, 4 pages. (26% acceptance rate.)

Daniel Ashbrook and Thad Starner. MAGIC: A Motion Gesture Design Tool. In Proceedings of SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), Atlanta, GA, 2010, 10 pages. (22% acceptance rate.)

Daniel Ashbrook, Kent Lyons, and Thad Starner. An investigation into round touchscreen wristwatch interaction. In Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI), Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2008, pp. 311–314. (35% acceptance rate.)

Daniel Ashbrook, James Clawson, Kent Lyons, Nirmal Patel, and Thad Starner. Quickdraw: The impact of mobility and on-body placement on device access time. In Proceedings of SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), Florence, Italy, 2008, pp. 219–222. (30% acceptance rate.)

Kihwan Kim, Jay Summet, Thad Starner, Daniel Ashbrook, Mrunal Kapade and Irfan Essa. Localization and 3D Reconstruction of Urban Scenes Using GPS. In Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Wearable Computing (ISWC) 2008, 8 pages.

David Minnen, Tracy Westeyn, Peter Presti, Daniel Ashbrook, and Thad Starner. Recognizing soldier activities in the ﬁeld. In Proceedings of International IEEE Workshop on Wearable and Implantable Body Sensor Networks (BSN), Aachen, Germany, March 2007, 10 pages.

Daniel Ashbrook, Tracy Westeyn, and Thad Starner. Dancing in the streets: Smart phones and gaming. In Electronic proceedings of Workshop on Ubiquitous Entertainment and Games at Seventh International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp), Tokyo, Japan, 2005, 2-page abstract.Thad Starner and

Daniel Ashbrook. Augmenting a pH medical study with wearable video for treatment of GERD. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC), Arlington, VA, 2004. (2-page poster paper; 29% overall acceptance rate.)

Daniel Ashbrook and Thad Starner. Location modeling: From raw data to user models. In Proceedings of Workshop on Forecasting Presence and Availability at SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), Vienna, Austria, 2004, 3 pages.

Kent Lyons, Christopher Skeels, Thad Starner, Cornelis M. Snoeck, Benjamin Wong, and Daniel Ashbrook. Augmenting conversations using dual-purpose speech. In Proceedings of the ACM symposium on User interface software and technology (UIST), Santa Fe, NM, 2004, pp. 237–246. (20% acceptance rate.)

Daniel Ashbrook and Thad Starner. Learning significant locations and predicting user movement with GPS. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC), Seattle, WA, 2002, pp. 101–108. (19% acceptance rate.)

Daniel Ashbrook and Thad Starner. Enabling ad-hoc collaboration through schedule learning and prediction. In Proceedings of Workshop on Mobile Ad-Hoc Collaboration at SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), Minneapolis, MN, USA, April 2002, 4 pages.

Daniel Ashbrook, Jake Auxier, Maribeth Gandy, and Thad Starner. Experiments in interaction between wearable and environmental infrastructure using the gesture pendant. In Proceedings of HCII Workshop on Wearable Computing, New Orleans, LA, 2001, 5 pages. (extended abstract reviewed)

Thad Starner, Jake Auxier, Daniel Ashbrook, and Maribeth Gandy. The Gesture Pendant: A self-illuminating, wearable, infrared computer vision system for home automation control and medical monitoring. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC), Atlanta, GA, 2000, pp. 87–94. (32% acceptance rate)

Daniel Ashbrook. Context sensing with the Twiddler keyboard. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC), San Francisco, CA, 1999, pp. 197–198.

Presentations

“Situational Impairments and Mobile Microinteractions.” Invited speaker at Intel Labs Seattle, Seattle, WA, December 2009.

“Situational Impairments and Mobile Microinteractions.” Invited speaker at Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, December 2009.

“The Future of Mobile Input.” Invited speaker at US Poultry & Egg Association annual Information Technology Conference, Myrtle Beach, SC, July 2008.

“Wearables, HCI and Mobile Phones.” Invited speaker at Silicon Valley Homebrew Mobile Club (SVHMPC) monthly meeting, Menlo Park, CA, May 2007.

“Mobile Wireless Devices: Trends and Possibilities.” Invited speaker at Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America (RESNA) workshop on Using Mobile Wireless Technology in Rehabilitation and Community Re-Integration, Atlanta, GA, June 2006.

“Contextual Computing Group Research Overview.” Invited speaker at Yahoo, Incorporated, Sunnyvale, CA, June 2006.

“Contextual Computing Group Research Overview.” Invited speaker at Bosch Research and Technology Center, San Jose, CA, June 2006.

“Contextual Computing Group Research Overview.” Invited speaker at Toyota InfoTechnology Center, San Jose, CA, June 2006.

“Contextual Computing Group Research Overview.” Invited speaker at Ricoh Innovations, Menlo Park, CA, June 2006.

Patents

“Magnetic mount eyeglasses display system.” Thad Starner and Daniel Ashbrook. Awarded May 23, 2006 (US7048370).

“Fire alarm beacon system”. Thad Starner and Daniel Ashbrook. Utility patent ﬁled July, 2001. Abandoned due to lack of sponsorship.

“System and method for capturing an image.” Thad Starner, Maribeth Gandy, Daniel Ashbrook, Jake Alan Auxier, Rob Melby, and James Fusia. Utility patent ﬁled August, 2001. Abandoned due to lack of sponsorship.