Projects | Publications | Interns | Professional Activities | Press

My research area is Human-Computer Interaction with a focus on Ubiquitous Computing and Computer Supported Cooperative Work.  I study and build technology for homes and families.  My current focus is home automation as a member of the HomeOS project. I have studied home heating, mobile context-aware applications for activity recognition and location sharing, reducing email overload, interacting with technology beyond the desktop, and annotations for asynchronous collaboration. I am a Senior Member of the ACM and was honored to receive a Borg Early Career Award in 2010.  I am helping organize the HomeSys 2013 workshop at UbiComp 2013 and the co-general chair of UbiComp 2014. I am also a board member of CRA-W, a group that works to increase the number of women in computing.

At Microsoft Research, I am a member of the Computational User Experiences (CUE) group. I graduated summa cum laude from Williams College in 1996 with a double major in Computer Science and Mathematics. I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Washington in Sept 2002 and I have been at Microsoft Research since 2004.  My CV and biography have more details. 

Publications

• Phoneprioception: Enabling Mobile Phones to Infer Where They are Kept
  Jason Wiese, T.Scott Saponas, A.J. Bernheim Brush, CHI 2013
• Digital Neighborhood Watch: Investigating the Sharing of Camera Data Amongst Neighbors, A.J. Bernheim Brush, Jaeyeon Jung, Ratul Mahajan, Frank Martinez, CSCW 2013.
• Demo Abstract: Augmenting Homes with Custom Devices using .NET Gadgeteer and HomeOS, James Scott, A.J. Bernheim Brush, Ratul Mahajan, BuildSys 2012 Demos.
• Sustainability does not begin with the individual
  Mike Hazas, A.J. Bernheim Brush, James Scott, Sustainability in (Inter)action Forum, Interactions, September + October 2012.
• HomeLab: Shared Infrastructure for Home Technology Field Studies
  A.J. Bernheim Brush, Jaeyeon Jung, Ratul Mahajan, James Scott, HomeSys Workshop at Ubicomp 2012
• Goldilocks and the Two Mobile Devices: Going Beyond All-Or-Nothing Access to a Device’s Applications Eiji Hayashi, Oriana Riva, Karin Strauss, A.J. Brush, and Stuart Schechter, Symposium On Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS) 2012
• SpeechToast: Augmenting Notifications with Speech Input Focus
  A.J. Bernheim Brush and Paul Johns, AVI 2012, (Note)
• Trajectory-Aware Mobile Search
  Shahriyar Amini, A.J. Bernheim Brush, John Krumm, Jaime Teevan, Amy Karlson, CHI 2012, (Note)
• "You're Capped!" Understanding the Effects of Bandwidth Caps on Broadband Use in the Home Marshini Chetty, Richard Banks, A.J. Bernheim Brush, Jonathan Donner, Rebecca E. Grinter, CHI 2012
• Your Phone or Mine? Fusing Body, Touch and Device Sensing for Multi-User Device-Display Interaction Mahsan Rofouei, Andrew W. Wilson, A.J. Bernheim Brush, Stewart Tansley, CHI 2012, (Note)
• It's Use by Us: Family Friendly Access Control
  A.J. Bernheim Brush, Technology for Today's Family Workshop at CHI 2012
• An Operating System for the Home
  Colin Dixon, Ratul Mahajan, Sharad Agarwal, AJ Brush, Bongshin Lee, Stefan Saroiu, and Victor Bahl, NSDI, USENIX, April 2012
• PreHeat: Controlling Home Heating Using Occupancy Prediction
  James Scott, A.J. Bernheim Brush, John Krumm, Brian Meyers, Mike Hazas, Steve Hodges and Nicolas Villar,  Ubicomp 2011
• Understanding the Importance of Location, Time, and People in Mobile Local Search Behavior Jaime Teevan, Amy Karlson, Shahriyar Amini, A.J. Bernheim Brush, John Krumm, Mobile HCI 2011 (Note)
• Learning Time-Based Presence Probabilities
  John Krumm and A.J. Bernheim Brush, Pervasive 2011, Best Paper Award.
• SpeakerSense: Energy Efficient Unobtrusive Speaker Identification on Mobile Phones Hong Lu, A.J. Bernheim Brush, Bodhi Priyantha, Amy Karlson, Jie Liu. Pervasive 2011, Best Paper Award Nominee.
• Human-Activity Recognition (HAR) Everywhere: Embedded, Mobile, Desktop, Home & Cloud
  T. Scott Saponas, Brian R. Meyers and A.J. Bernheim Brush, Pervasive 2011 Workshop on Frontiers in Activity Recognition using Pervasive Sensing (IWFAR)
• Home Automation in the Wild: Challenges and Opportunities
  A.J. Bernheim Brush, Bongshin Lee, Ratul Mahajan, Sharad Agarwal, Stefan Saroiu, Colin Dixon, CHI 2011
• Speech@Home: An Exploratory Case Study
  A.J. Bernheim Brush, Kori Inkpen, Brian Meyers, Paul Johns, CHI 2011 Case Studies
• While the Meter is Running: Computing in a Capped World
  Marshini Chetty, Richard Banks, A.J. Brush, Jonathan Donner, and Rebecca E. Grinter, Interactions Volume 18, Issue 2
• The Home Needs an Operating System (and an App Store)
  Colin Dixon, Ratul Mahajan, Sharad Agarwal, A.J. Brush, Bongshin Lee, Stefan Saroiu, and Victor Bahl,  HotNets 2010
• Exploring End User Preferences for Location Obfuscation, Location-Based Services, and the Value of Location
  A.J. Bernheim Brush, John Krumm, James Scott, Ubicomp 2010.
• User Experiences with Activity-Based Navigation on Mobile Devices
  A.J. Bernheim Brush, Amy Karlson, James Scott and Menlo team members,
  Mobile HCI 2010
• Home Heating Using GPS-Based Arrival Prediction
  James Scott, John Krumm, Brian Meyers, A. J. Brush, and Ashish Kapoor, Pervasive 2010 Workshop on Energy Awareness and Conservation through Pervasive Applications
• Activity Recognition Research: The Good, the Bad and the Future
  A.J. Bernheim Brush, John Krumm, and James Scott, Pervasive 2010 Workshop on How to do Good Research in Activity Recognition
• Newport: Enabling Sharing During Mobile Calls
  Junius A. Gunaratne and A.J. Bernheim Brush, CHI 2010.
• Video Playdate: Toward Free Play across Distance
  Svetlana Yarosh, Kori M. Inkpen, and A.J. Bernheim Brush, CHI 2010.
• Automatic Classification of Daily Fluid Intake
  Jonathan Lester, Desney Tan, Shwetak Patel, A.J. Bernheim Brush, Pervasive Health 2010, Best Paper Award
• Understanding Family Communication across Time Zones
  Xiang Cao, Abigail Sellen, A.J. Bernheim Brush, David Kirk, Darren Edge, Xianghua Ding.
  CSCW 2010 short paper.
• A.J. Bernheim Brush, "Ubiquitous Computing Field Studies", in John Krumm (ed), Ubiquitous Computing Fundamentals, 2009, pp. 161-202.
• Investigating the Use of Voice and Ink for Mobile Micronote Capture
  Adrienne Andrew, Amy K. Karlson, A.J. Bernheim Brush, Interact 2009.
• It's no secret: Measuring the security and reliability of authentication via 'secret' questions, Stuart Schechter, A.J. Bernheim Brush, Serge Egelman, 2009 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy.
• It’s Not Easy Being Green:Understanding Home Computer Power Management
  Marshini Chetty, A.J. Bernheim Brush, Brian R. Meyers, Paul Johns, CHI 2009.
• Can I Borrow Your Phone? Understanding Concerns When Sharing Mobile Phones
  Amy Karlson, A.J. Bernheim Brush, Stuart Schechter, CHI 2009 short paper.
• Exploring Awareness Needs and Information Display Preferences Between Coworkers, A.J Bernheim Brush, Brian R. Meyers, James Scott, Gina Venolia, CHI 2009 short paper.
• "The Calendar is Crucial": Coordination and Awareness through the Family Calendar 
  Carman Neustaedter, A.J. Bernheim Brush, and Saul Greenberg,
  ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, Vol 16, Issue 1, April 2009, Also joint MSR Research Tech. Report and Dept. of Computer Science at University of Calgary Tech. Report. MSR-TR-2006-66.
• Insights on Interactive Tabletops: A Survey of Researchers and Developers
  Hrvoje Benko, Merrie Morris, A.J. Bernheim Brush, Andy Wilson, MSR Tech Report: MSR-TR-2009-22. Mar. 2009. 
• SPARCS: Exploring Sharing Suggestions to Enhance Family Connectedness
  A.J. Bernheim Brush, Kori Inkpen, Kimberly Tee, CSCW 2008.  Video
• Family Accounts: A new paradigm for user accounts within the home environment
  Serge Egelman, A.J. Bernheim Brush, Kori Inkpen, CSCW 2008.
• Exploring Communication and Sharing Between Extended Families
  Kimberly Tee, A.J. Bernheim Brush, Kori Inkpen, IJHCS Special Issue on Family Communication Technologies
• A Field Study of Knowledge Workers’ Use of Interactive Horizontal Displays
  Merrie Morris, A.J. Bernheim Brush, Brian Meyers, IEEE Tabletop 2008.
• DocuDesk: An Interactive Surface for Creating and Rehydrating Many-to-Many Linkages among Paper and Digital Documents.
  Kate Everitt, Merrie Morris, A.J. Bernheim Brush, Andy Wilson, IEEE Tabletop 2008.
• Life Scheduling to Support Multiple Social Roles
  Andrea Grimes and A.J. Bernheim Brush, CHI 2008 Short paper
• SuperBreak: Using Interactivity to Enhance Ergonomic Breaks
  Dan Morris, A.J. Bernheim Brush, Brian Meyers, CHI 2008
• Reading Revisited: Evaluating the Usability of Digital Display Surfaces for Active Reading Tasks.
  Merrie Morris, A.J. Bernheim Brush, Brian Meyers, IEEE Tabletop 2007.
• Yours, Mine, and Ours? Sharing and Use of Technology in Domestic Environments.
  A.J. Bernheim Brush and Kori M. Inkpen, Ubicomp 2007
• Did You Leave the Calendar On? Exploring trade-offs between availability and power consumption in the home.
  A.J. Bernheim Brush. Position Paper for Ubicomp 2007 workshop: Ubiquitous Sustainability: Technologies for Green Values
• A Digital Family Calendar in the Home: Lessons from Field Trials of LINC
  Carman Neustaedter, A.J. Bernheim Brush, and Saul Greenberg, Graphics Interface 2007. Related technical report: LINC in the Home: Field Trials of a Digital Family Calendar, MSR-TR-2006-66
• Understanding Memory Triggers for Task Tracking
  A.J. Bernheim Brush, Brian Meyers, Desney Tan and Mary Czerwinski, CHI 2007 Short paper.
•  Revisiting Whittaker & Sidner's "Email Overload"; Ten Years Later
  Danyel Fisher, A.J. Bernheim Brush, Eric Gleave and Marc A. Smith, CSCW 2006 Note.
• LINC, An Inkable Digital Family Calendar. The Video
  Carman Neustaedter, A.J. Bernheim Brush, and Saul Greenberg, CSCW 2006 Video program
• "LINC-ing" the Family: The Participatory Design of an Inkable Family Calendar
  Carman Neustaedter and A.J. Bernheim Brush, CHI 2006.  Best Paper Nominee
• Dance Your Work Away:Exploring Step User Interfaces
  Brian Meyers, A.J. Bernheim Brush, Steven Drucker, Marc Smith and Mary Czerwinski, alt.chi at CHI 2006.
• IT@Home:Often Best Left to Professionals
  A.J. Bernheim Brush, Position paper for CHI 2006 Workshop: http://www.ischool.washington.edu/mcdonald/itathome/index.html
• A Survey of Personal and Household Scheduling
  A.J. Bernheim Brush and Tammara Combs Turner, Group 2005 posters. We also have a longer technical report A Survey of Personal and Household Scheduling Practices: Implications for Digital Family Calendars available.
• Scanning Objects in the Wild: Assessing an Object Triggered Information System
  A.J. Bernheim Brush, Tammara Combs Turner; Marc A. Smith; Neeti Gupta, UbiComp 2005.
•  The Social Network and Relationship Finder: Social Sorting for Email Triage
  Carman Neustaedter, A.J. Bernheim Brush, Marc A. Smith, Danyel Fisher. CEAS 2005.
• Beyond "From" and "Received": Exploring the Dynamics of Email Triage
  Carman Neustaedter, A.J. Bernheim Brush, and Marc A. Smith, CHI 2005, 1977-1980.
• Designs for Home Life
  A.J. Bernheim Brush, Leysia Palen, Laurel Swan and Alex S. Taylor, SIG at CHI 2005.
• Assessing Differential Usage of Usenet Social Accounting Meta-Data
  A.J. Bernheim Brush, Xiaoqing Wang, Tammara Combs Turner, and Marc A. Smith, CHI 2005, 889-898.
• Terminology and Evaluation: Two Challenges for Awareness Systems Research
  A.J. Bernheim Brush, Position paper for CHI 2005 Workshop on Awareness Systems: Known Results, Theory, Concepts and Future Challenges.
• 'Today' Messages: Lightweight Support for Small Group Awareness via Email
  A.J. Bernheim Brush and Alan Borning, HICSS 2005. (Nominated for a Best Paper Award)
•  A Comparison of Synchronous Remote and Local Usability Studies for an Expert Interface
  A.J. Bernheim Brush, Morgan Ames, and Janet Davis, CHI 2004, 1179-1183.
• Exploring the Relationship Between Personal and Public Annotations
  Catherine C. Marshall and A.J. Bernheim Brush, JCDL 2004, 349-357.
• 'Today' Messages: Lightweight Group Awareness via Email
  A.J. Bernheim Brush and Alan Borning, CHI 2003 Extended Abstracts, 920-921.
• Annotating Digital Documents for Asynchronous Collaboration
  A.J. Bernheim Brush, Ph.D. dissertation, Available as UW Computer Science Technical Report 02-09-02.
• Notification for Shared Annotation of Digital Documents
  A.J. Bernheim Brush, David Bargeron, Jonathan Grudin, and Anoop Gupta, CHI 2002, 89-96.
• From Personal to Shared Annotations
  Catherine Marshall and A.J. Bernheim Brush, CHI 2002 Extended Abstracts, 812-813.
• Supporting Interaction Outside of Class: Anchored Discussion vs. Discussion Boards
  A.J. Bernheim Brush, David Bargeron, Jonathan Grudin, Alan Borning, and Anoop Gupta, CSCL 2002, 425-434.
• Robust Annotation Positioning in Digital Documents
  A.J. Bernheim Brush, David Bargeron, JJ Cadiz, and Anoop Gupta, CHI 2001, 285-292.

Interns Supervised

• Jason Wiese, Summer 2012 (with Scott Saponas) Human activity inference
• Ryder Ziola, Summer 2011 (with Scott Saponas) Human activity inference
• Hong Lu, Summer 2010 (with Bodhi Priyantha, Jie Liu, Amy Karlson) Speech recognition for mobile devices
• Shah Amini, Summer 2010  (with John Krumm, Amy Karlson, Jaime Teevan) Mobile search with destination prediction
• Andres Neyem, Summer 2009 (with Ranveer Chandra) Proximity sensing
• Lana Yarosh, Summer 2009 (with Kori Inkpen)  Free play over video by children
• Junius Gunaratne, Spring 2009  Sharing during mobile calls
• Marshini Chetty, Summer 2008  Home computer power management
• Adrienne Andrew, Spring 2008, (with Amy Karlson) Mobile micronote capture using voice and ink
• Serge Egelman, Winter 2008, (with Kori Inkpen)  Account management on home computers
• Kate Everitt, Summer 2007, (with Merrie Morris) Linking paper and digital documents
• Andrea Grimes, Summer 2006,  Life scheduling and home/work calendar management
• Kimberly Tee, Summer 2006, Spring 2007,  Communication and Sharing between extended family members 
• Carman Neustaedter, Summer 2004, Summer 2005,  LINC, an inkable family calendar

Invited Talks & Recent Professional Activities

• Invited Speaker, Home Automation: Is It Finally Ready for the Mainstream? Williams College CS25 Anniversary, April 2013
• Speaker, Balancing Graduate School and Personal Life, CRA-W Grad Cohort, April 2013
• Speaker, CRA-W CAPP Mentoring Workshop, Nov. 2012
• Faculty Member, Pervasive 2012 Doctoral Consortium, June 2012
• Featured Speaker, CRA-W Distinguished Lecture at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, April 2012
• Keynote speaker, Phone Sense workshop at ACM SenSys 2011
• Panelist, Home Networking at IEEE Computer Communications Workshop 2011
• Featured Speaker, New York Celebration of Women in Computing 2011
• Faculty Member, Ubicomp 2010 Doctoral Consortium
• Tutorial Instructor at Pervasive 2010, Pervasive Computing User Studies
• Faculty Member, CHI 2009 Doctoral Consortium
• Tutorial Instructor at Pervasive 2008, Field Studies for Pervasive Computing
• Panelist, Ubicomp's Role in CSCW at CSCW 2008
• Panelist, Interaction and Infrastructure: Crossing the Divide in Ubicomp Research at Ubicomp 2006

Steering and Organizing Committees

• Ubicomp 2014 General co-chair
• UbiComp SIGCHI Community chair
• CRA-W Board Member
• Joint Ubicomp and Pervasive Steering Committee
• Editorial Advisory Board Member, International Journal of HCI (Feb. 2008 - Aug. 2011)
• ACM SIGCHI VP for Membership & Communications (2006 - 2009)
• Pervasive 2009 Program Commitee co-chair
• Organizer, CSCW 2008 Workshop on Designing for Families
• Ubicomp 2008 Poster Co-Chair
• Organizer, Pervasive 2008 Workshop on Pervasive Computing @ Home
• Group 2007 Workshop Co-chair
• CSCW 2004 Notes Co-Chair

Program Committees

• CHI 2012, CHI 2007 Notes
• CSCW 2013, CSCW 2011, CSCW 2008, CSCW 2006
• Pervasive 2010, Pervasive 2007
• Ubicomp 2011, Ubicomp 2009, Ubicomp 2008, Ubicomp 2007 Late Breaking Results, Ubicomp 2007, Ubicomp 2006

Selected Press

• Williams Computer Science 25th Anniversary, April 2013
• HomeOS: Microsoft Works on Bringing Smart Homes to the Masses, Time TechLand, Apr 2012
• Microsoft forges ahead with new home-automation OS, CNET, Apr 2012
• Microsoft's Smart House: Microsoft Research presents ‘HomeOS’, Technology Review, May 2012
• From Smartphone to Smart Home: Automating the Modern Home, Microsoft Research Connections Blog, April 26, 2012

• New from Microsoft Research: Controlling Home Heating Using Occupancy Prediction
  Software Enabled Earth, The Official Blog of Microsoft's Environmental Sustainability Team, October 31, 2011

• TechFest: A thermostat that knows when you're home
  Seattle Times, March 9, 2011, (Includes video about system)

• Finding Our Way with Digital Bread Crumbs
  Technology Review, 18 August 2010

• Kids experiment with ‘video playdates’
  CNN Tech, 11 June 2010
• The Intersection of Work & Life
  850 Business Magazine, 7 January 2010
• Password reminders: hard to remember, but easy to hack
  Ars Technica, 19 May 2009
• Study: Secret Questions Don't Safeguard Passwords
  PC World Business Center, 19 May 2009
• Are Your "Secret Questions" Too Easily Answered?
  Technology Review, 18 May 2009
• Microsoft’s latest is flat-out impressive
  Seattle Times, 19 July 2006
  
  

Computational User Experience Group

Ubiquitous Computing

CSCW

CRA-W

Join me at the HomeSys 2013 workshop, Sept 9th 2013 at UbiComp2013.