Jason A. Brotherton, Ph.D.
Royal Society USA Research Fellow
UCLIC Visiting Researcher



[Curriculum Vitae - PDF ]
UCLIC
University College London
31/32, Alfred Place
LONDON, WC1E 7DP

+44 (0)20 7679 5204 (w)
j.brotherton@ucl.ac.uk

Research Overview
My research focuses on the capture and subsequent access of activities, events, and memories that occur in our everyday lives through learning, visiting places, doing things and meeting people - in other words, living!

RESEARCH THEMES

Electronic Classrooms
Ubiquitous computing enhances the learning environment & process.

Skill Acquisition
Facilitating on-demand learning of skills. What do you want to do today?

Everyday Capture
Personal Video Capture lets you never forget anything you've ever seen or heard.

My previous work was with eClass [1], an automated classroom that records what is said and presented, and generates a set of online notes from the captured materials. Extensive real-world evaluation of eClass indicates that automated capture and access in the college classroom is both effective and desired by students and teachers [2].

Additionally, I believe that using capture and access to record or enrich an experience is a general technique that can be applied across a wide variety of domains. I am continuing to develop electronic classrooms, but I am also looking at different kinds of learning: skill learning. I see capture and access enabling anyone to learn a specific dance, juggling trick, or even playing a musical instrument like the piano. In addition, I am also looking at how capture and access can simulate a photographic memory, as well as create new types memories. (more about capture and access)

Methodology
Each project will follow the same methodology common to ubiquitous computing research: build, deploy, evaluate. Building is the necessary first step because these systems do not already exist. Deployment and everyday use is critical because it isn't until the systems have become "weaved into the fabric of our lives" that we can evaluate them reliably. The need for evaluation is obvious - how has the system altered a persons' routine or task - as often one cannot predict how these systems will end up being used. In turn, the evaluation prompts a new cycle of refinement, deployment, and evaluation.

Measurable outcomes are not just the systems or the publications associated with the research, but also how they offer insights into capture and access as a general field of research, and guidelines for interfaces with computer-augmented everyday objects. For example, how does one search through years of video to find an event? What if the years of video were simply just a recording of the person's life? The answers to such questions will contribute to the wider field of capture and access.

This research is supported through a
Royal Society USA Research Fellowship.


  1. BROTHERTON, J. and ABOWD, G. 2002. eClass. Sixth chapter in The Digital University: Building a Learning Community. Reza Hazemi, Stephen Hailes, and Steve Wilbur (eds), Springer Verlag, 2002, pp.252, ISBN 185233-478-9.
  2. BROTHERTON, J. and ABOWD, G. 2004. Lessons Learned from eClass: Assessing Automated Capture and Access in the Classroom. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (ToCHI). To appear Spring/Summer 2004.