computer science

Mary Czerwinski

Mary Czerwinski is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Mary Czerwinski rather than just read about it. In short: Mary Czerwinski is an American cognitive scientist and computer-human interaction expert who used to work for Microsoft Research as the manager of the Human Understanding and Empathy (HUE) group researching and developing systems that recognize, interpret, process and respond to human emotions for social good. Czerwinski resides in Redmond, WA.

Key takeaways

Mary Czerwinski belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Mary Czerwinski to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Mary Czerwinski from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Mary Czerwinski is an American cognitive scientist and computer-human interaction expert who used to work for Microsoft Research as the manager of the Human Understanding and Empathy (HUE) group researching and developing systems that recognize, interpret, process and respond to human emotions for social good. Czerwinski resides in Redmond, WA.

Education Czerwinski's education included 1978-1982—M.A; B.A, Experimental Psychology; Psychology at Ball State University She earned her doctorate in cognitive science from Indiana University Bloomington 1982-1988.

Career and research She worked in computer-human interaction for Bellcore, the Johnson Space Center, and Compaq, and also held an adjunct position at Rice University while at Compaq. She moved to Microsoft in 1996, as a usability tester in product development. Two years later, she joined Microsoft Research, as the first social scientist to work there. She worked in the visualization and interaction research group managing researchers, designers, and developers doing human-computer interaction research. Her main research focus is around large/multiple displays, social and physiological computing, novel information visualizations and interaction techniques She was also an affiliated faculty member with the psychology department at the University of Washington from 1996 to 2009, and has been an adjunct professor in Washington's Information School since 2011. In 2015 she was named a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery "for contributions to human-computer interaction and leadership in the CHI community." In 2014, she also received the Distinguished Alumni award from Indiana University's Brain and Psychological Sciences department and will receive a Distinguished Alumni award from the College of Arts and Sciences from Indiana in February, 2018. Czerwinski retired from Microsoft Research in 2024. Czerwinski has published over a hundred papers during her time at Microsoft Collectively, her work has been cited over 10,000 times since 2016. Her work focuses on developing Artificial Emotional Intelligence (AEI) to create systems that recognize and respond to human emotions. She promotes the idea of balancing emotions rather than striving for nonstop productivity and envisions AI enhancing well-being and efficiency in the workplace by adapting to users' emotional states.

Awards ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Service Award, ACM Fellow (2016), ACM Distinguished Scientist (2010), Fellow of the American Psychological Science Association (2018), Distinguished Alumni Award from Indiana University's Brain and Psychological Sciences department (2014). Chicago Global Visionaries Award (2006), EAI (European Alliance for Innovation) (2019) and elected to the National Academy of Engineering (2022).

Journals/conference papers/patents

Journal and conference papers Czerwinski, M., Horvitz, E., & Wilhite, S. (2004). "A diary study of task switching and interruptions." Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Robertson, G., Czerwinski, M., Larson, K., Robbins, D. C., Thiel, D., & van Dantzich, M. (1998). "Data mountain: Using spatial memory for document management." Proceedings of the 11th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology. Fisher, D., DeLine, R., Czerwinski, M., & Drucker, S. (2012). "Interactions with big data analytics." interactions, 19(3), 50–59. Baudisch, P., Cutrell, E., Czerwinski, M., Robbins, D. C., Tandler, P., Bederson, B. B., & Zierlinger, A. (2003). "Drag-and-Pop and Drag-and-Pick: Techniques for accessing remote screen content on touch-and-pen-operated systems." INTERACT, 3, 57–64. Larson, K., & Czerwinski, M. (1998). "Web page design: Implications of memory, structure, and scent for information retrieval." Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Czerwinski, M., Cutrell, E., & Horvitz, E. (2000). "Instant messaging and interruption: Influence of task type on performance." OZCHI 2000 Conference Proceedings, 356, 361–367. Biehl, J. T., Czerwinski, M., Smith, G., & Robertson, G. G. (2007). "FASTDash: A visual dashboard for fostering awareness in software teams." Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Czerwinski, M., Smith, G., Regan, T., Meyers, B., Robertson, G. G., & Starkweather, G. (2003). "Toward characterizing the productivity benefits of very large displays." INTERACT, 3, 9–16. Shneiderman, B., Fischer, G., Czerwinski, M., Resnick, M., Myers, B., Candy, L., ... & Terry, M. (2006). "Creativity support tools: Report from a US National Science Foundation sponsored workshop." International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 20(2), 61–77. McDuff, D., Karlson, A., Kapoor, A., Roseway, A., & Czerwinski, M. (2012). "AffectAura: An intelligent system for emotional memory." Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Patents Gupta, A., & Czerwinski, M. P. (2007). "Integrating collaborative messaging into an electronic mail program." US Patent 7,222,156. Czerwinski, M., Smith, G., Meyers, B., Baudisch, P. M., & Robertson, G. G. (2011). "System and method for managing software applications in a graphical user interface." US Patent 7,913,183. Czerwinski, M., Dumais, S. T., Dziadosz, S. E., Robbins, D. C., & Robertson, G. G. (2001). "Methods, apparatus, and data structures for providing a user interface, which exploits spatial memory, to objects." US Patent 6,188,405.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Mary Czerwinski

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Mary Czerwinski claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Mary Czerwinski before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Mary Czerwinski ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Mary Czerwinski

In research: Mary Czerwinski appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Mary Czerwinski in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Mary Czerwinski is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics American cognitive scientists, American computer scientists, American women academics, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Mary Czerwinski outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Mary Czerwinski in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Mary Czerwinski means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Mary Czerwinski out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Mary Czerwinski in simple terms?

Why does Mary Czerwinski matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Mary Czerwinski?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Mary Czerwinski.