Wendy Mackay facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Wendy Mackay
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Wendy Mackay in 2014
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| Born |
Wendy Elizabeth Mackay
May 25, 1956 Montreal, Quebec, Canada
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| Citizenship | United States, Canada |
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| Spouse(s) |
Michel Beaudouin-Lafon
(m. 1993) |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Human computer interaction |
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| Thesis | Users and customizable software : a co-adaptive phenomenon (1990) |
| Doctoral advisor | Wanda Orlikowski |
Wendy Elizabeth Mackay, born on May 25, 1956, is a Canadian scientist. She is an expert in human-computer interaction, which is about how people use computers. She has held important roles in the SIGCHI committee, a group for people who study human-computer interaction. Wendy Mackay is also part of the CHI Academy and has received a special grant from the European Research Council.
She was a visiting professor at Stanford University from 2010 to 2012. In 2014, she received the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Service Award. This award recognized her many years of helping the human-computer interaction community.
Today, she leads research at Exsitu. She is also a research director with INRIA Saclay in France. Her work focuses on making computer interfaces easier and more helpful for people. She wants to create tools that help users do their tasks better.
Contents
Education and Learning
Wendy Mackay studied psychology at the University of California, San Diego. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1977. Later, in 1979, she received a Master of Arts in experimental psychology from Northeastern University.
She continued her studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 1990, she earned her Doctor of Philosophy degree. Her research there was about how people use and change software.
Career and Discoveries
After finishing her studies at Northeastern University, Wendy Mackay worked at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). In 1983, she started a special group there to research multimedia. Multimedia means using different types of media, like video and sound, together.
At DEC, she created over 30 multimedia projects. One of her most important projects was IVIS, the world's first interactive video system. This system allowed users to control what they watched.
From 1987 to 1990, she worked on her PhD at MIT. After that, she became a senior research scientist at Xerox PARC. There, she worked on "augmented paper interfaces." This involved combining paper documents with online information. She explored how paper and digital worlds could work together.
She also taught at Stanford University for two years as a visiting professor.
Key Contributions
Wendy Mackay wrote the original software for IVIS, the first interactive video system. She also did one of the first big studies on electronic mail (email) while at MIT. Her special design methods are now taught at top universities around the world. These include Stanford, MIT, Georgia Tech, and the University of British Columbia.
She has written more than 200 research articles about human-computer interaction. She has also helped organize many important conferences. These include the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) and the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST).
Awards and Recognition
Wendy Mackay has received many awards for her work:
- In 2009, she was chosen as a member of the CHI Academy. This is a special honor for leaders in human-computer interaction.
- Also in 2009, she won a "best paper award" at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI). This was for her paper called Musink: Composing Music through Augmented Drawing. Only the top 1% of papers receive this award.
- In 2011, she received another SIGCHI Best Paper Award. This was for her work on Mid-air Pan-and-Zoom on Wall-sized Displays.
- In 2014, she was given the SIGCHI Lifetime Service Award.
- In 2019, she became an ACM Fellow. This award recognized her important work in human-computer interaction, mixed reality, and participatory design.
- In 2020, she received the Suffrage Science award.
- In 2024, she received the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Research Award. This award recognized her many contributions to the study of Human-Computer Interaction.
Personal Life
Wendy Mackay married Michel Beaudouin-Lafon on August 11, 1993. They were married in Avalon, California. She has two sons, named Alexandre and Matthew Thomas Beaudouin-Mackay.
