I am cognitive psychologist with a background in cognitive neuroscience. In 2000 I joined the Adaptive Systems and Interaction group at Microsoft Research, working to improve the "impedance match" between humans and their technologies.

My research mainly concerns the exploration and measurement of human interactions with information technology. Over the years, I've been fortunate to work on a broad range of HCI topics, ranging from input technologies to visual perception to brain-computer interfaces to intelligent notifications and disruptions. These days I spend much of my time thinking about information interaction. With terabytes of information available at our fingertips, how do people find new information (i.e., search) and then how do they retrieve information they've seen before? How can we design systems and interaction techniques that make accessing this world of information simple and intuitive?

Accepted & In Preparation (email for preprints or more information)

André, P., Cutrell, E., Tan, D.S. & Smith, G. (2009). Designing novel image search interfaces by understanding unique characteristics and usage. Accepted for INTERACT 2009, Uppsala, Sweden.

2009

Bergman, O., Tucker, S. Beyth-Marom, R. Cutrell, E. & Whittaker, S. (2009). It’s not that important: Demoting personal information of low subjective importance using GrayArea. In Proceedings of CHI'09, Human Factors in Computing Systems, (Boston), ACM press, 269-278.

Buscher, G., Cutrell, E. & Morris, M. (2009). What do you see when you’re surfing? Using eye tracking to predict salient regions of Web pages. In Proceedings of CHI'09, Human Factors in Computing Systems, (Boston), ACM press, 21-30.

Moraveji, N., Inkpen, K. Cutrell, E. & Balakrishnan, R. (2009). A Mischief of mice: Examining children’s performance in single display groupware systems with 1 to 32 mice. In Proceedings of CHI'09, Human Factors in Computing Systems, (Boston), ACM press, 2157-2166.

Teevan, J., Cutrell, E., Fisher, D., Drucker, S., Ramos, G., André, P. & Hu, C (2009). Visual snippets: Summarizing Web pages for search and revisitation. In Proceedings of CHI'09, Human Factors in Computing Systems, (Boston), ACM press, 2023-2032.

 2008

Baudisch, P., Zotov, A., Cutrell, E., & Hinckley, K.(2008). Starburst: a Target Expansion Algorithm for Non-Uniform Target Distributions. In Proceedings of AVI 2008, Napoli, Italy, May 28-30, pp. 129-137.

Wobbrock, J.O., Cutrell, E. Harada, S. & MacKenzie, I.S. (2008). An Error Model for Pointing Based on Fitts’ Law. In Proceedings of CHI'08, Human Factors in Computing Systems, (Florence), ACM press, 1613-1622.
Best of CHI Award

Alberts, A., Cutrell, E., & Duchowski, A. Course for CHI 2008: Augmenting Usability with Eye Movement Process Metrics: Hands-On Training. All-day course presented at CHI 2008. Student guide for course.

2007

Cutrell, E., & Guan, Z. (2007). What are you looking for? An eye-tracking study of information usage in Web Search. In Proceedings of CHI'07, Human Factors in Computing Systems, (San Jose, April 2007), ACM press, 407-416.
Best of CHI honorable mention

Guan, Z., & Cutrell, E. (2007). An eye-tracking study of the effect of target rank on Web search. In Proceedings of CHI'07, Human Factors in Computing Systems, (San Jose, April 2007), ACM press, 417-420.

Cutrell, E. & Guan, Z.(2007). An eye-tracking study of information usage in Web search: Variations in target position and contextual snippet length. Tech report for Microsoft Research, MSR-TR-2007-01

2006

Cutrell, E., Robbins, D.C., Dumais, S.T. & Sarin, R. (2006). Fast, flexible filtering with Phlat - Personal search and organization made easy. In Proceedings of CHI'06, Human Factors in Computing Systems, (Montréal, April 2006), ACM press, 261-270. Try Phlat!
Best of CHI honorable mention

Hinckley, K., Guimbretiere, F., Baudisch, P., Sarin, R., Agrawala, M., Cutrell, E. (2006). The springboard: multiple modes in one spring-loaded control. In Proceedings of CHI'06, Human Factors in Computing Systems, (Montréal, April 2006), ACM press, 181-190.

Cutrell, E. & Dumais, S.T. (2006). Exploring personal information. In Communications of the ACM (Special Issue: Supporting exploratory search), 49(4), 50-51.

Cutrell, E., Dumais, S.T., & Teevan, J. (2006). Searching to eliminate personal information management. In Communications of the ACM (Special Issue: Personal information management), 49(1), 58-64.

2005

Wilson, A. & Cutrell, E.  (2005). FlowMouse: A computer vision-based pointing and gesture input device. In Francesca Costabile, M. & Paternò, F. (Eds.), Human-Computer Interaction INTERACT '05, (Rome, September 2005), Springer (for IFIP), 565-578.

Baudisch, P., Cutrell, E., Hinckley, K., & Eversole, A. (2005). Snap-and-go: Helping users align objects without the modality of traditional snapping. In Proceedings of CHI '05, Human Factors in Computing Systems, (Portland, April 2005), ACM press, 301-310.

2004

Baudisch, P., Cutrell, E., Hinckley, K., & Gruen, R. (2004). Mouse ether: Accelerating the acquisition of targets across multi-monitor displays. In Extended Abstracts of CHI '04, Human Factors in Computing Systems, (Vienna, April 2004), ACM press, 1379-1382.

Robbins, D.C., Cutrell, E., Sarin, R., & Horvitz, E. (2004).  Advancing interaction: ZoneZoom: Map navigation for smartphones with recursive view segmentation. In Proceedings of the working conference on Advanced visual interfaces (AVI '04), (Gallipoli, May 2004), ACM press, 231-234.

Dumais, S., Cutrell, E., Sarin, R., & Horvitz, E. (2004). Implicit Queries (IQ) for contextualized Search. In Poster Session in Proceedings of SIGIR '04, (Sheffield, UK, July 2004), ACM press, 594.

2003

Dumais, S., Cutrell, E., Cadiz, J.J., Jancke, G., Sarin, R., & Robbins, D.C. (2003). Stuff I've Seen: A System for Personal Information Retrieval and Re-Use. Proceedings of SIGIR 2003 (Toronto, July 2003).

Baudisch, P., Cutrell, E., Robbins, D., Czerwinski, M., Tandler, P., Bederson, B., & Zierlinger, A. (2003). Drag-and-Pop and Drag-and-Pick: Techniques for accssing remote screen conten on touch- and pen-operated systems. In Rauterberg,M., Menozzi, M, & Wesson, J. (Eds.), Human-Computer Interaction INTERACT '03, (Zürich, September 2003), IOS Press (for IFIP), 57-64.

Baudisch, P., Cutrell, E., & Robertson, G. (2003). High-density cursor: A visualization technique that helps users keep track of fast-moving mouse cursors.  In Rauterberg,M., Menozzi, M, & Wesson, J. (Eds.), Human-Computer Interaction INTERACT '03, (Zürich, September 2003), IOS Press (for IFIP), 236-243.

McLoone, H., Hinckley, K. & Cutrell, E. (2003). Bimanual Interaction on the Microsoft Office Keyboard. In Rauterberg,M., Menozzi, M, & Wesson, J. (Eds.), Human-Computer Interaction INTERACT '03, (Zürich, September 2003), IOS Press (for IFIP), 49-56.

Ringel, M., Cutrell, E., Dumais, S., & Horvitz, E. (2003). Milestones in Time: The Value of Landmarks in Retrieving Information from Personal Stores. In Rauterberg,M., Menozzi, M, & Wesson, J. (Eds.), Human-Computer Interaction INTERACT '03, (Zürich, September 2003), IOS Press (for IFIP), 184-191.

2002

Hinckley, K., Cutrell, E., Bathiche, S., & Muss, T. (2002). Quantitative Analysis of Scrolling Techniques. In Proceedings of CHI '02, Human Factors in Computing Systems, (Minneapolis, April 2002), ACM press, 65-72.

2001

Czerwinski, M., Horvitz, E. & Cutrell, E. (2001). Subjective Duration Assessment: An Implicit Probe for Software Usability. In Proceedings of IHM-HCI 2001 Conference, Volume 2, (September, 2001, Lille, France), p. 167-170.

Cutrell, E., Czerwinski, M. & Horvitz, E. (2001). Notification, Disruption and Memory: Effects of Messaging Interruptions on Memory and Performance. In Hirose, Michitaka (Ed.), Human-Computer Interaction INTERACT '01, (Tokyo, July 9-13), IOS Press (for IFIP), 263-269.

LeeTiernan, S., Cutrell, E., & Czerwinski, M., Hoffman, H. (2001). Effective Notification Systems Depend on User Trust. In Hirose, Michitaka (Ed.), Human-Computer Interaction INTERACT '01, (Tokyo, July 9-13), IOS Press (for IFIP), 684-685.

Rademacher, P., Lengyel, J., Cutrell, E., & Whitted, T. (2001). Measuring the perception of visual realism in images. To appear in proceedings of the 12th Eurographics Workshop on Rendering, London.

Dumais, S.T., Cutrell, E. and Chen, H. (2001). Optimizing search by showing results in context.  In Proceedings of CHI '01, Human Factors in Computing Systems, (Seattle, April 2001), ACM press, 277-284.

2000

Dumais, S.T., Cutrell, E. and Chen, H. (2000).  Classified displays of web search results. Invited presentation at ASIS&T SIG/CR Classification Research Workshop, Nov 12, 2000, pp. 87-90.

Czerwinski, M., Cutrell, E. & Horvitz, E. (2000). Instant Messaging and Interruption: Influence of Task Type on Performance. In Paris, C., Ozkan, N., Howard, S. and Lu, S. (Ed's.), OZCHI 2000 Conference Proceedings, (Sydney, Australia, Dec. 4-8), 356-361.

Czerwinski, M., Cutrell, E. & Horvitz, E. (2000). Instant Messaging: Effects of Relevance and Time. In S. Turner, P. Turner (Eds), People and Computers XIV: Proceedings of HCI 2000, Vol. 2, British Computer Society, 71-76.

Cutrell, E., Czerwinski, M. & Horvitz, E. (2000). Effects of Instant Messaging Interruptions on Computing Tasks. In Extended Abstracts of CHI ’2000, Human Factors in Computing Systems, (The Hague, April 1-6, 2000), ACM press, 99-100.