[6] Sellen earned a master's degree in industrial engineering from the University of Toronto, and a PhD in cognitive science from the University of California, San Diego under the supervision of Don Norman.
as well as for various corporate research laboratories including Xerox PARC, Apple Inc., and HP Labs before joining Microsoft in 2004.
[4] With Richard H. R. Harper, Sellen wrote The Myth of the Paperless Office (MIT Press, 2001).
[12] In 2016 she became a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) "for contributions to human-computer interaction and the design of human-centered technology".
[3][5] She was elected as a foreign member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2020, for "contributions that ensure consideration of human capabilities in the design of computer systems".