She was also involved in organizing CHI conferences and was a member on the editorial board of ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction.

[1] In 1970, Coutaz received her PhD in computer science from Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France, where she specialized in operating systems.

[2] Coutaz's research interests shifted from operating systems to human-computer interaction after attending a CHI conference in 1983.

She co-founded two groups part of the CNRS national programme on computer-supported cooperative work and multimodal HCI.

[3] In 2008, Coutaz coordinated a group working on ambient intelligence for the Ministry of Higher Education, Research, and Innovation, with the purpose of confronting societal challenges in novel ways.

[citation needed] After achieving her PhD in 1970, Coutaz pursued her research interests in operating systems and computer networks.

The goal of the project was to create an intelligent agent which could facilitate communication between people of different cultures when solving a common problem.

Three key scientific issues were addressed: context management and awareness, semantic heterogeneity, and human control versus system autonomy.