Caroline’s interests after school included Egyptian archaeology and engineering, and she pursued both of these at tertiary level. Engineering was put on hold when the distraction of computer science and programming became too great, so she turned to the dark side and entered the nerdy computer science department to complete her first degree (B Comp(Comp Sci)). She was able to combine her interests in ancient architecture and in more technical pursuits (scientific visualization and computer animation) during her 1st class Honours year in archaeology. She created a virtual 3D reconstruction of an ancient Egyptian temple at a time when this sort of work was still considered to be magic by some!
She worked in Egypt for a few months every year digging up dead people and documenting the funerary architecture in which they were found. At the time she was working towards her masters in Egyptology, which was completed in 2004. Back in Australia, archaeology jobs often consisted of sinking post-holes along new sections of highway. This was not terribly exciting so, to do something more worthwhile, during university semester she taught Technical Documentation and Professional Communication subjects in the Monash Computer Science department.
From there she joined Moldflow, where, naturally she took to working in the technical documentation area but found that much of her time was spent tackling software design problems and critiquing interfaces. Following the acquisition of Moldflow by Autodesk, the natural next step in her twisty career path was to establish the Product Design team for Moldflow. A few title changes later and she is now a senior UX designer who still enjoys writing and editing.
During last year’s maternity leave, Caroline began editing the DUX blog. She has two small children, one of whom already understands the iPhone interface design issues and has devised various workarounds. The response of the other is to throw the thing off her high chair.
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