After doing a degree in Mathematics at Oxford University, Caroline started work as a software engineer for a large software house. It rapidly became obvious that she had an aptitude for management, so within a year she was managing projects. She continued as a project manager/software engineer in a variety of industries, including electronic point of sale, process control systems, telecommunications, and optical character recognition of printed and hand-written documents.

Caroline started her business, Effortmark Limited, when she discovered usability and realized that all along she'd been much more interested in what computers are for than in how they are put together.

She became fascinated with the problem of getting accurate answers from users when she was consulting with HM Revenue and Customs (the UK tax authority) on how to deal with large volumes of tax forms.

She became an expert in forms design, and is co-author of Forms that work: Designing web forms for usability.

Along the way, she completed an MBA with the Open University, which led to tutoring for them in project management and usability, to co-authoring a post-graduate course in user interface design, and the textbook "User Interface Design and Evaluation". The Open University, the UK's largest university, continues to be a key Effortmark client; she has worked with them on the overall information architecture of their enormous web site and on the design and content strategy for key areas such as the prospectus.

Her interest in surveys began when she discovered that academics tend to frame the challenge of getting accurate answers from users as a problem in survey methodology. She then found that it was rather convenient to be able to advise clients on when to do a survey and how to improve the user experience of surveys. She has been writing and presenting on survey design since 2002.

Caroline says "My deep, dark secret of surveys is that I'm just as likely to talk a client out of doing a survey as suggesting one. But if you're tenacious, thorough, and prepared to invest properly in your survey then you'll be rewarded with valuable insights".

Caroline is a Chartered Engineer, Associate Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication, and the co-founder of the Design to Read project which aims to bring together practitioners and researchers who are working on designing for people who do not read easily.