Interview with Linda Macaulay

Linda Macaulay was born in 1949 in Burnley, Lancashire, in the north of England. She is one of four children. Her father was a cabinet maker, before taking work in a factory as an engineer. Her Scottish mother moved to England after the war to be with her husband. She was an accounts clerk, but became a full time mother when the children arrived.

Of her family life, Linda says: “We lived in a small house with two bedrooms, a living room and kitchen; we were always content. We didn’t have much money but we never thought of ourselves as poor, there was always plenty to go round.”

Linda’s father died when she was eleven years old. Linda says: “He was the main breadwinner and at that point my mother was left with four children.  I was eleven, my younger sister was four, my brother was thirteen and my older sister was fourteen, so my mother had quite a task on to try to bring us up.  She’d been working as a dinner lady at a school, but that didn’t bring in much money.  She had a widow’s allowance and that didn’t bring in much money either, so she had to go to work fulltime and work out care for my younger sister with the neighbours mainly, and then the rest of us sort of fended for ourselves.  But, apart from that, it was a very stable environment, a loving environment.

Linda says her mother was one of her biggest influences as grew up. She adds: “One of the things that my mother always said to all three girls was that we had to be financially independent, whatever you do, make sure you can look after yourself, don’t depend on a man to look after you.”  The other big influence was Linda’s maths teacher who introduced her to her first computer at school at the age of seventeen. Linda adds: “That was very exciting; it was a very important time for me.”

Linda was taking A level maths when in 1967 the teacher arranged a class trip to Manchester to see a computer. Linda explains: “This was the time of Harold Wilson, the Labour Prime Minister, and his “white heat of technology” speech. The teacher was enthused by that and she’d also been reading about the first woman to get a PhD in computer science, who was also a nun, Sister Mary Kenneth Keller, in Chicago.  She said, if she can do it, why can’t my girls do it.  She was very enthusiastic and took us to Manchester Technical College to see an Elliott 803 which was in a big room. It was very exciting to be shown how that worked and to be able to have a ourselves.

 “I’d never seen a machine actually do a calculation like that in the sense that you could program it, you could tell it what kind of a calculation you wanted it to do and it would follow your instructions.  I found that really exciting, then after that I decided to find an opportunity to learn more about computers.”

Having passed her eleven-plus, Linda attended a local girls’ grammar school. She says of the experience: “Not having any money nor any sponsors, the only way that I could get an education was because of state support, so that was very important.

I took the eleven-plus and I got into the grammar school, and my mother was able to afford uniforms and all the costs that come with that, and then I could consider going to university because at that time, you got a grant from the government to go to university, otherwise I wouldn’t have gone.  So I was very fortunate in that sense to feel as though if I worked hard then I would be rewarded in a kind of a meritocracy situation so that you could actually benefit from your hard work.”

In 1967, Linda met Patrick, her husband to be. In 1968, she went to Sheffield University to study maths. She says: “At the time the first computer science course was just about coming on stream at Manchester University, but although my maths teacher was excited by computing, she thought it would be better to do maths first and then have the opportunity to go into computing later; it would give me options. I applied to Sheffield because they had just introduced a second-year module in computing, so I could do maths the first year and then opt to do computing in the second year. We learnt Fortran IV programming. … That was very much a manual process; you wrote a program and punched it up onto punch cards which you took to the computer room, asked them to run it through the computer, and then get your results as a printout and you could see whether you’d got it right. At that time the computer only ran one program at a time, so it would put your program into a queue and so you tended typically to run your programs overnight.  It was quite tedious, but it did teach you to check what you did because otherwise you could spend months if you only corrected one error at a time.  So you did a lot of desk checking.  But that was great fun anyway.”

Linda greatly enjoyed university life and her studies, especially maths. She adds: “One of the things I found about learning about computers and doing scientific programming was that at the end of it I didn’t really understand how the computer worked and I really wanted to learn a lot more about that.”

This yearning to understand how computers work, saw Linda apply for a place at St Andrews University, Department of Computational Science, to study for a one year Masters, with a bursary from the UK Science Research Council. She says: “The Masters was a simulation of a time-sharing computer system. The idea of the time-sharing computer system was to overcome the problem of only being able to do one programming job at once. Time-sharing mean you would share the use of memory and the use of the processor between jobs and carry out part of a job in the processor, then swap it out, and then do part of another job and so on.  The idea of the Masters was to come up with some algorithms for sharing the time of the processor among different jobs so that you could run several jobs at once.  It was a topic that was up and coming at the time. The idea of the simulation was so that you could show students how it worked and the impact of different algorithms on the use of a processor and the memory. After I’d done that, I felt as though I did know a bit more about how computers worked, how the memory worked and how you might develop different algorithms for doing that.”

In 1973 after completing her Masters at St Andrews, Linda decided to stay in Scotland and applied for a job as an applications programmer at the Ninewells Hospital.

The hospital used British computers to comply with the government’s advice that all British businesses should use British computers. Linda says: “The one that we had was called CTL Modular One.  As the name suggests, it is designed to be modular.  When we came to use it, it was all in boxes and it wasn’t connected together.  My first task was actually to put it all together.”

Linda, as a programmer, was part of small team that included a project manager and a systems analyst working on a ward-based computer system project under the professor of pharmacology whose project it was. Linda adds: “At that time there weren’t any computers on hospital wards, but there had been a few research projects going on. For this one in Dundee, the professor of pharmacology had received some funding from the Medical Research Council, and he was full of ideas about what a computer could do in a hospital.  We had no spec about what he wanted us to do, so we used to go to meetings every week and he would explain to us what he wanted, and then we’d go the next week and he’d explain again, but something completely different. I learnt a lot from that, I learned how you work out what the requirements are for a computer system and for an application especially. In the end myself and the systems analyst decided we were not going to any more meetings, we were just going to do what we thought we should do and look at research from elsewhere and make a start.”

As well as putting together the computer, Linda also set out to understand how doctors and nurses might want to use the computer. She says: “We interviewed the nurses.  I put together a programmed learning tool so that they could have a go at using the teletype, have a conversation with the computer so that they got the feel for the input and output process. Then we tried to show them things. It was very, very interesting, so much to learn. … It was the beginning of a journey forward-based systems.”

When the hospital contract came to an end, Linda and her husband Patrick decided to go travelling for a while. They returned to the UK when Patrick’s mother was taken ill and lived with her in Burnley. At the same time, Linda found out that she was pregnant with their first child. She says of the experience: “We’d only been back six months when Jon was born, but in that time Patrick’s mother died, so we were still in the house. Patrick had got a new job in Burnley. I was wondering what happens now, what am I going to do. I felt as though in the 1970s we might have been a bit more enlightened, but when it came to the crunch, it was still very much, the man goes to work and the woman stays at home. It just seemed a waste to me because I’d only been working for two years or so.”

Linda applied and got a job in a position working with Wessex Regional Services based in a hospital in Poole, Dorset.  The role involved working on another CTL modular computer.

Linda says: “It was a little more sophisticated than the one in Dundee; we didn’t have paper tape input, we had multiple screens, which I thought was really good fun because you could write a program and run it on one screen and then on the other screen you could  see it in execution.  So you could see in real time where the problems were and then correct them and then let it run a bit more and then correct again. I quite enjoyed that.  We used a language called CORAL 66, which was thought to be a real-time language, whereas in Dundee we used Assembler language.”

The computer was to be used by the pathology lab. Linda adds: “The Lab had lots and lots of different tests that you do on all kinds of weird and wonderful fluids that come from the human body.  The Lab had a machine for each different type of fluid and one machine would print out paper tape, another machine would print out a graph, and another machine would print out an X-ray report or whatever. They were all different outputs and they were all in different numerical units. The doctors ended up with five or six reports on one patient, so the task was to unify the output from all these different machines into single units and then let the doctor have just one report that covered all the tests that had been carried out.

“It sounds fairly easy, but you had to think about how the doctor would use it and whether your results were correct.  If you’re measuring somebody’s glucose level and you’re out by a decimal point, a factor of ten, the doctor could end up giving the patient some glucose when in fact they’ve already got too much. Your calculations could potentially result in a life-or-death situation. That made me quite worried in the sense that there was talk at that time about making programmers liable for what they did. It was at that point that I became interested in the ethics statements of the British Computer Society; what are the responsibilities, how should programmers behave in a professional way and the move towards computing as a profession with standards, ethics and levels of attainment, so that you could move up the ladder of attainment like a proper profession.  To me, it was very important to be supported by that.  We didn’t, as far as I know, make mistakes, but we did do one heck of a lot of testing.  We spent much more time testing than we did writing the programs.”

 Linda enjoyed the role as part of a small team, she says: “The great thing about being in a small team is that you see the whole project through, you don’t just see a small part of it.  We were able to work in a small team to understand the problem, design the solution, write the programs, train people how to use it.”

Linda was the sole woman in the team of three and as a working mother, she experienced some criticism of her choice to work and be the main breadwinner while her husband Patrick looked after their son.  She says: “I was working with two men and the only female company were the women in the office and they were wanted to know why I was going to work when I had a young child, suggesting that I should really be at home looking after him.  They were very unsympathetic.”

At the end of the project with Wessex Regional Computer Services, Linda was offered another project working on automating appointments which did not appeal to her, she says: “I knew that what I was really interested in was working with business to help people learn the potential of computers in business.”

In 1977, she saw a role advertised in Computer Weekly at a technical college in Halifax. She says: “I didn’t really know what a technical college was and also I didn’t know Halifax either, but we moved there. It provided me with the opportunity to work with business, it was a time when everybody was talking about microprocessors and what they could do.  One of the things I did was to go round a number of the factories where they made machine parts and talked to them about the potential of the microprocessor.  They were usually into numerically controlled machines and being able to program the machine was another step up that would revolutionise how the manufacturing was done.  So that was exciting.  … One thing I did find there at the college was I really liked the people.  The staff were such great fun.  They all were so enthusiastic about their subject, whatever it was.”

Whilst teaching Linda decided she wanted to do some research into the interactions between people and computers; a topic she had been considering for some time. She says: “In 1980 I moved to Huddersfield, which was a polytechnic at the time, and one of the reasons for going there was we could stay living where we were and I could just drive to work. It was not only convenient, but the computing department was very applied, and I liked the idea of working with business; I could learn from them and they could learn from me.  There was also the opportunity to pursue my interests in research and in human- computer interaction.”

Asked about her thoughts about human-computer interaction (HCI), Linda says: “It was called man-machine interface at first which was more because it was about things like designing the interface between the pilot and the cockpit of an plane”.

“I was looking for opportunities to learn more.  I came across Professor Ernest Edmonds at Loughborough University and the Science Research Council.  It was the beginning of the Alvey Programme. I had ideas about what I wanted to do because at that time you had only one interface to the computer but people are very different, the way people think, the way they see things, the way they process information is very different, so I was interested to understand if you could develop an adaptive interface; something that adapts to different users. This was the idea that I was working on and Professor Edmonds encouraged me. I got a grant to look at adaptive dialogues in the man-machine interface.”

Linda and her team in the HCI Research Unit recruited forty members of staff to take part in a three hour experiment. She says: “At that time people just had one screen in front of them and computer professionals used command line interfaces, short codes and everything was done very quickly.  We wondered about how admin staff would get on and if they would prefer a menu or would they be able to do this command line interface. We looked at people’s cognitive style, are they field dependent, field independent etc, there are seven different spectrums. We picked out a couple of different spectrums – field dependence, field independence – designed different interfaces and then got staff to use it in a three-hour experiment. We felt that the only way to prove that people really do think differently is to run experiments and try it out.  Dr Chris Fowler, a behavioural scientist, worked with us, and he was able to run GEFT tests, which assess somebody’s cognitive style, and then compare the results of GEFT tests with the performance of the individual with different user interfaces.”

 Linda was not alone in her interest, Alistair Sutcliffe at UMIST, Yvonne Rogers, at the Open University, a group at York and Loughborough were also working on different aspects of human computer interaction.  Unable to meet up with the HCI group working in London, Linda and those working in the north of the UK started their own group.

 Linda adds: “At first we were looking at HCI and expert systems. We had meetings pretty well every month, and that was a great way to build contacts and also learn what other people were thinking about. You can’t underestimate the power of these networks and sharing information because it also builds your own confidence especially if you talk to somebody about something and it makes sense to them.”

Asked about the changes over the time since she started her research, Linda says: “In the eighties most people were working in offices and they had a computer that was centrally controlled.  They were doing office work and they didn’t have much discretion about what they did or how they did it.  Once the internet caught on in the late nineties, things changed massively.  We moved to a situation where people have discretion, they have choices, they can use it or not use it.  They’re not just in the office, they’re in their home, they’re at leisure and a computer affords new opportunities at home and in leisure.  From the human-computer interaction point of view, we’re looking at the individual as a consumer, their consumer behaviour, it also brings in marketing; the whole interest in human-computer interaction broadened.

“At the same time what’s changing is what people can do with a computer and how their perception of things changed.  In 1990, I did a project with the Manchester Evening News which was called ‘Internet Usability’. It was just at the start of people talking about getting onto the internet and when you began to see people advertising that they had a website. One of the members of staff at the paper said that people were very sceptical about the internet and they thought the newspaper layout couldn’t be changed to adapt to it.” Linda explains that they set up an experiment to show the traditional newspaper layout on a computer screen and a version that allowed for hyperlinks, menus etc to navigate. Users were recruited to try both and see which they preferred. The experiment revealed that the newspaper audience was global. Linda adds: “They realised that they had all these people who are interested in Manchester.  That spark changed the way they thought about their own business and their opportunity.  So the technology is changing the interaction between the readers of the newspaper and the actual newspaper business itself.  The early 2000s was just a time of massive, massive change both in the way people interacted with computers and the opportunities that computers could give them.”

In 1989 Linda moved to UMIST to continue research and teaching in Human Computer Interaction.  Linda completed work on her PhD in computation. The subject focused on computer facilitation, distributed teamwork; an idea that arose from a number of workshops she ran for ICL bringing together different groups of people into the design of  user-centred systems for business.

She says: “I learned a lot about facilitation, went to many facilitation conferences and workshops and all the time I was wondering how can we computerise this, how could I run these workshops online and still have the same level of facilitation, what tools would the facilitator need, how would they know what’s happening in the team during a meeting”

In 1999, Linda became the first female professor to be appointed to the Department of Computation at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. In 2004 UMIST and the University of Manchester merged and in 2007 the School of Informatics closed and Linda was given the option of either joining the Business School or the Computer Science department; she chose the Business School. Today she is Professor Emerita of Information System Design at the University of Manchester.

Linda points to her two of her books as examples of her major contributions to the field of HCI, she says: “The book I brought out early on which is about the human-computer interaction for software designers, and then the book on requirements engineering are two of my main contributions.  One of the things that I’ve done is been able to embrace new technologies and then help others to do that as well, but with the human interaction in mind all the time, because the technology is always changing and there’s always something new.”

As an example, Linda highlights the challenge she accepted in 2008 from the Dean of the Business School to put the school on Second Life, the virtual world where the real world can be recreated and takes human computer interaction to the next level. The school ended up hosting graduations of one of the executive MBA programmes in Second Life as a result.  Linda says: “We’re now in the second wave of virtual reality through the metaverse and we are looking at how will it change shopping, how will it change medical consultations, how will it change education, how will it change facilitation. They’re all part of a continuum.”

On the subject of being a women in computing, Linda comments that there are lots of groups and activities and attitudes are changing slowly. Statistics suggest that there are more women in tech today, but those figures now include those working in digital roles, such as digital marketing. Linda adds: “I would like to see more women working on the design side, on the decision making side so that they can bring a fresh look to things, but also an inclusive look.  It’s like anything, if it’s all men that work on a project then you’re going to get a male viewpoint, or if it’s all women that work on it you’re going to get maybe a female viewpoint.  We need to have teams that are inclusive. Why doesn’t that happen and why aren’t there more senior women – there are so many reasons. For example; I did a session once for women returning to work and you find they’ve been at home with the children for ten years and then they come back and the technology has changed massively. They need to be able to come back into the workforce.

“It’s a very complicated subject.  You would hope that now we have computing in schools and children are learning about computing from the age of eight, that they will just come up and naturally want to be in that subject, like any other subject, so maybe things will change.”

Of her own experience, she adds: “I must admit that while I was at work, most of the time, I never really thought much about being a woman. It’s when you reflect that you realise that in fact your situation was different, you weren’t one of the boys. For example at conferences, very often delegates go for a drink afterwards, they have all the interesting discussions in the bar and then they go out on the town afterwards, but if all the other people there are men and you’re the only woman, are you going to go out with them?  Personally I wouldn’t do that and so you miss out on conversations and you miss out on all the camaraderie that goes on.”

Asked what advice she would give someone starting out now in the field of human computer interaction, Linda says: “For me, there’s only one subject and that’s climate change.  Whatever you do, you’ve got to change to keep the earth’s natural ecosystem front and centre. In terms of technology and human-computer interaction, this is such an important subject and you’ve got to want to do it with your heart. You’ve got to reach out to people that are involved, your users, your organisations, be empathetic towards them and how things will change.  It’s a tremendous subject area to go into and there are so many opportunities, and opportunities at so many different levels. It’s not just about the user interface design or web design, but also how are we all going to interact with the metaverse, with the future and ethics of social media. Everything’s there to be understood, because in the end people really don’t change that much, their fundamental needs don’t really change that much, but the technology changes a lot and it’s about how to meet the needs of people with that new technology.”

Linda is the author of over 100 learned articles including four books: Human Computer Interaction for Software Designers; Requirements Engineering; Case Studies in Service Innovation and her memoir Hello Computer: The heartfelt story of a woman in tech.

Interviewed by Elisabetta Mori

Transcribed by Susan Nicholls

Abstracted by Lynda Feeley