Cheryl Platz

About Cheryl

Cheryl Platz is an internationally-renowned interaction design leader best known for her work on a wide variety of emerging technologies and products – including Amazon’s Alexa voice platform and the Echo Look, Microsoft’s Cortana and the Azure platform, and groundbreaking early titles for the Nintendo DS. Her professional passions include natural user interfaces, design for constraint and complexity, systems design, and storytelling for product design.

Cheryl is currently the Director of User Experience for the Player Platform at Riot Games, building a team tasked with designing a consistent cross-game, cross-device experience for their full suite of games including the League of Legends family of games and Valorant. Cheryl’s past employers include Microsoft, Amazon, Electronic Arts, Griptonite Games, MAYA Design, Disney Parks, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In her spare time, as owner of design education firm Ideaplatz, LLC, she travels the world sharing her experience designing for new technology (and applying improvisation to design) with other technologists.

Cheryl holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science and human-computer interaction from Carnegie Mellon University. In addition to her design work, Cheryl has been a professional improvisor and performer for well over a decade. She is best known for her 13 years as an ensemble member and teacher at Seattle’s Unexpected Productions, and 9 years in the hit improvised parody of Star Trek “Where No Man Has Gone Before”. Her other hobbies include travel, writing and video gaming.