
Cheryl Platz is a world-class designer with over 15 years of industry experience shipping designs that have influenced millions of customers. Her professional passions include natural user interfaces, design for scale and complexity, system design, and storytelling for product design. Career highlights include: her role as the first designer on Amazon’s Echo Look and Alexa Notifications; working on the cutting edge of multimodal interfaces for Windows Automotive and Cortana; improving design systems for Microsoft Azure; launching a new administrative experience for the Microsoft Power platform; and producing video games and interactive experiences for Electronic Arts, Maxis, and Disney.
Cheryl is a dynamic and sought-after speaker, and has given talks and workshops across the globe including both coasts of the United States, and internationally in England, France, Sweden, Portugal, Denmark, Norway, Greece, Korea, Japan, Germany, Budapest, and Kenya. She’s also presented at some unique events, including the original Nintendo DS Press Launch in the US (2004) and a variety of educational outreach events.
In her free time, Cheryl is a professional actress and Internet personality, which feeds back into her work as a public speaker. As a 10-year veteran of the Unexpected Productions ensemble (home of Seattle TheatreSports) she has performed for tens of thousands of people – and she teaches improv to numerous classes at a variety of levels. She co-starred in the Internet TV show “Shadowrun: Corporate SINs” on Twitch at Hyper RPG for its 65-episode run, and continues to broadcast independently as an affiliated Twitch streamer. This unique background makes Cheryl adaptable to any live performance situation, no matter the crowd size or broadcast setup.