It’s time for puppets and Shakespeare (?!) as Cheryl Platz joins us to talk about her journey into live streaming. She shares how her background as a professional actor and improviser led her to stream with her puppet Sprinkles, initially performing Shakespeare as part of a Twitch creative competition. While she didn't win the contest, she developed a loyal community that encouraged her to continue, adding video gaming to the mix. Cheryl reveals her background working at a Sesame Street theme park as a teenage puppeteer, explains how Sprinkles developed a distinctive personality of "hyper confidence”, and shares how maintaining this community has renewed her faith in the internet.
Guest Bio
Cheryl Platz (she/her) is an internationally renowned interaction designer, game designer, teacher, writer, and actress best known for her innovative work in a variety of industries ranging from video games to B2B cloud platforms and from consumer products to global philanthropy. Her design work has empowered billions of customers with fun, creativity, immersion, and sometimes just a little less friction at the office thanks to her work on some of the world’s biggest products, including Amazon’s Alexa and Echo Look, Microsoft Windows and Cortana, the Disney Parks PhotoPass system, the Sims family of games, and Microsoft’s Azure platform. Her recent roles include Director of Experience Design for Marvel Strike Force at Scopely and Director of User Experience for the Player Platform at Riot Games. Through her design education company Ideaplatz, Cheryl has delivered talks and workshops on 5 continents and over a dozen countries. Her first book, Design Beyond Devices: Creating Multimodal, Cross-Device Experiences, is the “manual for those who aspire to design the starship bridge of their dreams," and her newest book, tentatively titled Enduring Play: Creating Video Games that Thrive, is the design manual for anyone looking to build engaging video games with a holistic understanding of player needs, basic game design, the production process, and modern business considerations in the video game industry. Cheryl can be seen streaming most weeks on Sunday mornings answering game development and UX design questions at her Twitch channel.
Links
Cheryl on Twitch: https://twitch.tv/funnygodmother
Cheryl on Youtube: https://youtube.com/c/funnygodmother
Cheryl’s first book: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/design-beyond-devices/
Cheryl’s second book: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/enduring-play/
Cheryl’s website: https://cherylplatz.com/
Cheryl on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/funnygodmother.bsky.social
Cheryl on Instagram: https://instagram.com/@funnygodmother
Cheryl on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cherylplatz/
Cheryl’s Medium articles: https://cherylplatz.medium.com/
Credits
Cover design by Raquel Breternitz.