Platz on Pausch, Pikachu and pursuing your passions
’Softie in question: Cheryl Platz
Job title: User Experience Designer on the Management and Administration eXperience
I heard that you were a protégé of the late Randy Pausch of The Last Lecture fame. Can you tell us about working with Professor Pausch?
I didn't even know about my field of human-computer interaction until I went on my college visit to Carnegie Mellon. There was this guy there, Randy Pausch, who spoke of combining design, programming and psychology - all at the same time. It blew my mind. To top it off, he mentioned that he was an Imagineer. I had always loved Disney, especially theme parks - and I'd never seen an Imagineer in the wild before. I was sold.
After my first few years at CMU, Randy became my professor in undergrad and, then, grad school and my boss when I was a teaching assistant for his "Building Virtual Worlds" class. But, even more than that, Randy helped to realize one of my personal dreams. He walked up to me before class one day and asked, "Do you have any plans for this summer? I think that I have a job for you at Disney World." I almost cried in front of everyone.
Randy was also passionate about increasing the number women in technology. I mean, when I started at CMU in '98, we were the first graduating class in the School of Computer Science to break the “Dave to girl ratio” - there were finally more female students than students named "Dave." Now, I work with a group called IGNITE. We speak at high schools and encourage girls to consider careers in technology. I feel like - in that small way - I can keep doing Randy's work and equalize the balance. He inspired so many people, and I want to carry on his legacy.
And what's your current role at Microsoft?
I am a User Experience Designer on the new version of System Center Configuration Manager. It's the software most enterprise corporations use to deploy and manage software across all their machines. Continental Airlines? Target? McDonalds? We're helping all of them with their critical IT infrastructure.
It's a complex problem space, and I love solving these problems and improving the user experience for a group of users often taken for granted.
Looking around your office, it's pretty obvious that you have a lot of different interests and hobbies. What're some of the outside activities that you balance with work?
I'm passionate about technology, learning, music, acting, dancing, art, video games and Pokemon. Over the years, I've amassed quite a collection of Pikachus.
I'm a 'Softie by day and, by night, I'm a professional improv comedienne with Seattle Theatresports and musical theatre actress. I played Cinderella in Microsoft Theater Troupe's production of "Into the Woods" last year.
I costarred in and cowrote the MSN movie trailer review series I'd See It If.... For our review of Transformers 2, we broke down director Michael Bay's use of: 1) explosions 2) words spoken 3) seconds of hot chicks on the screen and 4) vehicles destroyed - all to determine the eventual financial success of his films. We actually sat in a conference room and worked it out with quadratic regressions and ridiculousness like that. It was the craziest spreadsheet I've seen in my life.
The Last Lecture was originally titled "Really Achieving your Childhood Dreams." Is Microsoft helping you to really achieve your childhood dreams?
At Microsoft, I have the power to manage my own work-life balance and build a life I'm happy with. I come to work and solve interesting problems every day, and I'm encouraged to speak up and think big.
It's awesome, too, that Microsoft feels a little bit like college. There's so much passion and intelligence, plus there're groups like the Microsoft Theatre Troupe and a ballroom dancing club. What more could you ask for, really?
Links? Check out Cheryl's new play “Small World” on 2/26 and 2/27 at the Wade James Theater in Edmonds. Ironically, it's about 8 people stuck on a theme park ride. Buy tix here.
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1 Comment
Angela said:
Hey - I helped hire Cheryl! WOO HOO!