Elaine Fath

Elaine Fath (she/her) is the Lead Game Designer at the Carnegie Mellon University Center for Transformational Play. Previously, she has been a game designer at Schell Games, an interaction designer at Meta focused on the ethics and implementation of highly realistic VR avatars, and a kindergarten and high school teacher. With colleagues and classmates, she has developed several award-winning transformational games as well as projects for a variety of platforms and experimental hardware, from mobile games to theme park rides. She has been invited to speak at a variety of organizations about her work, including Google and MIT, and her independent game dev work has been featured in Polygon and Rolling Stone magazine. Her publications are focused on co-design methods for cross-disciplinary teams, curiosity as a game mechanic, and reducing cognitive load as a part of effective playtesting and game design. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA with her partner, Joe, and her cat, Puffin.