Amara Poolswasdi Hulslander

Amara Poolswasdi Hulslander

Senior Experience Designer


Sphero

Boulder, CO USA


Whenever you’re at an impasse, think about your deathbed. Would you have regretted not doing this thing? If you think you would regret not doing it, you should absolutely go do it.

Videos

By Roadtrip Nation

Amara Poolswasdi Hulslander

Milestones

My road in life has taken me all over.
Both of her parents immigrated to the United States from Thailand; their goal for Amara was for her to have a “sit-down” job in an office, rather than a “stand-up” job.
When she was 10 or 11 years old, she played around with making websites by viewing the HTML source codes of sites that she liked.
In middle school, she worked on her school’s yearbook; she started learning about graphic design and typesetting.
After high school, she had a slightly “tumultuous” time where she tried everything: she enrolled and then dropped out of the Coast Guard Academy, cycled through various majors.
Eventually she landed on graphic design; after graduating, she worked for a few different design and marketing startups, including one of her own.
One day, Amazon “came knocking” and hired her, moved her out to Seattle; then a couple years later, Sphero came knocking.
Says she makes her life decisions based on whether or not her next move will challenge her or stoke her curiosity—she felt like Sphero would both of those things, so she made the move.
Believes that her upbringing as a minority in a less affluent community helped her by forcing her to have a successful mindset right off the bat.
Keep following my journey

Career

Senior Experience Designer

I'm a robot whisperer who tries to harmonize the human-computer relationship.

Career Roadmap

Roadmap
My work combines:
My work combines:
Design
Technology
Learning / Being Challenged

Day to Day

I lead physical and digital experience design on the Star Wars Force Band. I work directly with project leads and technical teams to help define and design the product UX. I conduct a lot of applied user research for feature exploration, scoping, development, and refinement. I also conduct human factors design and research including gesture ergonomics and industrial design optimization. My overall focus is on end-to-end physical and digital user experience design.

Advice for Getting Started

Here's the first step for everyone

If you are ever unsure or doubting a decision, imagine your deathbed and whether or not you would regret having not made that decision. If you think you would regret it, that is absolutely the thing you should be doing. If not, don't do it.

Hurdles

The Noise I Shed

From Family:

"You are all over the place. Pick something!"

Challenges I Overcame

First-Generation Immigrant

Interviewed By

Code Trip

Code Trip

Increasing representation in the world of coding