Roger Cameron Wood

Roger Wood

Born	Atlanta, Georgia
Residence	San Francisco, California; Princeton, New Jersey
Alma mater	Morehouse College (B.A.) Columbia University (incomplete) Harvard University (M.B.A.)
Occupation	Product Designer, Engineer
Known for	Mobile Product Design, Analytics, Mobile social media, texting

Roger C. Wood is a product designer and brand marketer. He is the founder and principal designer of (ART+DATA), an interdisciplinary design and product development firm, devoted to the convergence of product design, branding and analytics. He is best known for design of the first smartphones, wearable fitness technology^[1] and tablet applications.^[2]

His design work emphasizes artistic inspirations and information about the user and the environment in which the product is used or engaged. He calls his designs "art plus data." He is known for koans and aphorisms, such as "design is the language of intent" and "the voice of design is data."

Early life

Wood was born in Atlanta, Georgia as the oldest son of Roger L. Wood, the first African-American software developer at AT&T Bell Labs, and Valerie Conley Wood, a child psychologist and homemaker. Through his mother, he is a member of the Conley Family.

He attended the Wardlaw-Hartridge School in Edison, New Jersey. He studied Statistics and Marketing at Morehouse & Spelman Colleges in Atlanta, Georgia, where he was the fourth generation of the Conley family to attend. He attended Columbia University for graduate studies in computer science but did not earn a degree. He holds an MBA from Harvard University, where he was the youngest student in the Class of 1993.

Career

Mainly in mobile and wireless industry, he created a number of influential user experience concepts and product designs, characterized by usability and clarity of purpose. Geoffrey Frost, former CMO of Nike and Motorola said, "Roger makes the complex process of design and analytical marketing understandable for the rest of us."^[3] Wood's sense of design aesthetic was influenced deeply by Weimar Bauhaus figures Marianne Brandt and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.^[4]

AT&T

Wood began working in the billing systems software engineering group of AT&T Network Systems while still in high school. He continued at AT&T in various software divisions supporting software defined networks running on 4ESS and 5ESS Switch platforms throughout his college years. He has said, "Coding and designing phone bills in high school and college shaped my understanding of graphical design and the user experience. Phone bills and automotive dashboards really were the first graphical designs of complex quantitative information for the masses."

Motorola / Nextel

His wireless career began at Motorola, as product manager and engineering program manager for the iDEN Division, which created Nextel and the iDEN product line of mobile phones. Reporting to wireless industry legend and vice chairman Bob Barnett^[5] at only 25 years old, he designed the iDEN mobile phones, which became the standard for group wireless communications^[6] throughout Latin America, the Middle East, Japan and China. Numerous industry analysts have remarked that iDEN was the first mobile social network by 10 years.^[7] The patents related to iDEN were pivotal in Google's acquisition of Motorola.^[8]

Omnipoint Communications

Upon the sale of Nextel to Craig McCaw, Wood joined the original management team of Omnipoint led by George Schmitt,^[9] a high profile Airtouch executive who launched GSM in Europe. There, he designed the user experience for the first commercial text messaging service in America. Subsequently, Wood launched the international texting business for Voicestream, Aerial, Powertel and Omnipoint - the consortium of GSM carriers which became T- Mobile USA. The company's famous "100% Digital, 0% Hassle" television ad campaign, and Omnipoint Parrot logo billboards sparked the short messaging trend that pre-dated AIM, Skype and Twitter.^[10]

Reebok International

Mr. Wood was then appointed Chief Digital Officer & Corporate VP of Global Marketing at Reebok International, which included Greg Norman, Ralph Lauren RLX, and Rockport brands. Reebok was the first apparel and footwear brand to use digital advertising, ecommerce, and digital video content, on a global scale. The company's digital media operations spanned online advertising, online videos, e-commerce, wearable technology and fitness clubs loyalty card programs across 184 countries.

The highlight of his tenure at Reebok was the product design, development and marketing launch of the first wearable technology fitness device.^[11] Traxtar^[12] was a product line of footwear products designed with a motion sensor and the ability to track physical activity and convert the information to a usable format on the web. Traxtar^[13] is regarded as a cornerstone of the wearable technology industry.

Willis Group

Additionally, Wood was COO & Practice Leader of the Media, Entertainment & Technology (MET) Practice at Willis Group Holdings. His practice focused on Internet, motion picture, television, theme park, advertising, and video game clients. The turnaround of Willis Group is widely viewed as one of the most successful investments in the history of KKR.

Amobee Media Systems

In a return to the mobile industry, he joined the founding team of Amobee Media Systems, Inc., a pioneer in mobile advertising backed by Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners.^[14]^[15] His product strategy urged the company to insert ads in the context of the content of the phone, especially social network applications, in a pivot away from the company's original plan to insert ads into text messages. Amobee Media was acquired by Singapore Telecom in 2012.

Hearst Corporation

With the rise of the tablet computer, Wood was recruited to join Hearst Corporations in-house ad agency. There, he focused on mobile, video and social media. He contributed to the design of company's iPad versions of leading magazine titles, customized web video experiences for major brands on YouTube channels, and smartphone applications for the travel and leisure industry.

Early-stage companies

Wood has also played a role as investor, board member, and executive in several venture capital-backed startup mobile media companies. His past projects have included: CitySoft,^[16] a pioneer in social entrepreneurship initially focused on building web sites using employees from lower income neighborhoods; NewMediary, once the largest network of online marketplaces for e-business services; ORCA Digital, a mobile payments start-up; Scripted.com; Tagwhat; Mirror Digital; and ProIntro. In 2014 he co-founded OnBeep, Inc. a wearable tech start-up in San Francisco.^[17]