Spotlight: Jawbone Product VP Travis Bogard

MagMaker / February 2, 2015

My name is Travis Bogard and my medium is products.

My love of technology and its ability to make life easier and less complicated is what has driven me throughout my career, from my time at AOL, where we made it easy to communicate and access content anywhere and anytime, to Tellme, where we were trying to bring that same accessibility in the form of audio, to my time now at Jawbone, where we sit at the intersection of beauty and engineering in service of a better life.

I love the process of solving complicated problems, the brilliant people that flock to the big goals, and the challenges it takes to bring those viewpoints into focus to create something meaningful for people. It is never easy and not always fun, but overall it’s a blast.

I use Flipboard as a way to…

…quickly see customer sentiment in social media by searching for product phrases.
…observe and save photos of how our customers use products in the real world by searching for product names and flipping them into a magazine.
…bookmark and categorize articles I find interesting by flipping them from my browser (or mobile).
…quickly catch up on the activity across all of my social services (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram).
…share a collection of content as magazines for discussion in the office. And as I find I’ve built out more general content, I have started sharing more publicly.

The first article I flipped was an Instagram picture I saw that a customer had posted on Twitter showing their JAMBOX playing music. I was immediately fascinated to have this little window into people’s lives, seeing how they were using our products in an authentic way without the bias of traditional research studies. So I started gathering them in my first Flipboard magazine.

The best article I read all week was a piece on the “mammalian dive reflect” – the impact of water on your heart rate, specifically water splashed against the face. What was interesting to me about that is how we continue to learn about how the body works and what evokes physical change in it. I flipped it to my Health & Body magazine.

My favorite topic on Flipboard is Parenthood. I just had a second baby, and as a parent you are always looking for answers, so it’s been helpful checking that topic out.

It’s interesting to get a new perspective that makes you re-think your role as a parent, see helpful tips or strategies to try when you are stuck, or even just hear how others are experiencing the same challenges. That inspired me to create a new magazine with some of the more unique or helpful parenting articles I like and may need in the future.

I also spend a lot of time checking out e-Health because it’s relevant to my work and it’s fascinating how much there still is to see and learn about the human body. There’s so much we still don’t know.

My biggest influence is watching people. In particular, I’m affected by time spent with friends and family who are not very technical, because they keep me focused on simplicity. It helps me identify friction points that exist with technology, and those conversations also keep me grounded in terms of communicating with the real world, outside of our tech bubble.

A unique productivity tip of mine is to find ways to leverage audio more. The amount of screen time we have is already at a max. The only way to consume more content is through audio, ebooks, podcasts or news radio, because you can do this while multitasking or during downtime. [Plus] the art of talking to someone and getting out of the email cycle is so powerful, yet is becoming far less common. I take every phone call walking and also walking one-on-ones. It makes for more creative and focused conversations and has the added benefit of keeping you healthy.

~ShonaS is reading “People in Polaroids”

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