Virtual workspace Bluescape connects teams on a global scale

We helped international office design firm Haworth create a sharing platform that works on every device, worldwide

Haworth is a well-established office design firm that makes products to create inspiring and innovative work spaces around the world. The company needed a way to connect showrooms on six continents, so people from Shanghai to San Francisco could easily collaborate on projects.

We helped the company develop a solution with Bluescape, an infinite, collaborative, virtual workspace. Now, across time zones, anyone can create, communicate, and share their work across devices, from tablets to wall-sized touchscreens.

Bluescape has also helped companies in several industries, including law enforcement to architecture, improve workflow and collaboration on a global scale.

Taming the creative process

The start of any project is often a beautiful, scribbled mess across whiteboards, sticky notes, shared files, and napkin sketches. Haworth was inspired to gather these moving parts into a single virtual workspace. This space would enhance and enable collaboration, regardless of distance, device, or time of day.

Creating Bluescape presented challenges to our design and development teams, who addressed technical challenges ranging from low-level input capture and hardware integration, to architectural design for scalability and latency.

On the design side, the overarching concern was how to create a new product that felt familiar and consistent across multiple devices, including tablets, desktop, and touchscreen walls.

Bringing it all together

We paired with Bluescape to turn Obscura Digital’s initial strategy of a multiscreen digital collaborative ecosystem into a MVP (minimum viable product) launch, continuing on to build and refine the platform over four years.

After four years, our team revisited the original strategy to help Bluescape align their teams, reset a roadmap, and launch a re-envisioned product they can sustain with their in-house teams. We had two audiences to keep in mind: Remote individuals accessing the cloud-based workspace, and project groups working together at the wall-sized touchscreen.

Our collaboration resulted in a platform that has changed the way people work together, as Bluescape accelerates project timelines, decision-making, idea generation, and business results in a visualized, immersive environment. Across devices worldwide, Bluescape covers the equivalent of nearly 145 football fields of virtual space.

“Substantial had the fearlessness and chops to figure it all out,” said Demian Entrekin, Bluescape CTO. “There are very few companies out there that are experienced in creating large, interactive virtual workplaces from a commercial standpoint. They quickly grasped how to translate our requirements into an executable, achievable, cost-efficient plan.”

Do you need a partner who can provide end-to-end digital products that make a lasting impact? See what we can do for you. Find us at substantial.com or reach out directly at newbusiness@substantial.com