by Brianna Crandall — June 14, 2013—Haworth Inc. and Obscura Digital’s newly launched Bluescape solution was selected as the Best of Competition as well as the Gold Winner in the Workplace Technologies categories in the Best of NeoCon Competition held during the recent NeoCon 2013 contract furnishings show. The companies describe Bluescape as “an infinite, collaborative workspace designed to accelerate decision making by enabling anyone to create, communicate, visualize, organize and strategize virtually anything, anywhere, anytime.”
As a turnkey Linux-based solution, Bluescape offers cloud-based software and services (Saas) that can be accessed on multiple devices, including large-scale, high-definition, multi-touch screens; iPads; laptops; and mobile devices. Multiple users located anywhere can work simultaneously to create, edit, organize, display and retrieve information in a way that is designed to be profoundly more effective.
Bluescape is the name of a product and a new company, explains Haworth. The product is currently installed in the Bluescape Experience Spaces at Haworth headquarters in Holland, Michigan, and in San Francisco at the Haworth showroom and Obscura Digital’s headquarters. In June and July 2013, Bluescape will be installed in the Chicago and Houston Haworth showrooms. An East Coast location is pending. The new company is jointly owned by Haworth with minority ownership from Obscura Digital.
“Bluescape was created to accelerate business results by enhancing innovation, strategizing, solving problems and sharing information in real time,” explains Scott Poulton, Bluescape Chief Executive Officer. “Through this new technology platform, decision-makers and product development teams are able to improve global communication and problem-solving with teams and executives around the world.”
Bluescape provides users with 160 acres of space, equivalent to 146 football fields. This vast scale allows for a unique visual perspective and cognitive experience, resulting in the identification of patterns, relationships, trends, constraints and synergies. There are no stoppages in creativity due to limited space or media shortages.
Once in the virtual space, a team can share, create, add and organize work interactively in real time. Everyone can be in the same location, or individuals can be anywhere with an Internet connection—all sharing desktops, software, images and video. In addition, the session is always live and can be accessed anytime to add or change content. All of the work is saved, so teams can go back and review the progression of the project over time. Shared content includes images, Internet browsers, presentations, spreadsheets, text documents, drawings, graphics, blueprints, videos, etc.
The Bluescape user experience includes using a stylus with “unnoticeable” latency when writing—the line quality reportedly surpasses that of a marker on a whiteboard and looks like real user handwriting. By capturing these original marks, meaning is preserved. Multiple screens act as one with seamless movement between monitors and hyper-accurate multi-touch sensing. Users also have the electronic equivalent ability to pin objects and use sticky notes — creating a very natural experience.
While existing content management and online collaboration tools have made it easier to share, manage and access content, there is presently no solution that extends beyond this functionality to provide users with real-time collaboration, claims Haworth—until Bluescape. Thus, the speed of execution is increased and business results are improved with an ease-of-use that is appealing to both the technophile and the technophobe.
“Haworth partners with its clients to create interiors that make their real estate more efficient and their workforce more effective and innovative,” said Franco Bianchi, President and Chief Executive Officer of Haworth. “We accomplish this by applying our research and knowledge to interior components, furniture applications and, now more than ever before, technology solutions. Bluescape is our next platform.”
The concept for Bluescape was born in 2006 when Haworth created a brainstorming room that held the first U.S. installation of Sony’s ground breaking 4X HD projector, the Pixel Blaster, as well as a collaborative space for displaying printed photos, sticky notes and white boards. While using this space during a strategic review of the global seating portfolio, staff reviewed every seating product at the same time. The designers immediately identified patterns, redundancies, omissions and opportunities that couldn’t be seen when viewing information sequentially. However, reorganizing and categorizing the information was difficult and the team moved the project to the Pixel Blaster. The idea was born to move strategic projects to a single, interactive technology platform.
In 2010, Haworth designers and researchers connected with a San Francisco based company named Obscura Digital, an award-winning creative technology studio and a leading innovator of large-scale, high-resolution, interactive multi-touch display solutions. The genesis of Bluescape is the result of the connection and relationship between the partnering companies: Haworth’s focus on workplace effectiveness and Obscura’s creation of immersive, interactive and educational experiences in both physical and virtual spaces. Together, the companies developed the initial product vision for Bluescape, and Obscura used its artistic vision, user experience expertise, and technology thought leadership to turn the product concept into an entirely new kind of business solution technology.
Haworth also knew from direct client experience that the ability of organizations to strategize, problem solve, decide, create and inform is essential to their growth and survival. Currently, the tools supporting these functions—conference rooms, team rooms, flip charts, whiteboards, Post-Its, Powerpoints, index cards—have remained unchanged for years and do not meet needs, says the company. Bluescape reportedly meets the need for an intuitive, interactive solution to help speed up innovation and execution—and productively collaborate in a rapidly changing, mobile world.
A demonstration video describing Bluescape is available on YouTube.
