Introduction
Showcased with its wall-sized, multi-touch screens, Bluescape is a powerful, multi-platform collaboration tool designed to meet the modern needs of product development teams. As the lead designer from 2013 through 2015, I worked closely with Bluescape's strategy, marketing, and development teams and created the UI and UX of all platforms.
Social Activity Redesign
When I joined the project, Bluescape had begun working with potential clients to determine ways to better meet their team's needs and process. Our feedback centered on collaboration, rather than creation and I created a conceptual redesign around user activity. I began with competitor audits to identify use cases and customer types that were left unaddressed in the market, and mood boards to explore a refined aesthetic.
Feature Rich Implementation
Implementation began with a complete redesign of the User Portal, as it was a vital element of social features and lacked support for mobile devices. My direct contributions ranged from audits of user permissions and roles, significantly reducing overlap and confusion; to the design of key features for improved collaboration, like user messaging, object comments, activity indicators and object groups.
Creating a virtual workspace
Bluescape is available on large multi-touch "Walls," browsers, and iPads, each with unique software limitations and interaction types. Maintaining feature parity was a constant struggle due to their staggered implementation, and correcting this became a large part of our redesign. As partial implementations were made full, we revisited feature designs and recreated the entire UI to have a consistent look and feel with pixel perfect implementation across all platforms.
A Job Well Done
Bluescape has been used by LucasFilm, Mazda, and Adidas, and won NeoCon's "Best in Competition" and a Gold Award in "Workplace Technologies." During my two years as Lead Designer, the project grew into an eight million dollar annual contract and was a huge success for both Substantial and Bluescape. We continued to work with Bluescape to build their internal teams, as well as provide concepts and guidance on future implementation during handoff.
