Research: The Citrix story

Citrix is a company with a unique mission: "Create a world where people can work and play from anywhere." This means enabling remote collaboration and empowering people to work from any location.  It also means supporting the many different work styles of today's workforce. Citrix is very serious about this mission for their customers as well as for how they work for themselves, so serious that they are adopting design thinking as a company-wide strategic imperative from their CEO, Mark Templeton. Opening the design collaboration space was a milestone on their design thinking journey. It's already played a key role in fostering a more collaborative culture that involves less over-the-wall processes, fewer silos, more and earlier collaboration, and better integration of design into the product development process.

They saw the need to create a shift in behaviors, and realized this would be best achieved by having people live the change, not just being told about it. The space facilitates this.

The space:

The space is a 2000 sq. ft. open and sunlit space with large windows that frame the beautiful mountain views. Everything in the space is on wheels and is configurable by teams as they need it. They can move tables and whiteboards around to create mini collaboration spaces. There are stacks of markers, Post-Its, and every "quick and dirty" prototype material under the sun...from construction paper to pipe cleaners. On the surface it might look like a child's paradise...but in fact it's heaven for designers.

Instead of being closed-off and secretive, it has all glass walls. They want passers-by to see the action happening and to see how they work. There's total transparency, literally and figuratively! The space cannot be booked like a regular conference room, since having to make reservations kills the spontaneity. Anyone can drop in anytime and create their own working space.

The interior design is quite minimal. The "beauty" of the space comes from the work that happens inside it: sketches, flow charts, Post-Its full of blue-sky ideas, new product concepts from raw idea to real formation. The space was intentionally left not-too-perfect, so people are encouraged to manipulate it, not be precious about it. It's intended to serve as a canvas for creative thinking. It's also very flexible and can quickly change from working studio to lecture room.

See the space as part of the following video: