Diverse practices of collaboration in design, research, teaching, or
academia increasingly rely on digital online tools to facilitate processes of
working and creating together. But a lot of the available digital platforms are not
necessarily designed with the particular needs of these respective practices in
mind. Rather, they might focus on commercial contexts, be built on limiting
assumptions about work practices and collaboration, or simply lack capabilities
for a substantial support of specific knowledge and creative practices within
more diverse collaborative settings. In this paper, we take an exemplary look at
three widely-used digital collaboration tools and their capacities and limitations
to support collaborative design processes in particular. We aim to highlight a few
of their embedded dispositions and built-in understandings of collaboration,
creativity or productivity and suggest some aspirations for alternative designs.