2021, Greiner-Petter, Moritz, Ibach, Merle, Zürich, Swiss Design Network

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.