What is the purpose of this publication?

We learn from experience

We learn and grow from our experiences, especially those that involve long-term collaboration. The human factor plays a crucial role in design projects, with designers often working in interdisciplinary teams. As educators, a significant part of our responsibility is to support students in developing the ability to work effectively in collaborative situations, even when faced with challenges and complexities. The DTCC project provided us with an immersive experience focused on (digital) creative collaboration. It became a primary case study as we ourselves worked together under difficult conditions - during the COVID and post-COVID era, across different cultural backgrounds, and in the English language. This experience has been immensely valuable, offering valuable lessons for both students and teachers alike.

With this publication, our aim is to share the narrative of our collaborative journey between EKA, HfG, and ESADSE as a starting point for a global reflection on our pedagogical approaches. DTCC has been a collective experience involving teachers, students, and staff from the three schools. Throughout this process, we have critically examined the purpose of our students' training and the tools, including methods, that underpin our teaching practices. Our collaboration has been characterized by meetings, debates, and collective productions, occasionally giving rise to friction that prompted us to challenge our assumptions and explore diverse perspectives on digital design practices and their instruction. For students, this project has represented a significant opportunity to step out of their comfort zones, position their practice within the broad spectrum of digital design, and collaborate with individuals who bring distinct perspectives to the same discipline and alternative approaches to project development.

We have constructed this publication based on the diverse activities and associated productions that we have carried out over the past two years, documenting them on a dedicated wiki platform created for the occasion. These documents, written by several authors including students, serve as a basis to examine the subject of design collaboration from a pedagogical standpoint.

A brief overview of what you can expect to find in this publication

In the first chapter, titled Methodologies and Tools for Collaboration, we reflect on our initial workshop at EKA. This workshop provided us with the opportunity to meet in person for the first time, and we quickly realized that expecting seamless collaboration without prior knowledge of each other's expectations and work habits was somewhat utopian. Prior to, during, and after the workshop, we made concerted efforts to collectively define the scope of our subject, establish the current state of the art, and determine effective ways of collaborating over the following months.

In the upcoming chapter, titled Encounter between different approaches to digital art and design pedagogies, each school will present its pedagogical approach and the distinctive aspects of its program. Additionally, we will introduce the openschool.art professional meetings, which were initiated as part of the project and focus on addressing the challenges involved in teaching digital practices within art and design schools.

In the chapter Learning to Collaborate with Different Perspectives, we reflect on the workshops held at ESADSE and HfG, where explored creative collaboration strategies. Additionally, we provide a platform for the students to share their testimonies, shedding light on their experiences and the significance of this two-year collaboration for them

Then, in the chapter Designing Tools for Creative Collaboration, we continue documenting our workshops at HfG and showcase the interfaces and prototypes of the collaboration tools created by students. Additionally, we include two articles by designers whose work revolves around the development of tools and collective practices. Furthermore, we introduce ourcollaborative.tools, an online platform that we are currently building. This platform serves as a participatory archive of artistic projects involving digital devices and collaborative endeavors.

Lastly, in the chapter Making Exhibitions as a Collective and Pedagogical Practice, we will discuss our intention of organizing three exhibitions of the DTCC project, hosted individually at each of the partner schools. We will explore how this endeavor aligns with our pedagogical approaches and discuss the ways in which the exhibition format is linked to our educational practices.

We hope you enjoy reading this publication and that our experiences and reflections resonate with your own.