Brief Encounters Network: Exploring New Forms of Online Collaborative Design We are living in a global economy where international and inter disciplinary collaboration is increasingly important. This research network will explore the potential for new and emerging technologies to better support collaborative Design processes. The network will bring together participants from a range of different backgrounds including product design, interaction and service design, graphic design ethnography, marketing, engineering, psychology and computer science in two workshops with both physical and virtual participants. Prior to the workshops, participants will contribute to a mapping exercise highlighting their current use of communication tools and processes. This will be used to inform and compare their current and ideal/future use of tools identified in the workshop. The participants will be sorted into teams including at least one remote online participant and challenged to address a "brief" to develop a new tool for collaboration. The teams will engage in concept design, sketching and scenario development to outline what the tool might look like. The teams will then critique one another's ideas in order to refine and reiterate the designs. This process may well produce innovative ideas which could be pursued in future research, but perhaps more importantly it will generate insights into what current practices are and how they might be improved. The workshops will be recorded by a documentary film maker. The film will be a resource for understanding interdisciplinary and international remote collaboration. It will also be edited into a short film for dissemination on video sharing websites such as YouTube and Vimeo.