  We reflect on our experiences as designers of COVID-19 data visualizations
working in a distributed synchronous design space during the pandemic. This is
especially relevant as the pandemic posed new challenges to distributed
collaboration amidst civic lockdown measures and an increased dependency on
spatially distributed teamwork across almost all sectors. Working from home
being 'the new normal', we explored potential solutions for collaborating and
prototyping remotely from our own homes using the existing tools at our
disposal. Since members of our cross-disciplinary team had different technical
skills, we used a range of synchronous remote design tools and methods. We
aimed to preserve the richness of co-located collaboration such as face-to-face
physical presence, body gestures, facial expressions, and the making and
sharing of physical artifacts. While meeting over Zoom, we sketched on paper
and used digital collaboration tools, such as Miro and Google Docs. Using an
auto-ethnographic approach, we articulate our challenges and strategies
throughout the process, providing useful insights about synchronous distributed
collaboration.
