
Ask HN: Favorite remote work realtime collaboration tool(s)? - mojomark
I&#x27;m about to start a large highly complex and creative project with a strong team. Unfortunatly, with distancing in place, we can&#x27;t spend all day in a room with a whiteboard. I imagine others have faced this dilemma. What are your favorite tools (or features if within common telecom SW like MS Teams&#x2F;Zoom) for realtime, day-long remote ideation and collaborative design?
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remotelyyours
I am actually working on a product called vlokit
([https://vlokit.com](https://vlokit.com)). It helps you collaborate beyond
zoom. It's video chat for remote teams.

The cool thing is you can share your thoughts instantly. Other people reply on
the same thread with their ideas, thoughts or feedback.

You keep track of context in a single place. People consume ideas better. It
also means you end up doing better brainstorming on zoom.

Let me know if you have any questions.

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felipebrnd
I’ve recently used [https://miro.com/](https://miro.com/) and overall was a
good experience to collaborate

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dkoston
Also using Miro and enjoy it.

In addition to the software, make sure your team has good hardware. A screen
large enough with high enough resolution is critical to see the whiteboard.
What’s also important is that video from meetings takes up screen real estate
and with multiple participants, having enough size and resolution to see them
all helps you stay connected. External webcams that can be adjusted are
helpful also.

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mojomark
Cool, good advice thanks. Could you say roughly. What percentage of the day
you'd spend in a collaborative environment vice independant work? I ask
because if we were able to physically go into an office, we'd normally easily
spend >50% of our time "whiteboarding" our hardware/software system of systems
concepts for a few months before we begin the more detailed preliminary design
phase that can last many more months.

I want to achieve the same productivity, but I'm very concerned about fatigue.
I'm thinking we'll need to break our ideation sessions down into a greater
number of shorter sessions.

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dkoston
It depends on the day but not such a high percentage usually. Our design
phases don’t last as long (software only).

Virtual meeting fatigue is real because there aren’t as many natural breaks.
It is important to make sure that people know they can excuse themselves for
water/food/bio breaks.

I’ve also found that virtual whiteboarding is slower for me as I’m used to
picking up a dry erase marker. It takes time to adjust to the different work
stream but a huge benefit is the quality of the end product (no sloppy hand
writing, easy to modify).

I don’t have any direct advice geared towards your situation as our white
boarding and planning phases are quite different in my industry.

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mojomark
Awesome - valuable input. I agree, there's probably a trade-off between
slowing down the documentation of a collective stream of consciousness and the
ability to read clear thoughts and make clean modifications.

I think being clear with the team up front about these trade-offs will make
the transition to remote ideation smoother as people will hopefully be less
frustrated that ideas aren't flowing 'like they used to', but perhaps they can
flow better and in new, more productive ways. We shall see.

Sincerely, thank you!

