COVID-19 threats have been impacting disadvantaged communities even harder. This paper looks into challenge areas and community responses to those in Brazilian informal settlements during the COVID-19 pandemic. These were identified through online roundtables with community members and representatives of NGOs in five Brazilian informal settlements. Our findings show how community members unconsciously design, deploying community-led (or diffuse) design capabilities to tackle COVID-19 challenges. These capabilities have been critical to coping with the immediate effects of the pandemic in communities. However, they are limited to short-term and reactive strategies. We argue that these natural problem-solving skills can be enhanced through a transition from diffuse to co-design capabilities to further harness community creativity towards better futures; extending community-led design capabilities into challenges and opportunity areas in a more strategic way for communities. This research contributes to filling the gap in design studies on how and to which extent communities unconsciously design
