Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed

Gender inequality has long been on the list of factors that impose limits on the potential of computing, in ways that have been more and less obvious. Drawing on ethnographic findings from marginal-ized communities in Bangladesh, we analyze the impact of gender inequality on the stages of user research, design, deployment, and use of computing technologies. We conclude with a discussion of how a combination of design, policy, and/or theoretical approaches might supply us with tools to combat the challenges faced in these stages in order to bring about greater equity and participation in the world of computing.

This paper contributes to the growing literature on peer-to-peer (P2P) applications through an ethnographic study of auto-rickshaw drivers in Bengaluru, India. We describe how the adoption of a P2P application, Ola, which connects passengers to rickshaws, changes drivers work practices. Ola is part of the 'peer services' phenomenon which enable new types of ad-hoc trade in labour, skills and goods. Auto-rickshaw drivers present an interesting case because prior to Ola few had used Smartphones or the Internet. Furthermore, as financially vulnerable workers in the informal sector, concerns about driver welfare become prominent. Whilst technologies may promise to improve livelihoods, they do not necessarily deliver [57]. We describe how Ola does little to change the uncertainty which characterizes an auto drivers' day. This leads us to consider how a more equitable and inclusive system might be designed.

Public sexual harassment has emerged as a large and growing concern in urban Bangladesh, with deep and damaging implications for gender security, justice, and rights of public participation. In this paper we describe an integrated program of ethnographic and design work meant to understand and address such problems. For one year we conducted surveys, interviews, and focus groups around sexual harassment with women at three different universities in Dhaka. Based on this input, we developed "Protibadi", a web and mobile phone based application designed to report, map, and share women's stories around sexual harassment in public places. In August 2013 the system launched, user studies were conducted, and public responses were monitored to gauge reactions, strengths, and limits of the system. This paper describes the findings of our ethnographic and design-based work, and suggests lessons relevant to other HCI efforts to understand and design around difficult and culturally sensitive problems.

Making technology accessible to low literate users and communities is an important challenge of ICTD research and practice. Past work in the field has addressed the problem of effective UI (User Interface) design under low literacy conditions, exploring graphic or audio alternatives to text-centered interfaces on the basis of studies that take individual users and user-interface interactions as their central unit of analysis. Our study complements this work through an alternative 'ecological' model, in which literacy-based barriers to technology use are encountered not by individual users but embedded social actors who draw on external networks, resources, and infrastructures to manage the problems that literacy poses. Based on a six month ethnographic study of mobile phone use within a low-literate rickshawpuller community in Dhaka, Bangladesh, we explore the literacy-based barriers to use experienced by our study population, and the external networks and connections that users draw on to work around such barriers. We conclude with design and wider research recommendations that may expand the toolkit of researchers seeking to better address these and other ICTD problems.

The growth in numbers and capacity of mobile devices such as mobile phones coupled with widespread availability of inexpensive range of services presents an unprecedented opportunity for mobile health care applications. Blood donation and transfusion service is one of the most complex management systems in health sector. Quality management of a Blood Transfusion Services (BTS) starts with safe blood donor recruitment (BDR) and donor care. In the South-East Asia Region (SEAR) almost all countries except Thailand depend heavily on replacement of blood from relatives and friends. In this paper, we present location-aware mobile phone based blood donor recruitment, information retrieval and management system that aims at ensuring the quality of the blood and increasing the efficiency of operation management. Here an attempt has been made to leverage the ubiquity and power of the standard mobile phone as a lifesaving mobile health care application, delivering more user convenience.

Abstract Microcredit was introduced in Bangladesh in the early'70s and since then, it has been considered as one of the principal means of socio-economic development in many parts of rural Bangladesh. However, the impacts of Microcredit are often criticized and the ultimate objectives are sometimes accused to be missing in reality. We conducted a field study at the district of Jamalganj in Sylhet, Bangladesh that revealed some interesting facts behind the failure of Microcredit operations in there. In this paper, we have discussed ...

The problem of cutting a convex polygon P out of a piece of paper Q with minimum total cutting length is a well studied problem in computational geometry. Researchers studied several variations of the problem, such as P and Q are convex or non-convex polygons and the cuts are line cuts or rays cuts. In this paper we consider yet another variation of the problem where Q is a circle and P is convex polygon such that P is bounded by a half circle of Q and all the cuts are line cuts. We give a simple linear time O(log n)-approximation algorithm for this problem where n is the number of vertices of P.

The problem of cutting a convex polygon P out of a planar piece of material Q (P is already drawn on Q) with minimum total cutting cost is a well studied problem in computational geometry that has been studied with several variations such as P and Q are convex or non-convex polygons, Q is a circle, and the cuts are line cuts or ray cuts. In this paper, we address this problem without the restriction that P is fixed inside Q and consider the variation where Q is a circle and the cuts are line cuts. We show that if P can be placed inside Q such that P does not contain the center of Q, then placing P in a most cornered position inside Q gives a cutting cost of 6.48 times the optimal. We also give an O(n 2)-time algorithm for finding such a position of P, a problem that may be of independent interest. When any placement of P must contain the center of Q, we show that P can be cut of Q with cost 6.054 times the optimal.

Autism is a disorder of neural development which affects about one in every 150 kids on average. One of the major complexities regarding autistic children in social communication is the speech disorder. The problems related to speech disorder fall into different categories and unintelligibility in speech is one of them. Although there is no definite medicine or treatment for autism, doctors, therapists, and special teachers can help kids with autism overcome many difficulties by different physical and psychological therapies. In this paper we have demonstrated our newly developed interactive computer game which will be helpful in increasing intelligibility in the speeches of autistic children and can be used as a therapy besides the traditional approaches. During our five months of intervention with the autistic children of Autism Welfare Foundation (AWF) at Dhaka, we checked the effectiveness of this therapy and got some encouraging results.

Purpose–Speech disorder is one of the most common problems found with autistic children. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the introduction of computer-based interactive games along with the traditional therapies in order to help improve the speech of autistic children. Design/methodology/approach–From analysis of the works of Ivar Lovaas, it is already known that there are several disadvantages to the “applied behavior analysis” approach to solve the problems of autistic children; so the authors' methodologies were to ...

Autism is a complex developmental disability that typically appears during the first three years of life. This is the result of a neurological disorder that affects the functioning of human brain. Children diagnosed with autism often are self-absorbed and seem to exist in a private world where they are unable to successfully communicate and interact with others. Sometimes they have difficulties in developing speaking skills and understanding what others say to them. Lack of fluency in the speech is one of the most frequently found problems with autistic children. The traditional methods for increasing fluency were found to be monotonous and hence, not much successful during our three months of observations over the participants of Autism Welfare Foundation (AWF) at Dhaka. Therefore, we developed an interactive computer game for the autistic children for improving the fluency in their speech. Our game produced encouraging results over a participant during three months of observation. In this paper, we describe our project and the outcomes.

Tags are words that users add to shared multimedia contents as metadata to facilitate better categorization and improved sharing experiences. With the burgeoning growth of shared images and videos over online social networks, a huge number of tags is being populated everyday in public or shared databases. While one major reason for tagging a photo or a video incorporates the functional needs for the organization of that shared object, people also use tags as a medium of communication for conveying their emotions to their family, friends, and other contacts. The diversity in the linguistic features of these tags demonstrates some interesting patterns that reflect different facets of human nature in managing their online impression to their social peers. This paper investigates how some linguistic features of tags associated with the Flickr photos change with the distance between the user's home location and the location where the photo is taken. In our exploratory analysis "affective" and "relativ" words and their multiplicative interaction show correlations with this distance. These initial findings help us to have a better understanding of online social phenomena related to the expression of emotions and sharing information. At the same time, this might have some indirect implications to understand the insight of impression management in online communities.

Using bibliometric methods, this exploratory work shows evidence of transitions in the field of computer science since the emergence of HCI as a distinct sub-discipline. We mined the ACM Digital Library in order to expose relationships between sub-disciplines in computer science, focusing in particular on the transformational nature of the SIG Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) in relation to other SIGs. Our results suggest shifts in the field due to broader social, economic and political changes in computing research and are intended as a prolegomena to further investigations.

Purpose – Speech disorder is one of the most common problems found with autistic children. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the introduction of computer-based interactive games along with the traditional therapies in order to help improve the speech of autistic children.

Design/methodology/approach – From analysis of the works of Ivar Lovaas, it is already known that there are several disadvantages to the “applied behavior analysis” approach to solve the problems of autistic children; so the authors' methodologies were to encourage children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) to “play,” where playing is mediated through technology. By creating technological methods of interaction (visual displays and physical robots), play and comfortable interactions can be garnered from children with autism. There is a feeling of “safety” in having the main form of interaction occur with non-humans. Further, these devices allow the child, rather than a third party, to be in control of the interactions.

Findings – From the observations, it could found that the problems of autistic children have a wide range and it is almost impossible to design a single game for a group of children. Instead, each child needs to be treated individually. Hence, the authors are suggesting different types of games for different problems.

Research limitations/implications – The authors have proposed some computer game-based therapies for two types of autism that are discussed in the paper. Interactive games can be built for other types too. After having a group of these games it can be an experimental topic to determine the order of execution of these therapies. However, the proposed games heavily depend on the instructors. Research should be conducted to minimize the duties of instructor.

Social implications – The autism spectral disorders are defined by the qualitative impairments in social communication. Although the actual reason for autism is still unknown to the medical sciences, it has been proved to be the result of abnormal and irregular growth of cerebral neurons of human brains. People suffering from autism very often demonstrate a poor performance in social interactions and hence find it difficult to communicate with other people. So if vocalization can be encouraged at the age of 3, a pivotal age for children with ASD, this could lead to an increased communicative ability, which makes not only the child's life easier, but also increases their chances of functioning in the world around them.

Originality/value – This paper offers a hierarchy of speaking skills and suggests corresponding games for each stage to achieve a necessary level of efficiency.

Abstract Two types of problems were studied in this thesis. The first one is cutting a convex polygon out of a circle and the second one is to find out the center of a sphere and an ellipsoid under some definite constraints. The problem of cutting a convex polygon P out of a piece of paper Q with minimum total cutting length is a well studied problem. Researchers studied several variations of the problem, such as P and Q are convex or non-convex polygons and the cuts are line cuts or rays cuts.

ABSTRACT Searching a misplaced or lost object efficiently has been an important issue of research for many years. Some small but important objects which we use in our everyday life sometimes get misplaced or lost and we need to find them out. Searching such small objects is not always an easy task even if we are not much away from where those objects are. There are a number of known techniques for solving this problem.

Abstract Autism is a complex developmental disability that typically appears during the first three years of life. This is the result of a neurological disorder that affects the functioning of human brain. Children diagnosed with autism often are self-absorbed and seem to exist in a private world where they are unable to successfully communicate and interact with others. Sometimes they have difficulties in developing speaking skills and understanding what others say to them.

Abstract: The burgeoning growth of the e-Learning technologies implies the fact that the future education system will largely depend upon the electronic devices and computer aided technologies. It has already been proved that the computer aided teaching techniques are much more effective for the children than the traditional teaching system in most of the cases. A large number of software has been designed to assist the teachers in the classroom to teach and evaluate the students.

Abstract—In this paper, we approximately solved the multiple-choice multi-dimensional knapsack problem (known as MMKP), an NP-Hard combinatorial optimization problem using genetic algorithm. The performance of genetic algorithm has been evaluated on several problem instances. Parameters of genetic algorithm have been varied to analyze the effect upon result. This performance has been compared to other existing algorithms for solving MMKP. Encouraging results have been obtained.

P out of another geometric shape, Q has been extensively studied in recent years. A number of variations of this problem has been addressed including P being convex or concave, cuts being line cut or ray cut, Q being a polygon or a circle etc. In this paper we give a simple linear time O (log n)-approximation algorithm for the problem where Q is a circle and n is the number of vertices of the convex polygon P. We also give a constant factor approximation algorithm for this problem which runs in O (n3) time.

Autism is considered to be a disorder of neural development which affects about 1 in every 150 kids. Specifically, some children with ASD are not fortunate enough to acquire the ability to communicate in their own language. Since speech is an important media of communication, socialization, and interaction with the world, these children need assistance while delivering speech to communicate to the world. Without proper speaking skills, these autistic children face difficulties in expressing their needs and emotions, too. Doctors, therapists, and special teachers usually help kids with autism to overcome many difficulties. However, the traditional methods of teaching clear speech to the autistic children suffer from being monotonous, laborious and not successful in many cases. Hence, we developed an interactive computer game which will be helpful to increase intelligibility in autistic children. During our five months of intervention with the autistic children of Autism Welfare Foundation (AWF) at Dhaka, we checked the effectiveness of this therapy and got some encouraging results.

Autism is a disorder of neural development which affects about one in every 150 kids on average. One of the major complexities regarding autistic children in social communication is the speech disorder. The problems related to speech disorder fall into different categories and unintelligibility in speech is one of them. Although there is no definite medicine or treatment for autism, doctors, therapists, and special teachers can help kids with autism overcome many difficulties by different physical and psychological therapies. In this paper we have demonstrated our newly developed interactive computer game which will be helpful in increasing intelligibility in the speeches of autistic children and can be used as a therapy besides the traditional approaches. During our five months of intervention with the autistic children of Autism Welfare Foundation (AWF) at Dhaka, we checked the effectiveness of this therapy and got some encouraging results.