Papers by Asam Almohamed
ACM, 2016
When refugees and asylum seekers start new lives in a host community, they face many challenges a... more When refugees and asylum seekers start new lives in a host community, they face many challenges and often rely on others for help. ICT can play a significant role to empower and support them in their new lives. In this paper, we focus on understanding the challenges that refugees and asylum seekers face in order to build a comprehensive perspective to design suitable technologies. As a first step, we carried out a qualitative study involving semi-structured interviews with 7 participants: 5 refugees and asylum seekers and 2 activists. Our preliminary findings show that there are three common themes that affect such demography: (1) Social isolation, (2) Cultural backdrops, and (3) The role of technology. Based on this, we provide some early insights into designing an innovative ICT platform to empower refugees and asylum seekers for their social inclusion in the host society.
ACM, 2016
This paper focuses on the issues refugees and asylum seekers face in their daily lives in Austral... more This paper focuses on the issues refugees and asylum seekers face in their daily lives in Australia. We present findings from a field study that included a mix of fourteen participants involving refugees, asylum seekers, activists and community workers, who participated in a cultural probes inspired and semi-structured interview studies. The probes approach was adopted to involve refugees and asylum seekers in a set of engaging and creative activities in order to elicit their experiences related to displacement, cultural preferences and beliefs. Our findings reveal three main challenges refugees and asylum seekers in Australia face: mistrust, cultural barriers and displacement trauma. In the paper, we discuss examples from the field and provide implications for designing technologies that can support and empower refugees and asylum seekers.
ACM, 2017
Conflicts in Iraq and Syria have forced millions of minorities to flee their countries and seek ... more Conflicts in Iraq and Syria have forced millions of minorities to flee their countries and seek refuge elsewhere. This paper investigates the factors that affect the social capital of newly arrived refugees in Australia and the role of information and communication technology in supporting the rebuilding of their social capital. We present the findings from 3 participatory design workshops involving 14 newly arrived refugees form persecuted minorities in Iraq and Syria. Our findings highlight three main factors that affect social capital for newcomer refugees: cultural adjustment, organizational support, and social activities and support. We discuss our approach that helped refugees voice their concerns and challenges and provide possible venues for design to support the rebuilding of social capital in a refugee context.
ACM, 2018
Newcomer refugees face enormous challenges on their arrival in host countries to start their new ... more Newcomer refugees face enormous challenges on their arrival in host countries to start their new lives. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and volunteers play a vital role in helping newly arrived refugees meet their needs during their process of resettlement. ICT can facilitate social interactions between refugees and NGOs, thus supporting refugees' connections within the host community. This study focuses on evaluating an initial prototype that has been designed to support social interaction between refugees and NGOs in a host community. We present the findings from a design workshop with seven newcomer refugees from Iraq. Following the workshop, we interviewed the head of an NGO and two volunteers. We found that participants face problems in finding information, getting jobs, and connecting with members from the host community. Based on these results, we offer three main design concepts that will guide us to improve our initial prototype in future work to support the social interaction between refugees and NGOs.
ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), 2019
Displacement caused by war, conflict and persecution affects refugees and asylum seekers in more ... more Displacement caused by war, conflict and persecution affects refugees and asylum seekers in more ways than we can imagine. This article investigates refugees and asylum seekers’ experiences associated with displacement and the effects it has on their social capital. We present findings from a qualitative study that involved a mix of 24 participants, including refugees, asylum seekers, community workers and activists. Cultural probes and semi-structured interviews were adopted in this study. We discuss our findings in four themes: displacement related stressors, acceptance in the host community, access to social resources and technology use by refugees. We discuss examples from our study and offer practical, theoretical and technological design implications that can foster social capital for refugees and asylum seekers.
ACM, 2020
This paper presents findings from a set of 'magic machines' workshops with newly arrived Iraqi re... more This paper presents findings from a set of 'magic machines' workshops with newly arrived Iraqi refugees in Australia. The aim was to allow a broad range of response in designing innovative and creative technologies that can help refugees deal with specific challenges. To bring the 'future' into the present and to understand their needs and experiences, we asked 12 participants to create low-fi objects from different materials and to enact them in different scenarios. The magic machines workshops helped access refugees' voices and provided future contexts for them to deal with their challenges. The data analysis of the two workshops revealed three broad themes: information provision barriers, security and ethical challenges, and mistrust and cultural aspects. Our findings show that adopting a speculative design approach has encouraged refugees to have a strong voice- creatively articulated in the form of a set of magic machines. The study offers insights into refugees' perceptions of the future and current technology. It also informs policymakers of the issues around current policy hurdles newcomer refugees face in their settlement in the host community.
ACM, 2022
Upon arrival to a host community, refugees and asylum seekers face immense challenges to rebuild ... more Upon arrival to a host community, refugees and asylum seekers face immense challenges to rebuild their social capital that is critical in the process of their resettlement. Developing a holistic understanding of these challenges can provide significant opportunities to inform designers and services providers working with this demography. We adopt the lens of social capital coupled with an inquiry into the heterogeneity of refugees and asylum seekers to gain a holistic understanding of various challenges that they with. We accordingly present a conceptual framework that has been iteratively built based on our four years of engagement with refugee communities. The framework highlights three important aspects: cultural backdrops, displacement-related stressors, and social resources in the host community. We offer several implications for technology design, policies, and the theory of social capital that can support members from these communities in their resettlement.
Books by Asam Almohamed
ACM, 2021
Research on migration (both internal and external, voluntary and forced) has been an emergent dom... more Research on migration (both internal and external, voluntary and forced) has been an emergent domain in HCI and related disciplines over the past decade. However, as the number of migrants has been increasing over the last two decades, coupled with various growing global affairs, new challenges encountered by diverse types of migrants (e.g. international students, migrant workers) keep arising, and research on mobility gets entangled with many broader social and political issues. Hence, migration can no longer be considered as a ‘special case’ for some immigrant and refugee communities, but an everyday reality to hundreds of millions of people worldwide and across diverse socio-economic groups.
Thesis Chapters by Asam Almohamed
Children Vaccination Reminder System via SMS Alert
Universiti Utara Malaysia, 2012
This report presents a model for children vaccination reminder using short message service (SMS) ... more This report presents a model for children vaccination reminder using short message service (SMS) to remind parents of the vaccination schedule. Vaccination is required to keep the children healthy and away from infections. In this report the main objective is to develop a children vaccination reminder model that operates via SMS. The general design methodology is the design used in this study and is represented using Unify model language (UML). The system is evaluated using questionnaires which were answered by parents. A percentage of 54.8 percent and 45.2 percent answered useful and very useful respectively of the proposed model. As a conclusion it is found that users do agree on the benefit of having reminder for their children vaccination appointmen
Designing for refugees and asylum seekers: Social inclusion and empowerment
QUT, 2021
This thesis presents a conceptual framework for understanding the challenges that refugees and a... more This thesis presents a conceptual framework for understanding the challenges that refugees and asylum seekers face in Australia and the role of ICT in rebuilding their social capital. It has been built based on four studies that involved a mix of contextual inquiry, cultural probes, and participatory design methods. The framework offers implications for technology design, policies, and the theory of social capital. The collective contributions of this research will inform designers of appropriate technologies that support social capital in the refugee and asylum seeker context. It will also inform policymakers to implement policies that affect this demography.
Conference Presentations by Asam Almohamed
IEEE Xplore, 2011
This study presents a model for children vaccination reminder using short message service (SMS). ... more This study presents a model for children vaccination reminder using short message service (SMS). The model consists of data flow in reminding parents of their children vaccination schedule. Existing practice on vaccination schedule is via written appointment. Nevertheless, such approach may not be sufficient as parents may forget due to a tight work schedule and daily routines. The proposed model was evaluated by allowing selected respondents to use to the developed prototype. Results show that respondents do agree on the benefit of having reminder send via SMS. In addition, all of the respondents feel that the proposed system is useful.
2019 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality Adjunct (ISMAR-Adjunct), 2019
Extended reality has been used in various application areas creating societal impact including in... more Extended reality has been used in various application areas creating societal impact including in health, education, and the arts. However, there has not been enough research to help alleviate the issues of refugees around the world using extended reality applications. In this paper, we focus on identifying issues that refugees face in Australia and how extended reality application can be designed to support in resolving those issues. We followed an ethnographic research approach that involved a semi-structured interview, participatory design, and speculative design approach where we recruited 30 people who arrived in Australia as refugees and currently finding ways to settle in the country. Our research identified three key issues that refugees face—post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the information-seeking problem, and cultural adjustment in the host community. We discuss how extended reality applications can support the refugees in Australia and elsewhere in the world in each of the three issues.
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Papers by Asam Almohamed
Books by Asam Almohamed
Thesis Chapters by Asam Almohamed
Conference Presentations by Asam Almohamed