Rayhan Rashed

Looking for PhD positions starting in Fall 2024!

I am a lecturer at the CS Department at Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology (BUET). I’ve graduated from this department with a 3.94 GPA securing the 2nd position in my class. My academic path was greatly influenced by Dr. A.B.M. Alim Al Islam, who advised my bachelor’s thesis. Currently, I am working as a remote research engineer at the Saudi Data & AI Authority (SDAIA) working at large scale deployment of human-centered AI systems. Previously, I had the invaluable opportunity to be mentored by and collaborate closely with Dr. Ishtiaque Ahmed at the University of Toronto.

My broader interest lies at the intersection of social computing, participatory & responsible AI, civic technology, and policy. I also explore how to design, use, and build technologies for communities at the margins.

I also have experience working with an environmental organisation. My knowledge of sustainable development, design, technical skills intersect at the work I do. I love working with people. I have surveyed more than 2000 people, interviewed more than 120 people, and conducted quantitative and qualitative analyses of survey, interview, and technology usage data.

PS: My first name pronunciation is more like “Raye-haan”

Want a brief sample of my work? Check out this recent talk I gave about how pandemic is shaping up the informal electronics repair work.

---

Selected Publications

Pandemic, Repair, and Resilience: Coping with Technology Breakdown during COVID-19 in Bangladesh
Rayhan Rashed, Mohammad Rashidujjaman Rifat, Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed.
ACM COMPASS 2021

Dakter Bari: Introducing Intermediary to Ensure Healthcare Services to Extremely Impoverished People
Rayhan Rashed^*, Md Aminur Rahman^*, Sharmin Akther Purabi, Noshin Ulfat, Sriram Chellappan, ABM Alim Al Islam
ACM CSCW 2021
* Equal contribution

Exploring the Tensions between the Owners and the Drivers of Uber Cars in Urban Bangladesh
SM Taiabul Haque, Rayhan Rashed, Mehrab Bin Morshed, Md Main Uddin Rony, Naeemul Hassan, Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed
ACM CSCW 2021

---

Research Highlights

I have several ongoing threads of research, focusing on local and contextual appropriation of technological systems and tracking down the after-use phase of technology in third world countries.

Contextualized Technology, Internet & Underserved Communities

Dakter Bari: Healthcare, Marginalized Community & Infomediaries

NOTE: I am really proud of this work and the impact it created!

Bangladesh (a low-income country) has a significant number of people dependent on alms for daily survival. These extremely impoverished people are deprived of even basic healthcare. Their extreme levels of poverty, coupled with low literacy skills, and complete lack of access to technology means that they are unaware of existing low-cost/free healthcare services–arranged by local hospitals, NGOs, charity organizations. In this paper, we ask: How can we extend the existing healthcare systems to this marginalized community?

With critical insights from our field study, we design, iteratively develop, deploy, and user-test such a solution called Dakter Bari in the field. The usage of the system for more than six months registering nearly 500 service requests demonstrates its efficacy in bridging the gap we identified in our study. Paper:CSCW 2021

 

---

Exploring the Tensions between the Owners and the Drivers of Uber Cars in Urban Bangladesh

Most scholarly discussions around ridesharing applications center on the experiences of the drivers and the riders (passengers), and thus the role of the owners of the cars, if they are different from the drivers, remain understudied. However, in many countries in the Global South, the car owners are often different from the car drivers, and the tensions between them often shape the experience with these ridesharing apps in those countries.

In this paper we dig deeper into this issue based on our interview-based study in Dhaka, Bangladesh. We identify the contract models that facilitate the partnership between prospective Uber drivers without a car and car owners seeking to rent their cars for Uber, describe the tensions between these two parties, provide a nuanced cultural portrayal of their negotiation mechanisms, and highlight the reasons for which the driver or the owner leaves Uber. Our analysis reveals how the local adoption of technology based sharing economy amplifies existing inequalities and disrupts the prevailing social dynamics. Paper:CSCW 2021

 

---

Understanding Internet Usage in Rural Bangladesh: Effect of Seasonal Migration and Overseas Employment
Manuscript in preparation in collaboration with ICT Division, Government of Bangladesh

In this project, we have collected internet usage data in rural areas from a large countrywide survey. With data collected from more than 8000 participants, we are working on analyzing how overseas employment–one of the biggest earning sources in rural families in Bangladesh– and migration are shaping up the internet usage pattern, expectation, and strategies to minimize the costs.

 

---

Electronic Waste, Repair & Sustainability

Pandemic, Repair, and Resilience: Coping with Technology Breakdown during COVID-19 in Bangladesh

COVID-19 disrupted the existing ecosystem of technology repair and recycle in Bangladesh as visiting repair workshops became difficult and most repairers and e-waste workers had to temporarily close their businesses. Consequently, users were left with very few choices for fixing or recycling their devices. Based on our interviews with 30 repair and e-waste workers and 21 users of electronic devices we capture various aspects of this disruption and the corresponding coping mechanisms.

This paper reports how the repair and e-waste worker communities adopted various changes to their work, provided remote services, and yet faced a decline in their business. On the other hand, end-users learned to fix their devices, collaborated with each other, and negotiated with partially broken devices to address this challenge. Paper:COMPASS 2021

 

---

When and Why End-Users Chooses between Discarding and Attempting Self Repair?
Manuscript in preparation in collaboration with Shion Guha and Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed

---

Forked from: Danaë Metaxa