Advancing HCI Research and Education within and across South Asia

With the advancements in technologies, the need for Human’s perspective and human-centered designs are in much demand and its essential to understand diverse cultural needs. The community in South Asia has been recognized to have a unique and diverse socio-cultural, political, infrastructural, and geographical background of the region. However, we continue to see that the studies presented to the CHI community about South Asia primarily focus on working with and unpacking the regional contextual constraints (of the users and the infrastructures), thus taking a developmental stance. We witness a lack of HCI work presented by South Asian research community promoting diverse methods, cultures and behaviors. We believe this is due to limited experience in the field and resources. In this online workshop, we take advanced steps to operationalize collaborations and resource sharing between HCI researchers by presenting their half-baked ideas, presenting published HCI work on other venues, or even sharing challenges faced in a Rejected HCI work in the context of South Asia. Our aim is to broaden the perspective of the CHI research and community towards the contributions from the region including and beyond development, by bringing together researchers, designers, and practitioners working or are interested in working within these regions on diverse topics.