Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, CSCW(3), p. 1-27, 2019
DOI: 10.1145/3359270
Full text: Unavailable
This paper discusses the issues that arise while designing better wellbeing support for a low-income rural population in Bangladesh. Through a four-month long ethnographic study, we explored how people in 13villages in southwestern Bangladesh accessed healthcare. Over the course of our fieldwork, we asked the participants about the existing healthcare services available to them and how they interacted with different ICT-based wellbeing support systems. Our findings show that insufficient resources, schedules, and the distant location of government-supported healthcare facilities were major challenges for the villagers. We also found that villagers' limited knowledge and mistrust of care-providing infrastructure block them from the benefits of available ICT-based supports and resources. Drawing on our findings from the field, we discuss possible alternative design directions for improving wellbeing support for rural Bangladeshis.