We are a group of young researchers, and honestly, most of us are still known as “just graduated.” Three of us finished our undergraduate studies only eight months ago, and the other two just four months ago. We didn’t have years of research experience or a strong academic background in publishing. What we had was curiosity, a bit of courage, and a willingness to try something we didn’t fully understand at the beginning.
That “something” eventually led us to the ACM CHI Conference 2026, one of the most prestigious venues in Human-Computer Interaction. Our paper, “The Digital Democracy Paradox,” was accepted there. Even now, saying this out loud feels a bit unreal. For many people, getting into CHI takes years of graduate-level research. For us, it started as an undergraduate thesis.
But if I go back just two years, none of this was planned.
At the beginning of my second year, I found myself going through a difficult phase. My academic performance started to decline, and mentally, I wasn’t in a good place either. At the same time, financial pressure started to weigh heavily on me. It became one of the main sources of my stress, constantly reminding me of the need for stability. In that state, I started thinking less about long-term exploration and more about immediate security. Like many students facing uncertainty, I leaned toward what felt like the safer, more practical option. Instead of committing to a thesis, I planned to pursue an internship. It seemed like a decision grounded in reality and less risky, and a quicker path toward financial independence.
To finalize that decision, I went to talk to Salman Sayeed Khan, sir. He was busy with some work and was only half-looking at me while listening. I explained everything and finally said, “Sir, I want to do an internship instead of a thesis.”
He didn’t think twice.
He simply said, “No. You will do a thesis.”
That was it. No long explanation, no discussion. Just one firm sentence. At that moment, it felt like a small interaction. But now, when I look back, I realize that one line quietly changed the direction of my life.
When I finally realized that I would be doing a thesis, the first question that came to my mind was simple: what problem do I want to solve? I had always been drawn to real-world problems. Issues that directly affect people’s lives, things that are visible, frustrating, and often ignored.
So I started looking inward. What is something I’ve personally struggled with?
The answer came quickly: government websites.
Long before I ever thought about doing a thesis, I had a recurring frustration. Whenever I came across a new government website, I would spend a significant amount of time trying to navigate it, usually out of necessity. And almost always end up frustrated. It became a pattern. Sometimes, out of curiosity (and irritation), I would open the Inspect Element or dig into the network tab, trying to understand what was going wrong behind the scenes. It wasn’t just casual curiosity. It was a repeated experience of something clearly not working the way it should.
That curiosity eventually turned into a question: why are these systems so difficult to use?
I still remember the first time I went to discuss a thesis idea with my supervisor, Jannatun Noor, ma’am. At that point, I didn’t even know that a field called Human-Computer Interaction existed. I had no idea that the kind of problem I was thinking about was part of a much larger global research community.
She was busy that day. She listened briefly, paused, and simply said, “Read CHI papers.”
I walked out of the room, not even sure if she had accepted me as her supervisee. And the first thing I did was search: “Kai paper.” I didn’t even know it was spelled “CHI.” That’s how unfamiliar everything was back then. The most difficult thing for my supervisor was to literally make me understand what HCI is. At that time, I didn’t even fully understand what Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) was. In Bangladesh, HCI wasn’t as widely discussed or pursued as domains like AI/ML, Cloud, or Blockchain. Most students naturally gravitated toward those areas for their theses, so HCI remained relatively unfamiliar to many of us, including me.
Looking back, it’s interesting to realize that we were already engaging with HCI-related problems without even knowing it. We were exploring usability, accessibility, and real-world user challenges, just without the vocabulary to define them. Things started to change when we took the HCI course under Jannat ma’am. That course gave structure to everything we had been intuitively thinking about. It introduced us to the theories, methods, and research that connected our scattered observations into a coherent field.
It was during this time that I read my first HCI paper, “Design Within a Patriarchal Society” by Sharifa Sultana Ela Apu, and I still remember exactly where that moment happened. It was during a lab session of our Human-Computer Interaction course, when Jannat ma’am suggested to read it. At that time, I didn’t really know what to expect from an HCI paper. But as I started reading, something just clicked. The paper didn’t talk about fancy systems or complex technologies. Instead, it focused on people, their lived realities, and how social structures like patriarchy shape their interaction with technology. It showed how rural women face barriers that are not just technical, but deeply rooted in culture and society.
Before reading it, my mindset was very solution-driven. I believed that after research, we must always build a product or system. But this paper completely changed that perspective. It taught me that sometimes not building anything is also a valid and responsible design decision, especially when technology might reinforce existing inequalities. It helped me understand that design is deeply embedded in social structures, and without understanding context, even well-intentioned solutions can fail. That was the first time I realized that technology design is not just about building things, but about understanding people in their full context. I think that was the moment I knew, this is something I want to do.
What followed was one full year of thesis work. At BRAC University, the thesis is done in groups over a long period, and that time turned out to be the most important part of our journey. We weren’t just building something, we were learning how to think. We explored ideas, made mistakes, changed directions, and slowly started to understand what research actually means. For me, this was the point where something shifted. I didn’t just complete a thesis, I started enjoying research.
Our work focused on something very close to our everyday reality. In Bangladesh, many government digital platforms promise inclusion through e-governance. But when people actually try to use them, many struggle due to usability issues and a lack of digital literacy. So even though access exists, meaningful participation often does not. That gap became the center of our work. We called it the “digital democracy paradox.”
At first, it was just a thesis. But over time, we refined it, improved it, and decided to submit it to CHI. The process itself was intense. Multiple revisions, feedback, improvements, and somehow, it got accepted with strong reviews. When it passed the first round, we were all still undergrad students. That moment still feels hard to explain.
But getting the paper accepted was only part of the story. The next challenge was actually going there.
We decided to fund the trip ourselves. As someone who had just graduated and started working, spending almost all of my savings on a conference felt like a huge risk. I took some support from family and friends, but it was still a big decision. And the timing made it even more uncertain. There were global tensions because of war, flight uncertainties, and constant doubts about whether we would even be able to travel.
Still, we booked everything: tickets, visa, and even non-refundable accommodation. Even a few days before the trip, we weren’t fully sure if it would happen. If it didn’t, almost everything would have been lost. For someone at the start of their career, that wasn’t a small risk.
But now, looking back, it feels like one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
CHI was not just a conference for me. It felt like stepping into a completely different world. For the first time, I was surrounded by researchers whose work I had only read before. I had conversations with people from Korea, the USA, and many other countries. What surprised me most was how open and approachable everyone was. These weren’t just big names in research; they were people genuinely curious about understanding others.
Beyond the global interactions, there was also a deeply personal moment. It was Pohela Boishakh (Bengali New Year), and somehow, in the middle of Barcelona, we found our own community. All the Bangladeshi HCI researchers who were attending CHI gathered together, almost like a small reunion far from home. That’s where I got to meet people I had only known through their work before. I met Ela apu, Mim apu, and many others whom I had admired for a long time but never had the opportunity to meet. It felt surreal, being surrounded by people from Bangladesh who were contributing to this global research space, many of them working in universities around the world. For the first time, it didn’t feel distant anymore. It felt possible.
Sitting in sessions, I started to see things differently. Research wasn’t just about building systems or writing code. It was about understanding people’s struggles, their behaviors, their contexts, and designing technology that actually fits into their lives. That perspective changed how I see my own work.
Another thing that stood out to me was the strong presence of industry. This wasn’t just an academic gathering. Practitioners from big companies were actively attending sessions, engaging in discussions, and asking thoughtful questions. I even saw first-year PhD students receiving opportunities and interest from major companies. It made me realize how closely connected research and industry are in this field, something I hadn’t fully understood before, and currently, in our country, we’re lacking in.
One thing that stood out about us was that almost everyone there was a PhD student, a researcher, or a professor. And then there were the three of us, just graduated. Even among the Bangladeshi attendees, most were coming from universities abroad. We were the only ones who traveled directly from Bangladesh. When people found that out, they were genuinely surprised and praised a lot.
That moment made me realize how rare this journey still is for students from our context. And also, how important it is for more people to try.
There are a few people I cannot talk about this journey without mentioning. Anika Priodorshinee Mrittika ma’am gave us an incredible amount of time and support during our thesis. We used to joke that she was the sixth member of our group. Her ideas helped shape our work in ways we didn’t fully realize at the time. And our supervisor, Jannat ma’am, guided us with sharp, thoughtful feedback even in her busy schedule. Every small review from her made our work stronger.
And of course, that one line from Salman Sayeed Khan sir, “No, you will do a thesis,” still echoes in my mind.
Right now, I’m working in the industry, and I genuinely enjoy what I do. But this journey introduced me to something I didn’t even know I was looking for. A space where technology meets human stories. A space where my interest in social science and computing finally connects. I’ve started working on research again, this time in Human-Centered AI, and slowly thinking about the next steps in this path.
If there’s one thing I want to say to students in Bangladesh, it’s this: you don’t need to be fully ready to start. We weren’t. We didn’t have perfect plans or perfect profiles. What we had were questions about real problems around us.
And that was enough.
Because at the end of the day, HCI is not just about technology. It’s about people. And the stories around us, the struggles, the gaps, the everyday experiences, those are worth studying.
Maybe all it takes is one decision, one push, or even one sentence to change everything.