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: #R##N##R##N# - (1) Social isolation, #R##N##R##N# - (2) Cultural backdrops, and; #R##N##R##N# - (3) The role of technology. #R##N##R##N#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.
['Asam Almohamed', 'Dhaval Vyas']
Designing for the marginalized: A step towards understanding the lives of refugees and asylum seekers