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I work at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Linguistics to design, evaluate, and improve captioning technology and assistive technologies for people who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing(DHH).
I am currently a third-year Ph.D. student in Computing and Information Sciences at Rochester Institute of Technology and a graduate research assistant at the Center for Accessibility and Inclusion Research. My doctoral advisor is Matt Huenerfauth.
My primary research focuses on creating more usable captioning services for improving Deaf or Hard of Hearing(DHH) viewers' experience with TV programming. To achieve this DHH users' feedback was collected through different experimental approaches such as focus groups, semi-structured interviews, surveys. The analysis of this data has revealed DHH viewers' overall subjective preferences. Using the quantitative data, a caption evaluation metric has been built that can automatically estimate DHH viewers' subjective judgment of a captioned video quality. In another project, we are working on how to improve the user experience of American Sign Language dictionary for novice learners.
The ongoing investigations are as follows:

1. Identifying caption occlusion severity among DHH viewers and quantifying their preference to build a metric using a supervised learning approach. Methods: semi-structured interviews
2. Eliciting insights about DHH users' video caption style preference. Methods: Focus Group Sessions, Interviews
3. Evaluating performance of existing caption evaluation metrics in terms of large caption transcripts. Methods: Structured Interviews
4. Investigating DHH users' preferred speaker identification method while watching a captioned video in presence of multiple onscreen speakers. Methods: semi-structured interviews
5. Introducing new modalities in existing sign language dictionaries to enable users to improve their ability to construct better query thereby improving their overall search experience. Methods: semi-structured interviews

In summer 2021, I have mentored 3 undergraduate researchers from Gallaudet University to conduct research e.g., study design, conducting interviews, data analysis, reporting the result, writing papers. Their summer internship has concluded successfully.
I am always looking to collaborate with new researchers and discuss shared academic or non-academic interests, so please drop me an email.

Academic CV (PDF)» Resume (PDF)»

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Projects

As a researcher, I have supervised teams conducting collaborative research, designed and conducted experimental studies on artificial intelligence-based technologies, overseen large data collection projects, and created prototypes of novel inclusive technologies. Working on these projects has enabled me to develop key artificial intelligence, user research, and interaction design skills.
My primary research focus lies in these area:
Accessibility—Designing and experimentally evaluating assistive technology for Deaf and hard-of-hearing people.
Machine Learning-Developing a metric that might measure the quality of captioning services from Deaf and hard of hearing people's perspectives
Human-Computer Interaction—Experimentally evaluating assistive and language learning technologies.
Information Retrieval—Exploring the utility of searching by performance.

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Selected Publications

h-index: 2   Citations: 6   ORCID  

• CHI '22 "Watch It, Don't Imagine It: Creating a Better Caption-Occlusion Metric by Collecting More Ecologically Valid Judgments from DHH Viewers." Akhter Al Amin, Saad Hassan, Sooyeon Lee, Matt Huenerfauth, In Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. , Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA (Accepted!) Acceptance Rate 24%
• CHI '22 "Design and Evaluation of Hybrid Search for American Sign Language to English Dictionaries: Making the Most of Imperfect Sign Recognition." Saad Hassan*, Akhter Al Amin*, Sooyeon Lee, Matt Huenerfauth, In Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems., Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA (Accepted!) Acceptance Rate 24%
• ACM Trans. Access. Comput. 2022 "Reading-Assistance Tools Among Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Computing Professionals in the U.S.: Their Reading Experiences, Interests and Perceptions of Social Accessibility (to appear)." Oliver Alonzo, Lisa Elliot, Becca Dingman, Sooyeon Lee, Akhter Al Amin, and Matt Huenerfauth, In Journal of the ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS)., Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA (Accepted!)
• Web for All '21 "Caption-occlusion severity judgments across live-television genres from deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers." Akhter Al Amin, Saad Hassan, Matt Huenerfauth, In Proceedings of the 18th International Web for All Conference (W4A ’21). , Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 26, 1–12. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3430263.3452429(Accepted!)
• UAHCI '22 "Effect of Occlusion on Deaf and Hard of Hearing Users’ Perception of Captioned Video Quality." Akhter Al Amin, Joseph Mendis, Raja Kushalnagar, Christian Vogler, Sooyeon Lee, Matt Huenerfauth, In Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCII). , Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction. HCII 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, Cham. (To Appear: Accepted!)
• HCII '21 "Effect of Occlusion on Deaf and Hard of Hearing Users’ Perception of Captioned Video Quality." Akhter Al Amin, Saad Hassan, Matt Huenerfauth, In Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCII). , Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction. HCII 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, Cham. (Accepted!)
• HCII '21 "Preferences of Deaf or Hard of Hearing Users for Live-TV Caption Appearance." Akhter Al Amin, A. Glasser, R. Kushalnagar, C. Vogler, M. Huenerfauth, In Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCII). , Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction. HCII 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, Cham. (Accepted!)
• ISchool Conference Poster '21 "Perspectives of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Viewers on Live-TV Caption Quality." Akhter Al Amin, Matt Huenerfauth, URL: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/109692 (Accepted!)

All Publications »

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Awards and Honors

• ISchool Conference '21 Best Poster Nominee. 2021, ``Perspectives of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Viewers on Live-TV Caption Quality.''
• PhD Merit Scholarship Full tuition and stipend support, Rochester Institute of Technology
• Ranked top 5% among 815 teams at ACM ICPC Dhaka Regional Preliminary 2014 Ranklist
• Secured 7th Position among 56 teams in International Robotics Competition organized by IEEE Branch IIT, Mumbai, India 2014.
• 2nd Runner-up among 96 teams in Regional International Robotics Competition organized by IEEE 2014.
• Best Poster among 60 teams in Undergraduate Poster Competition organized by Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology 2014. Ranklist, ``Clean your city efficiently with limited resource you have''
• 1st Runner-Up. in Inter-University Project Show Competition organized by Bangladesh University of Engineering andTechnology, Bangladesh 2013.
• 1st Runner-Up. in Inter-University Project Show Competition organized by University of Dhaka, Bangladesh 2013.
• Finalist(Top 6) among 200+ teams in National Hackathon organized by World Bank Group, Bangladesh 2012.
• Champion in Divisional Math Olympiad organized by Bangladesh Math Olympiad Committee 2007, 2009.

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Professional Service

• Reviewer at Late-Breaking Work at Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) 2021.
• Reviewer at International Conference on Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications(AutomotiveUI) 2021.
• Reviewer at CHI PLAY '21: The Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play.
• Judge at Inter-University Robotics Contest organized by Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology 2014.

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Professional Experience

• Software Engineer(Front-end)
  iPay Systems Limited

  My prime responsibility was to develop front-end applications and implementing the design provided by UX designer at the application end. Furthermore, I was responsible for developing several in-house products, ensuring a smooth user experience. These products were developed in a feedback-oriented setting. Here I am describing the process I would usually follow to implement such a development cycle:
  To ensure salient customer experience, it was essential for a service provider to have essential data available at once. That's why I regularly conducted fieldwork after deploying a new version of the customer service application. Through this interview data, I was able to capture the benchmark achieved through each release cycle. Finally, during this fieldwork, I try to note down additional requests that I would interpret as a feature that needs to be implemented in future releases.

  1. e-KYC(Electronic Know Your Customer): This application was developed based on customers' financial profiling across the network. In this application, details on customer journey and experience were presented in an organized manner. [Code]
  2. Customer Relation Management(CRM): This system facilitated customer care department to respond customer feedback or complain on the fly. Using an iterative process, I led a team to develop this system in such a way that a customer care agent could find the required user information at their fingertips away. Using this application, our customer care department serves more than 10,000 customers each day.
  3. Business Tool: This system facilitated business team to categorize customers based on different profiling. I developed this application to allow the business team to reach a specific group of customers to disseminate specific campaigns, promotions, or offers. Additionally, this application allows users to track how successful each campaign was. [Code]

• Software Engineer(Intern)
  Samsung Research Bangladesh.

  My primary responsibility was to develop a front-end application that will track employee activity and generatea quarterly report based on the work reported by each team. As a part of this software, a reporting module was developed to enhance stakeholders' ability to monitor the employee task holistically.

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Important Links

• Github I support open-source code development.
• Donate Blood I support blood donation.
• Writing Comedy Play My favorite hobby besides research & programming :-)

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Contact

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