A one-day design sprint focused on developing a way to identify and prevent human trafficking in collaboration with NEC technology company experts.
Human trafficking can be incredibly difficult to detect and prosecute. Many detectives/analysts struggle with the ever-changing code, and even if they know it, they may not have the resources or time to research it.
To develop an online registry accessible to law enforcement (LE) to assist them in identifying known indicators of human trafficking.
Throughout the day, we worked through the same design steps. Design steps include understanding the problem, ideating, deciding, prototyping, and testing.
Ideating & Prototyping
Austin Farar – Communication Design Major Ava Puente – Biochemistry and Spanish Major Simren Pokhrel – Civil Engineering Major
Sex Trafficking occurs when someone uses force, fraud, or coercion to cause a commercial sex act with an adult or causes a minor to commit a commercial sex act.
Human trafficking can be incredibly difficult to detect and prosecute.
Sex traffickers use their own “code” to avoid detection and/or prosecution.
Law enforcement detectives/analysts may not fully know this code.
Even if they know the code, they may not have the resources or time to search the web to track down victims of sex trafficking.
These are a few emojis/emoticons and phrases of the ever-changing code traffickers use to advertise their victims to potential buyers.
Indicate movement of the poster with the airplane’s arrival tending to show the movement of a minor.
Used as a reference to a woman’s virginity, and a minor.
Used as subtle indicators of price.
Indicated that the poster is usually a minor with a pimp controlling them.
to allow law enforcement to add emojis/emoticons and phrases to the online repository to make the filtering process more helpful in searching for high-risk victims.
This repository system should make it easier for law enforcement to track and report human trafficking without using third-party software.
Throughout the process of developing this prototype, I understood that it’s an arms race between law enforcement and criminals with the ever-changing means of conducting these atrocious acts.
This prototype will hopefully be developed by NEC so that law enforcement can assess its usefulness and feasibility on a day-to-day basis.
