Human Trafficking & Cyber Fraud

• Team: Minna Friedlander, Robin Perlstein, Aileen Aguilar, Cidney Lee

• Role: UI/UX design, wireframes, social media strategy, print collateral design, research

• Duration: 2 months

Problem Statement

Currently there isn’t a single cohesive resource for victims of human trafficking and cyber fraud to access on the Central Coast of California. In terms of prevention, there is no website for people to educate themselves in order to prevent these crimes from happening. Instead, people go to several different disconnected resources to find the information they need. In addition, these resources are not accessible to non-English speakers, or to those who cannot access and use technology. A huge percentage of these victims are non-English speakers and/or elderly people who are not aware about how to use technology; despite the fact that these problems are relevant in demographics across the board.

Abstract

My teammates and I worked in conjunction with the District Attorney’s office in San Luis Obispo County and Santa Barbara County, along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Our collaborative vision is to help bring awareness to victims of human trafficking and cyber fraud as well as prevent more crimes from happening. Our project seeks to develop an interface with existing content in order to educate the Central Coast population, while at the same time creating a site that is accessible to non native english speakers and to people who are illiterate, or non users of technology. Aside from a website, we also created a social media campaign.

social media

For the social media component of the human trafficking and cyber fraud campaign my team and I wanted to develop something that showcased images of real people with real stories. We wanted these images to resonate in some way with people. This strategy was developed so that viewers could put a face on these horrific tragedies and empathize with the victims. The idea behind blocking out the eyes of the victims symbolizes that these people were being stripped of their humanity.

BUS ADVERETISMENT

This was a bus advertisement I created for Human Trafficking awareness month for the San Luis Obispo transit.

low fidelity wireframes

High Fidelity Wireframes

The idea behind the Human Trafficking and Cyber Fraud website is to solve a direct need. People living in the central coast of California have no where to go online to learn about these critical issues plaguing their communities. The site is also intended to be used by victims of human trafficking and cyber fraud as a place to get help, or as a resource to visit when someone has a loved one or family member that is a victim. My team and I designed the site so that both resources for human trafficking and cyber fraud could be accessed from one single website. However we created different pages of the site: one addresses human trafficking and one addresses cyber fraud. Although both of these issues are closely related, they are also different and target different people. A large majority of victims of these crimes are non native english speakers, so we wanted to be sure to include an option to view the site in the language of their choosing. Additionally many of these victims have low literacy skills, so my teammates and I incorporated images alongside the words to try to articulate messaging in a variety of ways.