Situation

About 180 000* people go missing in Russia every year

Everyone is looking for them – government agencies, volunteer organizations, ordinary people. Even so, they don't always succeed. Or the process is taking too long. The fact is that every minute counts.

*Source: Interfax 01.10.2020, Ministry of Internal Affairs statistics

Brief

To understand what is wrong with the current search processes of missing people and solve the problem so they can be found faster.

Objectives

Create an effective way to find missing people using existing digital tools in the realities of a lack of budget.

Scalability of the idea

The idea is simple but somehow nobody has done it before: to recreate the actual image of the missing person and spread more accurate images. The outfit which a missing person was last seen wearing is usually different from what the description in the bulletin says. As a result, we have bulletins with an old picture of a missing person wearing totally different clothes that they were actually wearing in the moment of disappearing. E.g. the missing person has red t-shirt on the picture but goes missing on January wearing the big coat and the hat.

When passers-by see the updated image, the chance of recognition increases.

Now it works only for Russia, but we are open for cooperation with foreign search-and-rescue teams. This is the great symbiosis of the digital industry and search-and-rescue activity.

Target

Members of search-and-rescue volunteer organizations and ordinary passers-by who can potentially help to find missing people.

Approach

We decided the digital industry can help finding missing people even sitting on the coach with the laptop. By little PR-booze we found a lot of volunteers and have created the community of compassionate designers who are ready to help. We explained to them that their skills plus 20 minutes of their time equals someone’s life.

Implementation

We decided the digital industry can help to find missing people even sitting on the couch with the laptop. By little PR-booze we found a lot of volunteers and have created a community of compassionate designers who are ready to help. We explained to them that their skills plus 20 minutes of their time equal someone’s life.

The design itself is the key element of our project. To be more specific we have found a new way of using simple clothing design – now we use it not just for style, fashion magazine or entertainment but for help to search missing people.

Placement

Web-site, chat-bot, constructor on Viewst and social networks.

Scale

Now it works only for Russia, but we are open for cooperation with foreign search-and-rescue teams.

Brand relevance

This project was not created for the specific brand, it works for all search-and-rescue teams. Only such organizations can join the project.

Touch points

The design itself is the key element of our project. To be more specific we have found a new way of using simple clothing design. Now clothing design could be used not just for style, fashion magazine, or entertainment but for help to search missing people.

Materials, style elements, design choices

Images of different clothes that best fit the description, full figure human models so designers can recreate the whole look. ?

Methods and process

Volunteer designers receive photos with descriptions through the chat bot and change missing people’s clothes with graphical apps and dress-constructor on Viewst.

Timeline

April 2021 – Start of the project

Present moment – Working

The work is in progress and the only actual result is the number of the people that were retrieved home safely after finding them by the updated image. We only started but the statistics show – 5 out of 7 people were found and are safe and sound now.