Written petitions have become the norm at the U.N. General Assembly, so much so that they have little to no impact. Faceless signatures are too easy to ignore. But when the world is staring you directly in the face, it’s hard to turn a blind eye.

The Living Petition stood face to face with world leaders to demand action on behalf of citizens caught in conflict by convening people from around the world at the General Assembly’s entrance.

Every world leader entering the General Assembly had to walk past the Living Petition digital screen, which tracked them using motion technology and stared them down with the 3D selfies of citizens collected online during the campaign. There’s no better way to inspire action than to force leaders to see the people whose lives depend on them as human beings and not just names on a page.

The Living Petition’s concept was developed with interactivity at the heart — from how the user-generated content (UGC) was created to how it was distributed to inspire action by world leaders.

As the input, people were able to upload their selfies through Facebook and create dynamic 3D portraits of themselves through their mobile devices as a lead-up to World Humanitarian Day.

As the output, the UGC 3D portraits were displayed on an interactive, imposing monolith at the entrance to the main session hall of the U.N. General Assembly. As each world leader walked past, 3D portraits dynamically stared them down through a combination of facial recognition and motion tracking technology. This innovative mashup of technology forced world leaders to interact with and face the Living Petition instead of glancing over faceless signatures of the petitions of yesteryear.