
Hajj ID
Hajj Hackathon
August 1-3, 2018
48 hours, 2,950 innovators, one Guinness World Record.
In August 2018 Jeddah hosted the Hajj Hackathon, officially certified by Guinness World Records™ as the largest hackathon ever staged.
Among the multidisciplinary teams was Saudi brand-identity specialist Samar Mirza, whose contribution earned two independent certificates:
* Guinness World Records™ Certificate of Participation for helping set the world record.
* Certificate of Attendance & Participation from the organizer, the Saudi Federation for Cybersecurity, Programming & Drones (SFCPD).
Fuelled by coffee and collaboration—and almost no sleep—the participants tackled a life-saving brief: how to identify and assist millions of pilgrims swiftly & reliably. Mirza’s team proposed Hajj ID, A human-centred system of water-resistant NFC/QR smart wristbands, intuitive colour-coding, universal pictograms and a multilingual cloud database that integrates with Ministry dashboards. Praised for its affordability (under SAR 5 per pilgrim) and scalability, the prototype demonstrates how thoughtful design can enhance safety for the Guests of Allah while keeping operational costs low.
By lending her branding expertise to a record-breaking hackathon and receiving recognition from both Guinness World Records and the SFCPD, Samar Mirza exemplified the practical power of clear visual communication in large-scale humanitarian challenges.
