What we researched

In our city of Shoreview, we have problems with teens causing ruckus in public spaces like Dairy Queen and Walgreens near our Middle school. They disturb customers, shoplift, use crude language and make lots of noise! They have turned a public fast food restaraunt into a middle school hangout spot where they can do whatever they want whenever they want. The ruckus they cause makes it an unfriendly enviornment that is unappealing to people who just want to get a quick afternoon snack. We have decided to solve this problem so customers and middle schoolers can enjoy this place the way they were meant to.

We decided to go undercover to survey how the Middle Schoolers were acting there and this is what we found,

After going undercover and talking to the business owners of Bruegger's Bagels, Kowalskis, Dairy Queen and Walgreens we found out that the places where staff interact with the kids and asks them things like "How is your Bagel?" helps build rapport and makes the kids more aware of their actions but places like Dairy Queen and Walgreens staff are more hidden behind the counter and don't interact with the teens.

We created a spreadsheet to organize all of our experts responses,

Our solution

We thought of several solutions such as adding teen centers, adding more police support and changing the school start time. But after talking to 16 experts we decided that those 3 ideas were impractical and unscalable. We found a news article about successful signage being used to stop littering. It said that the percentage of litter dropped 60% and it was said that the specific words and symbols they used on the sign made a big difference.

Some of the tings we found works well on signs are adding a pair of eyes which makes you reflect on yourself and makes you more responsible of your actions. Another thing we found was using a softer approach and saying something like "Welcome Chippewa Middle School students, come on in!". Also adding your school logo might make the teens more responsible for their actions.

This is the sign we tried out at Dairy Queen. We decided to try using a softer touch and adding our school and the Dairy Queen and Walgreens Logos to make they feel like they are representing our school.

We went undercover again to the the public spaces near Chippewa but this time with our signs up. This was our result.

Insert restaurant analysis 2 here

There were a lot less people at Dairy Queen, but that could be because of the weather and there was a school dance that evening, but the teens that were there, were much better behaved, they were swearing much less, the noise level went down many notches and everyone was acting much more mature like they were representing our school!

Implementing our signs

After trying it at Dairy Queen we decided to find other problems that our signs could be used for. We decided to ask our school principal. After talking to her, we found out that there was a big problem in the Boys bathroom with not keeping the bathroom clean and ruining school property.

These are the signs we put up,

The Janitors rated the boys bathroom from 1-10 with and without the signs. They said that it usually was around an 8 or 9 but with the signs it was a 5 or 6!

Here are some pictures of the bathroom with the signs up,