My town of Montara is one of those over-the-top Halloween communities that dot the October landscape. This place goes all out. Years ago, we moved in on the morning of Halloween and that afternoon the new neighbors stopped by to warn us: “Hope you’ve got a LOT of candy!”

Last year I saw this robot, now one of the images I chose for our business cards.

It was only in the last couple of years that we even decided to venture out; this past year we finally made it onto the Montara social register: we were invited to two parties-for-grownups with costumes and alcohol.

The party-for-grownup vibe permeates the whole town

As we reached one of our parties, we saw the abandoned robot costume beside their neighbor’s driveway. It was a glorious costume – the heart-shaped light would flash off and on – but obviously not that comfortable. So we passed by during the aftermath. Fortunately our friends showed us some video footage and the occupied costume was indeed wonderful. Still, the costume with its discarded legs has a special bit of the curious about it.

More Montara at Halloween:

The line for the “Witch’s House” – a long-standing attraction

The town also hosts an increasing number of up-and-coming attractions

Kiddie and grownup flavors of frozen treats on the street

The neighborhood set decorator turns her front yard into a horrifyingly hilarious (or is that hilariously horrifying) scene. We learned about this place off-season when their garage sale featured a disproportionate amount of ghoulish cast-offs.

This is an interesting prototype; used to suggest the overall size/space of the house in 3D. This is done for a local design review by the county/community/whatever-other-agencies-get-involved.

Update: two years later, I learned that these are called “story poles”

This comment in the bad survey design thread got me thinking further about where/when/what to do with surveys. It’s not my primary tool so some of these reflections take me a little longer than someone who makes their living as a quantitative researcher, for example.

A tiny new restaurant opened in our tiny town of Montara – the Montara Bistro. I dropped by yesterday to pick up a menu and saw that they are already looking for customer feedback.

So to some folks, this is a survey. But it’s next to useless.

Why? Their questions are not too bad, but they are conversational questions, and should be presented that way. They are the basis of a conversation. Handing someone a sheet of paper (with no room to fill in any response) and asking them for essays is ineffective. It’s not fair. These are the questions they want answers to, but sometimes you have to ask a series of questions to get that information. And you can’t decide ahead of time which questions to ask. You have to ask a question, listen to the response, and then choose your next one. You can’t do that on a piece of paper. You need to have real people talking to each other and exploring the issues that way.

Not to mention that the restaurant has been open for a day or two, and there’s a presumption of an in-depth relationship that hasn’t really been built yet. What do I think of the Bistro Vision? Ummm, I don’t care.

I love what this artifact tells you about the company; that they really want to get a dialog going. They don’t have the tools in place to do it yet. Maybe it’s backed up by the way they interact with customers who come in; I don’t know. But this won’t work at all.

And I think this sort of inquiry is what a lot of design students are doing; identifying some open-ended (i.e., requires the respondent to write sentences) questions and sending them out by email. Some people will respond. Some may even write a lot. But you can’t follow up unless you send out another email. And then it’s just a conversation.

As with everything you “send out” who it gets sent to is a factor. Sending something to 3 friends is a very different approach than something that is quantitative in nature.

Look at this artifact from a recent project (created by our partners, not us):

This contained 31 questions, only a few open-ended ones. There’s randomization where needed (so you can filter out order-effects, where the first or last item might be picked more frequently in a list), and a large enough sample so that results can be processed to lead to conclusions – comparisons between different factors (this is the stats part I’ve been talking about).

Attitude toward technology meets Age
Purchase habits meets Region (with Age)
Stores shopped meets Region (with Age)
etc.

Tons of work and tons of math goes into creating tables (that then get interpreted) like

As Paul Hogan (sorta) said “That’s not a survey, now that’s a survey!”

I hope this brings a bit more clarity to the discussion.

Jerome, Montara, CA

The mono-named celebrity trend has finally trickled down, all the way to realtors. Charo, Bono, Cher…Jerome.

phonejerome?

The Sheriff Dept is (.)(.)U! You need Help!!!

Seen on a walk in our neighborhood in Montara. We have no idea what this is about. Another small town mystery!

The door at the Montara post office is held open with materials on hand – the plastic dispensers from the rolls of packing tape they sell.

In Fruit Comes To The Door I wrote about some our experience with home delivery of organic produce

Small farms – I don’t know if this true and I don’t care to verify it but I get the vibe that the producers of these products (perhaps because of the organic thing) are small businesses themselves, and as consumers we hear about the corporate farms and how that’s vaguely bad, so there’s a further flavor of Doing Good attached to this purchase.
Local farms – Again, I don’t know if this is true, but it’s part of the mythology of the service – but I’m guessing the food hasn’t come a long way (the stand itself highlights some local farms). We’re being told that having a product sit on a truck and burn fuel to go a long distance isn’t good for us or the environment.

Nice improvement to the weekly pricelist from Sweet Peas (in the form of a spreadsheet) – now includes the name of the grower, their location, and the distance to Montara, where Sweet Peas (and we) are located.

Much, but not everything is local (however you interpret that term), but at least they are transparent about it. Way to go, Sweet Peas!

Speaking of local food, I had an amazing (free) lunch at Google’s Cafe 150 a few weeks back. Everything is from within 150 miles.

Returned home today to news that Devil’s Slide will re-open by 5 a.m., Friday, Aug. 4. This is fantastic! Four months after it closed, and 7 weeks earlier than estimated. I have felt pretty trapped in Montara, with poor access to San Francisco, and more planning required for out-of-town meetings and lunches and like. My colleagues have been understanding of the limitations, but it’s still hard not to feel marginalized by location. And I don’t even have a regular commute like so many others!

The Aug. 4 opening does not mean all repair work will be done by then. While work required to stabilize the road will be complete, drainage and electrical systems work will continue together with some erosion control into September.

In a post-Omnivore’s Dilemma world, we had a recent chance to participate in a service usually reserved for big cities – home delivery of organic produce.

Here in Montara (pop. 4000 or something; home to an Alpaca ranch, a cafe, and a convenience store but very little else commercial) there is a little produce stand called “Sweet Peas” and they’ve begun home delivery.

I don’t think I’ve ever had non-restaurant food delivered (and I can’t remember the last time I had restaurant food delivered at home). We were totally struck by our visit to the suburbs of Mumbai when our host called and ordered some bottles of water and cigarettes and they appeared a few minutes later. One of my first real design/research projects, in fact, was a grocery store home delivery service (pre-Webvan, in fact, pre-web). And many many years later, I finally experienced it.

They send out a Tuesday email with a spreadsheet; you fill it out and email it back that day and the food comes on Friday. Leave the resuable boxes (they have our names on a sticker) out next week and do it all over again

I’m intrigued by the complexity of the cultural factors that impact the experience, and here’s my first pass at it:

Home delivery – food comes to the door – time-saving and convenience
Organic – I admit I don’t care about this as a principle, but some of the food does taste better, richer, fresher. There’s a snob factor to organic as well that I’m sure I am participating in. Hey, those two boxes cost $41. The prices are definitely higher, but I’m trying not to compare apples and apples, if you will.
Local business – I am surprised at how much this appeals to me – maybe the lack of commerce in my area makes this more tangible. Maybe I can relate, as a small business myself. The fact that we walk our dog past the owner’s home and see the garage filled with produce boxes makes it more tangible; we’re presumably doing good for our community and helping someone we can point to make a living. Of course, our Safeway employs locally and shopping there gives people jobs well. But Safeway seems like The Man and this feels like Sticking It To The Man; a rare chance to feel some power, to have some choices. These delivery services have appeared over the past several years in big places like New York (where FreshDirect seems to have had a similar cultural impact to Starbucks) and Vancouver. We’re getting some of that big city flavor of small(er) business in our own small community.
Small farms – I don’t know if this true and I don’t care to verify it but I get the vibe that the producers of these products (perhaps because of the organic thing) are small businesses themselves, and as consumers we hear about the corporate farms and how that’s vaguely bad, so there’s a further flavor of Doing Good attached to this purchase.
Local farms – Again, I don’t know if this is true, but it’s part of the mythology of the service – but I’m guessing the food hasn’t come a long way (the stand itself highlights some local farms). We’re being told that having a product sit on a truck and burn fuel to go a long distance isn’t good for us or the environment.
Reactive eating – For our first purchase, we picked from a list, but Sweet Peas will also let you specify a weekly dollar amount and simply pick stuff for you based on what’s fresh that week. In combination with the local food thing, this suggests a different philosophy of food consumption, that we bend with nature rather than forcing it to our will through the magic of science
Surprise and Mass CustomizationBecause of their local and small nature, Sweet Peas seems very willing to help come up with a weekly menu that is some combination of staples (i.e., we always want 3 bananas) and what’s fresh (i.e., to make a total of $XX.XX). Even if we don’t make use of that, the flexibility and choice seem very appealing.

Some bad government usability on a notice we received from the county

The aplication requests an Off-Street Parking Exception to allow for 1 uncovered tandem parking space within the existing driveway, where 1 free-and-clear arking space is required for a second dwelling unit. The application has requested this exception to allow the required parking space to be located in tandem to existing covered parking spaces.

I read this several times, looked at the diagram on the back of the page, walked over the house in question, read this again, and I’m still really confused. Really confused.