House-Warming Gift
During the seclusion of staying in your home because of the COVID-19 pandemic, people all over the world are starting to develop creative ideas to keep themselves busy. One such idea is the remodelling and redecorating of one’s own home. The Landreth family, for example, have decided it was about that time to start a new project to repaint their home during the quarantine. While it seemed like a pretty easy project to venture into, it looked as if the family had no clue as to how to begin the process. Not all is as easy as it seems! As a result, the family decided that using a survey to take input from different people would be the best option to get them started.
Here we can see the sign the family posted in front of their house in order to get the crowd’s attention. They included a QR code that takes participants straight to a GoogleDocs in order to make the survey easily accessible via technology. Also, they added the five options of paint they plan to use on the surface of the wall of their house for people to get an idea as to what options they have thought about using.
“We don’t want to be that neighbor with that bright ugly house that everyone sees every day,” Brian Landreth said. So what’s a better way to solve this issue than asking your neighbors which color they prefer?
Well, that makes sense given that the family will be the ones to view the house more often every day. It’s a fair assessment when you thinking about how you want your home to look aesthetically.
“Many people walk, bike, drive by our house every day. I thought it would be fun to give those people a chance to weigh in on the color of the house they are going to have to look at often. Love being collaborative and increasing community engagement,” Brian said.
A very thoughtful strategy if you ask us.
Two Birds, One Survey
So how did the family figure out the easiest bet to include the community in the decision-making process? Brian weighed in on what happened:
“My 11-year-old and I brainstormed on the easiest way to direct passersby to the online survey. She wanted to print the URL on our website. It’s hard to type a long URL into a browser. I showed her how QR codes work. She researched how to create a QR code for our link to the Google Form,” said Landreth.
As it turns out, this activity also helped Landreth’s daughter, Grace, with her schoolwork. The young teen was assigned a task in her technology class to gather and collect data and then later to report her findings. Luckily, this was just what she needed.
The survey instructs participants to vote from the numbers 1 through 5, with 1 being the top choice and 5 being the lowest of the totem pole. The colors listed were “rocky mountain”, “wild orchid”, “good taste”, “blessed blue”, and “it’s well.” The family was in for a big surprise.
A Just Cause
The story went viral and the family received over 110,000 votes!
“It’s been a lot of fun, but also a lot of work having this go viral. I work in Emergency Management and my wife works in the grocery industry so we have been pretty busy during COVID-19. It’s been great to involve our daughters in the process. We’ve had to learn a lot about internet security and privacy. The best thing is having the chance to make so many people around the world happy, even if it’s only for a few minutes. In these times, we need fun and interesting distractions. The comments on the survey and social media have been so kind, this whole thing has restored my faith in our ability to be kind to each other and find happiness in common interests,” Brian said.
While it may all look like fun and games, the family has used this platform to serve the cause they believe in. Landreth encouraged people to donate to his daughter’s Parent Teacher Student Association and Self Enhancement, Inc. since they are an important organization that helps provide supplies and essential services to many hundreds of families during this atrocious pandemic. “Any donation amount goes a long way,” Brian said.
“We are not asking for money for ourselves, but would love to have a way to capitalize on our ’15 minutes of fame’ to do some good in our local economy.”
After a long-anticipated wait the family was in for quite a surprise when more than 150,000 people cast their votes from all over the world. The winner? Blessed blue.
Which color would you pick? Do you think the neighbors made the right choice?
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