Stakeholder Focus Group Study for the Future National Coast Guard Museum
Client: Future National Coast Guard Museum | Location: New London, CT
We explored stakeholders’ reactions to plans for the Future National Coast Guard Museum to ensure its stories, content, and design represents the totality and diversity of the Coast Guard.
OVERVIEW
In 2019, we partnered with the Future National Coast Guard Museum to gauge its stakeholders’ perceptions of designs for a new museum about the U.S. Coast Guard. This testing came at a time when the museum was still early in its design stage, and it was important to ensure they were headed in a direction that would adequately capture the Coast Guard’s long and rich history.
APPROACH
We designed a data collection approach that would quickly provide useful and actionable feedback to the museum and design teams.
Over one day, we led three simultaneous focus groups in the U.S. Coast Guard Headquarters, which each included members of the U.S. Coast Guard with a diversity of perspectives and experiences.
We showed each group a slide deck of plans for the new museum, and we guided them in a discussion to learn more about their thoughts, opinions, and reactions to the museum’s plans.
CLIENT TAKEAWAYS
Overall, stakeholders were impressed with the breadth of content and were particularly pleased at how the planned exhibitions will challenge some misconceptions about the Coast Guard, including highlighting its work globally and across many different missions.
There were no pervasive concerns about the overall direction, but some stakeholders provided nuanced insight into critical artifacts and stories to emphasize in the Coast Guard’s vast history, which museum staff and the designers were able to quickly weave into the final designs.
