Case Study: App for Marshall M. Fredericks Sculpture Museum
Problem
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arilyn Wheaton, the former director of the Marshall M. Fredericks Sculpture Museum, worked at Saginaw Valley State University from 2006 to 2018. During those 12 years, she and her colleagues doubled attendance at the Museum through a passion for cultivating a sense of community and an understanding of where and how to market the Museum to visitors. “One of my goals was to make the Marshall M. Fredericks Sculpture Museum relevant to every student at the University,” she says.
Wheaton focused on encouraging students to get involved with public projects, using marketing strategies to attract people in the community, and bringing in exhibitions that would encourage people from Michigan and beyond to visit the Museum. Ka Vang, a 2017 graduate of the Graphic Design program at Saginaw Valley State University, often passed the Museum on the way to her art classes. “When I was still going to school there, I remember the Museum was offering a lot of opportunities and working with a lot of schools and youth groups,” Vang says.
Wheaton’s visits to other art museums across the United States and around the globe inspired her to create an app for the Marshall M. Fredericks Museum, an app that would provide expanded information about the displays and allow students and community visitors to take a self-guided tour. “You can walk into a museum and read labels, but you cannot read enough labels,” she says. “No museum can print enough labels to give you a full understanding of what you are looking at.” Wheaton realized that if the Museum had its own app, then the museum staff could not only connect with more students, but also reach more members of the community.

The design was started with thorough research determining the needs of the average museum visitor.

