A Mixed method pilot study about the visitor experience. The case study Robot Valley Genoa, an event between art, science and technology, within the RAISE Project.

The paper aims to present the results of a pilot study about the visitor experience at the first Robot Valley Genova 2024 event, organized by the RAISE (ROBOTICS AND AI FOR SOCIO-ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT) project with the municipality of Genoa. Within this project, this is the first mixed method analysis of the visitor experience at an event between art, technology and science, with a multiplicity of parallel activities for different audiences. Robot Valley Genova is strongly connected to the history of the neighborhood, to the genius loci of Villa Bombrini, and to the future of the city of Genoa, with investments in the sectors of robotics and artificial intelligence. The paper aims to understand: the aspects of success, what visitors liked and why, what they learned, what engaged and inspired them, in detail which words were used, by which groups, what can be improved in the next editions of the event, in terms of: experience, content, communication, evaluation methods and tools. A survey with closed questions and one open question was designed and used in order to collect data. Those data were triangulated and analyzed combining four qualitative and quantitative methods: grounded theory, corpus analysis, quantitative analysis of visitor satisfaction and data visualization.