Describing and Understanding the Experience of Visitors

Can we gain access to the experience of museum visitors? Can we describe and understand their experiences? In particular, can we grasp the physical and cognitive processes through which knowledge is constructed in museums? We focus on the visitor experience from an enactive perspective, i.e., that which makes sense from the point of view of visitors during their visit. We shows that an analysis of the visitor’s “course of experience” carried out by means of a subjective re-situ interview allows us to describe and understand the basic units of the visitors’ experiences as well as the overall experience of the visit with precision, finesse, and depth. The actions and cognitive paths of visitors, which contribute to the construction of the knowledge, are also highlighted. This approach allows us to imagine new perspectives of mediation toward visitors and thus to enrich the experience dynamics offered by museums.