The deployment of a mixed reality experience for a small-scale exhibition in the wild

Museums and exhibitions often present physical artefacts which may contain rich histories or deep meaning associated with them. These additional contents are often installed physically as informational panels shown on the wall. However, these may sometimes be challenging to deploy due to space constraints. In order to address this challenge, we introduce the use of mixed reality. Mixed reality offers an immersive and interactive experience through the use of head mounted displays and in-air gestures. Visitors can discover additional content virtually, without changing the physical space. For a small-scale exhibition at a cafe, we developed a Microsoft HoloLens application to create an interactive experience on top of a collection of historic physical items. Through public experiences at the cafe, we received positive feedback of our system. In this paper, we discuss the design and implications of our system, survey results, as well as challenges that were encountered in deploying our mixed reality experience in a public setting.