Embodied Interaction for the Exploration of Image Collections in Mixed Reality (MR) for Museums and Other Exhibition Spaces

Although museums and archives dispose of extensive cultural heritage data, suitable interfaces for exploration of these collections are lacking. We describe an applied research based on an archive of historic photographs. Our main objective is to engage the general audience in the exploration of this data and thus facilitate discovery and insight. Embodied interaction  [1] promises much potential for this endeavour and is highly suitable for museums and exhibition spaces when implemented with vision based technology as no contact with hardware is required. In addition, MR output is attractive for surrounding audiences. To test this assertion, an immersive interactive MR exploration space was developed applying embodied concepts, where the user’s position and movement in the interaction space combined with in-air gestures are used for application control of the super-positioned collection data space. A user study was conducted to measure differences in user engagement, exploration behaviour and discovery between this embodied interaction concept and traditional WIMP interaction. With embodied interaction, a significantly higher degree of exploration of the collection space was measured and users discovered slightly more novelties and connections. Additionally, a higher sense of immersion, fresh perspective on the contents and increased interest in the collection were reported. Hedonic qualities (e.g. stimulation, aesthetic appeal, reward factor) scored significantly higher while pragmatic qualities such as perceived usability were lower.