Mixed Reality as a Tool for the Design and Implementation of Virtual Exhibits

This work aims to use Mixed Reality (MR) as a method for the creation of virtual exhibitions. With the rise of digital content being used in GLAMA (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums, and Academia), there is a gap in the literature surrounding MR approaches to assist in the exhibition creation pipeline. For this, we propose a novel approach that uses MR to spatially map out environments and have produced a bespoke toolkit called “Exhibit-MR”. This uses Microsoft HoloLens 2, and was created in the Unity games engine. This application provides an accessible way to create exhibitions without the need of external software or technical experience, which has limited many frameworks in the past. This is due to its semantic understanding of environments paired with the development environment. This approach will be validated in a future user-based study outlined in this work utilising the System Usability Scale to gain an understanding from the GLAMA sector to whether this approach could be adopted, and streamline virtual exhibition creation in the future.