Visual Metaphors for Notification into Virtual Environments

The novel research field of Cross-Reality enables the usage of different stages on the Reality-Virtuality Continuum or to move between them. To facilitate communication between or within these stages, it becomes essential to notify head-mounted display users about ongoing events, distractions, or communication approaches in their current Mixed Reality application. These notifications can originate from any other stage of the continuum. In this position paper we explore how visual notifications can be designed to reflect well-known metaphors. We present five initial concepts for notification metaphors, focusing on seamlessly integrating the notification in the Mixed Reality experience to achieve a high plausibility. An initial implementation shows how such notification could look like.