A System for Hierarchical Browsing of Mixed Reality Content in Smart Spaces

We present in this paper technical and engineering details of a wearable system for visualizing digital content. The digital content is overlaid onto the physical space by employing hierarchical structures for content organization. We implement analogies with the physical world adapting laws of physics, such as gravity, to digital content. To this end, we rely on concepts from the fields of Augmented Reality, Wearable Computing, Software Engineering, and Human-Computer Interaction to propose a new model for accessing digital content anchored in the physical reality. In our prototype, reality is augmented with containers of digital content represented graphically as semiopaque spheres that float in the physical space around the user. We describe the properties of the spherical containers of digital content, such as their size and relative location in the physical environment, and their relationships to the user and the physical world. We also present interaction techniques based on gesture input that enable users to access the digital content contained by the virtual spheres. We present our technical implementation using the Microsoft holographic computer HoloLens and exemplify use case scenarios for our wearable prototype.