Enacting Future Protocols for Spontaneous Crossing between Mixed Realities
Mixed-reality glasses may become ubiquitous in the near future. But they will not necessarily create shared realities: headsets are private by default. Mixed reality (MR) systems increasingly support co-located shared content, yet offer few socially legible ways to enter another person’s MR. We examine spontaneous mixed-reality crossing: ad hoc encounters in which one person opens a personal MR layer to another. We ask why people cross, how crossing unfolds, and what a crossing protocol enables. Through research through design, we present two protocol designs as immersive speculative enactments (n=25) that make this future encounter experienceable. MenuPort manages invitation and entry through menu-based requests and responses, while TouchPort re-protocolizes an embodied handshake-and-pull gesture that opens a portal, combining invitation, consent, and crossing into a single action. We contribute (1) a framing of crossing mixed realities; (2) protocol artifacts; (3) empirical reflections; and (4) a protocol design space.