Staging collective VR experiences

Immersive technologies are reshaping how audiences experience art and culture. An important question to be answered though is: how can museums efficiently onboard large groups of visitors into fully interactive, multi-player VR experiences? This challenge marks a crucial frontier for institutions seeking to blend innovation with accessibility.
Across the globe, museums have successfully integrated single-player VR applications, offering visitors static yet engaging virtual encounters with art. These experiences have proven to attract younger audiences and enrich visitors’ engagement. However, the next step—transforming VR into a shared, interactive medium—holds even greater potential. Multi-player VR allows visitors not only to explore but to interact with each other within virtual spaces, redefining how exhibitions are perceived, curated, and experienced.
Realizing this potential is far from straightforward. Large-scale, interactive VR installations come with unique technical and logistical demands, particularly during the onboarding process. Managing multiple participants simultaneously often requires intensive, hands-on guidance, making current setups unsustainable for continuous museum use.
This research proposes to address that bottleneck by co-design an efficient, scalable onboarding method for multi-player VR exhibitions in museum contexts. The outcome aims to bridge the gap between artistic design, technological promise and practical implementation, unlocking new opportunities for museums and contributing to valuable insights for the broader Interaction and Experience (IX) industry.