Whispers of the Butterfly: A Research-through-Design Exploration of In-Situ Conversational AI Guidance in Large-Scale Outdoor MR Exhibitions

Abstract

Large-scale outdoor mixed reality (MR) art exhibitions distribute curated virtual works across open public spaces, but interpretation rarely scales without turning exploration into a scripted tour. Through Research-through-Design, we created Dream-Butterfly, an in-situ conversational AI docent embodied as a small non-human companion that visitors summon for multilingual, exhibition-grounded explanations. We deployed Dream-Butterfly in a large-scale outdoor MR exhibition at a public university campus in southern China, and conducted an in-the-wild between-subject study (N=24) comparing a primarily human-led tour with an AI-led tour while keeping staff for safety in both conditions. Combining questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, we characterize how shifting the primary explanation channel reshapes explanation access, perceived responsiveness, immersion, and workload, and how visitors negotiate responsibility handoffs among staff, the AI guide, and themselves. We distill transferable design implications for configuring mixed human-AI guiding roles and embodying conversational agents in mobile, safety-constrained outdoor MR exhibitions.