Beyond Links: Exploring Visual Representations of Multi-View Relations in Mixed Reality

This paper investigates associations, explicit representations of relations between multiple views in Mixed Reality (MR). While research on 2D desktop environments offers extensive recommendations for communicating relations between multiple views, MR environments lack such systematic guidance, necessitating adapted solutions that consider their spatial affordances. To address this gap, we systematically explored association techniques in existing research. Building on established 2D multi-view literature and refining insights from prior design principles, we developed a codebook to describe view relations and their representations. Applying it to a corpus of 44 immersive multi-view approaches, we identified recurring design strategies and synthesized them into a design space of visual association techniques adapted for immersive contexts. Based on a lightweight prototyping framework, we validate the utility of the design space through three envisioning scenarios, demonstrating how associations can support exploration, coordination, and sensemaking in MR applications. Our results inform the design of MR multi-view environments.