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Museums are increasingly turning to technology to improve their offerings. This presents an opportunity to surrounding neighborhoods to take advantage of the museum in order to connect with visitors and offer them a glimpse into their community. The work presented in this article contributes to advancing the state of the art in designing Mixed Reality (MR) entertainment experiences by presenting and discussing Yasmine’s Adventures (YA), a mobile application aiming to extend the museum visitor’s experience into the surrounding neighborhood. YA demonstrates the potential of MR in engaging visitors to explore neglected urban areas. This is achieved by incorporating the opinions of community members, and other contextual information, into a fictional storytelling journey, delivered through a MR entertainment experience distributed in real space. Consequently, users are provided with opportunity to connect with enriched portraits of these spaces. Results from a quantitative and qualitative evaluation showed that participants’ perception of the neighborhood was positively affected by the experience, which fostered curiosity and willingness to explore the neighborhood both at the spatial and social levels. By taking the tour, participants increased their interest in interacting with locals and fostered greater knowledge of the area, which they were willing to share after experiencing it.

In the light of the increasing adoption of participatory culture means by general consumers, this paper describes the design process, evaluations and discussion on four studies on public interactive storytelling system addressing findings and limitations in regards of its participatory nature. Previous bodies of work within interactive artworks and public displays cite difficulty in attracting passersby attention. Through an iterative design process and refinements to the storytelling concept, we advanced our experience of the mechanics of digital storytelling’ and passersby engagement within each space studied. This paper aims to share our research highlights, encountered difficulties and how the applied evaluation methods stood up to the task within public spaces that aren’t as easily accessible for research, such as airport terminals. Our findings further seek to go beyond a traditional technology-centered approach while examining the relationship between individual, object, and public spaces.