Picture Passwords in Mixed Reality: Implementation and Evaluation

We present HoloPass, a mixed reality application for the HoloLens wearable device, which allows users to perform user authentication tasks through gesture-based interaction. In particular, this paper reports the implementation of picture passwords for mixed reality environments, and highlights the development procedure, lessons learned from common design and development issues, and how they were addressed. It further reports a between-subjects study (N=30) which compared usability, security, and likeability aspects of picture passwords in mixed reality vs. traditional desktop contexts aiming to investigate and reason on the viability of picture passwords as an alternative user authentication approach for mixed reality. This work can be of value for enhancing and driving future implementations of picture passwords in mixed reality since initial results are promising towards following such a research line.