XFR was an Exhibition at the Tech Museum of Innovation and a research project. Seen and used by 300,000 visitors, XFR is an interactive, entertaining and educational exhibition that explores the history of reading, the technologies of today’s reading and a few experimental forays into the future of reading. It is intended to make the visitor aware of reading in its many forms, its expanding technologies, its methods and genres, and its promise. It dispels the concept that the digital age will make reading obsolete; it shows how new media creates new genres. The exhibition is composed of multiple independent exhibits, each exploring a different aspect of the message. The visitor “reads” their way in and out without being conscious of it – the same way that we cannot help but read once we have learned how. The project used a genre-oriented approach to carrying out a design-based research approach.