By: Kelvin Yu

In the rapidly evolving world of extended reality (XR), few designers are thinking across as many dimensions as Yuehui Du. With a background that bridges architecture, spatial computing, and interaction design, Yuehui has spent the past five years deeply embedded in the XR industry, working across consumer, industrial, and cultural domains to shape not only what XR can do but also what it could feel like.

From designing system-level interactions for cutting-edge AR glasses to creating award-winning immersive experiences for museums, her work reflects a clear vision: XR isn’t just about technology; it’s about crafting thoughtful, human-centered experiences that live within it.

Building the System, Not Just the Surface

Yuehui began her XR journey at Rokid, a leading AR hardware company in China, where she designed the core user experiences for products like Rokid Air and Rokid Glass 2. Her work wasn’t limited to interface polish—it went deeper, helping to define the system-level interaction models that connect users with complex hardware functionality in intuitive ways. Whether optimizing daily-use flows for entertainment and productivity in consumer scenarios or designing operational tools for industrial use cases, her design thinking was deeply integrated into the product ecosystem.

She later brought that systems-driven mindset to Samsung Research America, contributing to Project Moohan, a collaboration between Samsung and Google to explore what would eventually become Galaxy XR, Samsung’s next-generation headset. There, she worked closely with engineers and product teams to align core operating logic with meaningful user behaviors, further expanding her expertise in defining how users navigate and interact across immersive environments.

From Tech Platforms to Cultural Experience

Alongside her work in hardware, Yuehui has applied XR design in cultural spaces, leading individual projects that bring immersive technology into museums in both China and the U.S. Yuehui contributed to immersive cultural tech installations for the Liangzhu Museum in Hangzhou, bringing ancient history into dialogue with emerging media. At the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, she created Gaia, an AR storytelling experience layered over the Hall of Minerals and Gems. The experience, which won multiple design awards, allows visitors to wear a headset and explore the gallery through interactive narration and personalized digital gem collections. These projects helped her realize that XR has significant potential not only to support daily life and productivity but also to foster emotion, connection, and presence through cultural storytelling.

Shifting Toward Narrative & Expression

Today, Yuehui’s XR practice is evolving again. After years working in-house as a systems designer, she’s begun collaborating with artists and storytellers to explore XR in more expressive ways. Her latest project, Narcissus Bug, is an interactive AR installation created in partnership with artist collective Curaxuan. The piece has been selected for the ICIDS 2025 Art Exhibition: Kaleidoscopic Machines, and will be exhibited in Malta this December.

In Narcissus Bug, Yuehui focused on the interaction design layer, translating story and movement into an experience that’s not just seen, but can be felt and participated in by visitors. It reflects her ongoing interest in making technology emotionally resonant, not just functional.

Designing for What’s Next

Whether she’s building immersive tools for industrial productivity, creating intuitive systems for consumer hardware, or collaborating with artists to tell stories in space, Yuehui Du continues to expand what XR can be and what design can do within it.

Her work shows that great XR design is rarely just about the interface or the visuals. It’s about understanding people, systems, movement, and meaning—all at once. And in that layered space between function and feeling, she’s shaping the future, one immersive moment at a time.