Danyal Sarfraz HCI researcher and designer

I build mixed-reality and AI prototypes, then test them with the people they’re for.

Researcher at the IID Lab, UNIST, in Ulsan, South Korea.

Open to HCI research positions, collaborations and design roles.

See the work Get in touch

  • First place

    3rd Korea Heritage Digital Contents Contest, XR category, 2024

  • 4 papers

    Peer-reviewed, at IASDR 2025, KSDS 2025 and KSDS 2026

  • 7,000+

    Downloads of True RoboAnimator, published on Blender Extensions after review by the Blender Foundation

  • 91%

    The highest BSc thesis score in the cohort, Industrial Design, NUST

First place3rd Korea Heritage Digital Contents Contest, 2024

Bangudae XR

Ulsan’s prehistoric petroglyphs, brought indoors on Meta Quest 3.

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IASDR 2025

Synthetic Realities

How well can people tell AI-generated video from real footage?

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An audience in a conference room watching a presentation of the study’s accuracy chart

Open-source tool · Blender add-on

True RoboAnimator

Animation that real robots can drive.

Learn more Get it
Stylized render of the True RoboAnimator panels floating in dark space

KSDS 2026

Product form analysis

Reading a product’s form from a handful of images.

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Industrial design · BSc thesis, NUST

Waveform

A monitor-mounted device that prompts physical movement during long hours of screen use.

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Render of Waveform, a compact black cylindrical device mounted on top of a computer monitor

What I do

  • Mixed reality and spatial apps

    Apps for Meta Quest 3, Apple Vision Pro and iPhone, from 3D capture to the finished experience.

    Unreal Engine 5 · Swift · RealityKit · ARKit · visionOS · Photogrammetry

  • HCI research

    Studies that put prototypes in front of the people they’re for, from workshops and interviews to controlled experiments.

    Participatory design · Interviews · Perception experiments · Usability testing · Statistics

  • Human-centered AI

    How people perceive generative AI, and AI tools that fit into design work.

    ComfyUI · Python · Model training · Prompt engineering

  • Industrial design and 3D

    Products, photoreal CGI and visualization, from an industrial design degree and four years of client work.

    Blender · SolidWorks · Substance Painter · Figma · DaVinci Resolve

Selected publications

All publications

  1. 2026KSDS 2026Conference paper

    Assessment of Multi-View Consistency in Automated Product Form Analysis

    Danyal Sarfraz, KwanMyung Kim

  2. 2025IASDR 2025Full paper

    A Component-Based Approach for Developing Actions in Non-Humanoid Elderly Care Robots

    Danyal Sarfraz, Ulugbek Vahobjon Ugli Ismatullaev, KwanMyung Kim

  3. 2025IASDR 2025Pictorial

    Synthetic Realities: Evaluating Human Ability to Distinguish AI-Generated Videos from Real Footage

    Danyal Sarfraz, Raja Mubashar Karim, KwanMyung Kim

  4. 2025KSDS 2025Conference paper

    Developing a Hierarchically Structured Action Catalogue for an Elderly Care Robot through Participatory Design

    Danyal Sarfraz, Ulugbek Ismatullaev, KwanMyung Kim

Industrial design and 3D

Before research, I spent four years making things look real.

Industrial design at NUST, then product visualization and CGI for international clients: Top Rated Plus on Upwork, game assets at Metablaze, and campaign visuals shown in Times Square.

See design and 3D work
Danyal in red graduation robes, holding a bouquet of yellow flowers, with the UNIST campus behind

Hi, I’m Danyal.

I’m an HCI researcher and designer based in Ulsan, South Korea. I hold an MSc in Engineering Design from UNIST, where I continue as a researcher in the IID Lab with Prof. KwanMyung Kim, and a BSc in Industrial Design from NUST in Pakistan.

I’m open to HCI research positions, collaborations and design roles. Email is the best way to reach me.

LinkedIn GitHub Behance More about me