Oil-water interfaces play a central role in a wide range of natural and technological systems, where interfacial structure and dynamics govern macroscopic behavior and performance. In many practical settings, these interfaces are regulated by surfactants and are driven far from equilibrium by gradients, flows, and time-dependent boundary conditions. Despite their importance, probing dynamic interfacial processes at fluid-fluid interfaces remains experimentally challenging due to their intrinsic complexity and the limited spatial and temporal resolution of conventional characterization techniques.This thesis establishes nematic liquid crystals (LCs) as responsive, information-rich materials for probing non-equilibrium interfacial phenomena at oil-water interfaces and for leveraging these responses toward functional material design. LCs are employed as structured oils whose orientational order is highly sensitive to interfacial chemistry, transport, and hydrodynamic stresses, enabling molecular-scale interfacial events to be amplified into measurable optical and electrical signals. The first part of this thesis investigates LC responses to surfactant-mediated non-equilibrium interfacial dynamics. LC films undergo orientational reorganization in response to externally imposed gradients in surfactant concentration in the contacting aqueous phase. The resulting optical responses encode information about both the magnitude and direction of these gradients, demonstrating the use of LCs as platforms for optical mapping of interfacial transport and flow. This approach is further extended to examine surfactant-driven interfacial (Marangoni) flows in complex geometries, where geometric confinement and obstacles generate spatially heterogeneous flow fields revealed through local LC reorientation. The second part of this thesis addresses limitations in the precision and robustness of LC-based sensing by introducing a strategy that is broadly applicable across previously established LC sensing platforms, extending their utility to compact, alignment-insensitive configurations. A polarizer-free sensing strategy based on dye-doped LCs is developed, enabling direct optical and electrical readout of LC orientation with improved precision, sensitivity, and reversibility. Finally, this thesis demonstrates that spatiotemporal LC responses encode information about multiple underlying physicochemical processes relevant to functional properties such as skin compatibility in surfactant-based formulations (e.g., shampoos and cleansers), thereby establishing a foundation for an alternative formulation design framework that reduces experimental burden and improves screening efficiency. Overall, this work establishes LC as versatile platforms for probing and exploiting dynamic interfacial phenomena, bridging fundamental interfacial science with emerging applications in sensing and formulation design.