Kristin HughesAssociate Professor
Margaret Morrison 104C
kh@andrew.cmu.edu(412) 268-7098
Kristin Hughes is an assistant professor in the School of Design where she teaches a range of courses including first year, junior, and senior level studios, color and communication, and typography. Recurring themes in her research and professional practice focus on utilizing design methods as a catalyst for community and civic engagement. She is currently examining the design of products that allow participants agency over their own learning space. They are invited as co-creators in the design process, a process that they may eventually engage and sustain on their own. Most recently, this question has led her to explore game design, examining learning processes and ways that play spaces provide a powerful platform for uninhibited learning.
One of Hughes’ current projects is
Fitwits™, a collaborative research project designed by Carnegie Mellon University School of Design and UPMC Saint Margaret Family Health Centers, and funded by The Heinz Endowments. Fitwits offers a series of games designed to educate and encourage smart choices in nutrition, portion control, and physical activity. Other projects include Click! Urban Adventure, an interactive role-playing game designed to immerse middle school girls in discipline-specific science, technology, engineering and mathematics activities. Hughes also collaborated on
explanatoids, an interdisciplinary project funded by the National Science Foundation, which brought science, technology, engineering and mathematics topics to the general public by placing signs and other artifacts in public spaces to encourage curiosity and understanding of science in everyday life.
Prior to her work at Carnegie Mellon, Hughes was a designer at Plus Design, Inc., a firm specializing in book design and corporate restaurant identities. She was an art director and project manager/supervisor at The History Factory, a corporate communications firm for Fortune 100 companies, and worked at Segura Design.
Hughes holds an MFA in Visual Communication from Virginia Commonwealth University and a BFA in Illustration from Syracuse University. She has also studied abroad at Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and at Yale University’s workshop in Brissago, Switzerland.
