Kelly Murdoch-Kitt

Kelly Murdoch-Kitt is a user experience designer and educator focused on people, systems, and interpersonal interactions. In her work and teaching, human connection drives the creation of effective and socially responsible concepts.

She integrates visual communication, user experience, and service design with behavior change and social engagement, drawing on her professional experience as a user experience strategist in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Murdoch-Kitt is the author of Intercultural Collaboration by Design: Drawing from Differences, Distances, and Disciplines through Visual Thinking (Routledge 2020). Based on her research with Assistant Professor Dr. Denielle Emans at Roger Williams University, their book offers more than thirty visual thinking activities to support effective collaboration among diverse teams. Murdoch-Kitt enjoys bringing these topics to life in the classroom, particularly through virtual exchanges with Professor Emans’ design courses. Murdoch-Kitt and Emans are currently working together on The ORBIT Project, an acronym that stands for the “Online Resource for Building Intercultural Teams.”

Prior to joining the Stamps School of Art & Design faculty, Murdoch-Kitt served as an Assistant Professor in the School of Design at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She also created and taught a variety of courses in the Graphic Design Programs at the University of San Francisco and California College of the Arts. She is a recent alumna of the National Steering Committee for the AIGA Design Educators Community, an organization that aims to support and foster professional development for design educators. Her excellence in teaching and contributions to service within the discipline have been recognized by the Design Incubation Communication Design Educator Awards: Intercultural Design Collaborations in Sustainability; and the Decipher 2018 Design Educators Research Conference.