Kristi Bartlett is an Assistant Professor in the Product Design Department in the College of Design at the University of Kentucky. Kristi holds a PhD in Technology from Purdue University, an MS in Industrial Design from the University of Houston, and a BA in Civil & Environmental Engineering from Rice University. Kristi’s research focuses on design education, specifically on critical approaches to spatial skills research, broader questions of who gets to be a ‘designer’? and design visualization technologies. Kristi has also provided in-house design and consulting for multiple healthcare startup companies and has ongoing research in healthcare design.
Recent News
June 2025: Honored to share that our paper, How faculty-student interactions affect the BIPOC design student experience, was a best paper nominee at ASEE 2025 in the Design in Engineering Education Division (DEED).
June 2025: Welcome to Alexander Diakov who is joining for summer research.
May 2025: Congratulations to Gabriel Portugal for winning the Dean's Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Scholarship for his Fall 2024 studio project “Design of a Hands Free Jar Opener.”
April 2025: Excited to share that I have been nominated for the Excellent Undergraduate Research Mentor Award at UK.
Jan 2025: Excited to share that Claudia Krogmeier and I had our paper accepted at IEEEVR 2025.
Nov 2024: Excited to share that our abstract for the Experiences of Design Students project has been accepted for presentation at IDEC 2025
Nov 2024: Congratulations to Anna Quarles for winning 2nd place in the design category of the 2024 Oswald Research & Creativity Competition with her summer research project!
Sept 2024: Congratulations to KayDee Pratt for having her summer research project featured by UK!
Aug 2024: Welcome to Sadie Aaron, Kiefer Howland, and Anna Quarles who join me as undergraduate researchers for Fall 2024
Aug 2024: Congratulations to to Anna Quarles, Joshua Hocker, and KayDee Pratt for completing their summer undergraduate research fellowships! Pics below:
July 2024: I am honored to join Engineering Studies as an Associate Editor
June 2024: Excited to share that my paper, coauthored with Davis Ferriell and Jon Mills, was a Best Paper Nominee in the Design in Engineering Education Division at ASEE
May 2024: Honored to have two projects selected for IRC Funding
May 2024: Excited to share that my paper, coauthored with Almudena Palacios-Ibáñez and Jorge Dorribo Camba, was selected as a “Reviewer’s Favourite” at DESIGN 2024