Dennis Cheatham

Educational Credentials

M.F.A., Design: Innovation Studies, University of North Texas
B.F.A., Design Communication, Texas Tech University
B.A., English, Texas Tech University

Biography

Dennis Cheatham is an Associate Professor of Design in the Department of Art and is an Affiliate Faculty member in Emerging Technology in Business and Design. He serves as a Research Fellow at Miami's Scripps Center for Gerontology. Dennis’s research explores ways to design products, services, and systems to produce relevant and meaningful experiences. His current work focuses on advance care planning and topics in aging, including improving personalized resident experiences in assisted living communities and enriching programming for people with dementia. Dennis practiced design for fifteen years as a creative director, graphic designer, and interaction and experience designer in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas. He holds a Master of Fine Arts in Design-Innovation Studies from the University of North Texas, a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Design Communication, and a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from Texas Tech University.

Teaching Areas

Experience Design, Interaction Design, Design Research, Innovation Studies, Generative AI

Select Publications

• Cheatham, D. (2023). A Design Education Toolkit for Ideating Experience Design Effects. Journal of
  Futures Studies.
• Cheatham, D. (2023). A Digital Toolkit for Training Hyper-Observant Experience Design Researchers. In A. Marcus, E. Rosenzweig, and M. M. Soares (Eds.), Design, User Experience, and Usability: 12th
  International Conference, DUXU 2023 (pp. 388–400). Springer Nature.
• Cheatham, D. (2023). Learning Lenses: Four Theories for Interpreting Experience Design Scenes. In A.
  Larocchi (Ed.), Applying Education in a Complex World: Teaching and Learning (pp. 131–141). Amps
  Proceedings Series.
• Heid, A. R., Heppner, A., Cheatham, D., VanHaitsma, K., & Abbott, K. M. (2022). Emotion-focused
  communication training online: Development and evaluation of acceptability. Gerontology & Geriatrics
  Education, 1–14.
• Cheatham, D. (2019). Rewarding Risk: Exploring How to Encourage Learning that Comes from Taking
  Risks. Teaching and Learning Design: Re: Research, Volume 1, 1, 105.
• Cheatham, D. (2018). A Necessary Shift: Embracing Research and Front-End Coding for Experience-
  Focused Graphic Design. Graphic Design Journal, 7, 62-73.
• Cheatham, D. (2017). A Multiple Intelligences Model for Design: Developing the Ways Designers Think as Design Disciplines Expand. Dialectic, 1(2), 75-100.
• Cheatham, D. (2017). Experience Design: Embracing Transdisciplinarity. Iterations: Design Research and Practice Review, 1(5), 22-27.
• Cheatham, D. M. (2017, October 31-November 3). Rewarding Risk: Exploring How to Encourage
  Learning that Comes from Taking Risks. Proceedings: IASDR 2017: Re: Research, Cincinnati, Ohio.
• Cheatham, D. M. (2015, November 19-22). Learning to Fail: How to Make Failing Part of Learning.
  Proceedings from Lilly Conference on College Teaching, Oxford, Ohio.