Lo/Be Lab
A design-based research practice studying how spatial, narrative, and computational environments can help people reflect more deeply during life transitions.
Established 2014. Run by Seth Looper with Lin Liu, Xiaoxi Tan, Tianyi Tan, and Hanjing Wang. Programs and research developed in association with Dartmouth College and Kent State University's College of Architecture and Environmental Design.
This site is the lab's public working notebook. Each project is a working report — built with real students, observed across multiple academic terms, revised.
Nothing here is for sale. The lab is a research practice, not a consultancy. Write to us with questions, citation requests, or pushback.
Active reports
- DartWorld A spatial narrative platform with reflective onboarding, 3D environment, and longitudinal journaling. Rebuilt each term.
- Synapse An exploration instrument that replaces the ranked list with a spatial map. 13 questions, 460 occupations from BLS & O*NET.
- Career Design Lab Six tools woven into a semester-long deliberation system. Each term is both a program and a research cycle.
- Narrative by Design A 90-minute workshop built around narrative compression: paragraph → sentence → single word. Paired with card sorts and an AI-as-mirror.
- Threshold Discipline-specific career toolkit for architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design.
Animating questions
- Can designed environments and guided conversation help people reflect more deeply during life transitions — at the scale of a full undergraduate cohort, not just a single session?
- What design principles help spatial, conversational, and computational tools support people in seeing, reframing, and making sense of their own stories?
- Does personal reflection make people better at group decision-making? Can tools that help individuals understand themselves also improve how communities talk to each other?
- How do we use AI to surface evidence about a person without replacing their own judgment about what it means?
- What's specific to a discipline, and what's universal, when designing reflection tools for a particular profession?
Field notes
A planned section for short essays from the working memory of the lab — methods being tested, patterns the lab keeps noticing, observations from the field. First entries are in preparation.
Connected layers
- Methods Working write-ups of the methods that recur across projects: narrative compression, card-sort triangulation, AI-as-mirror, spatial mapping, archetype clustering, longitudinal journaling.
- Library Annotated bibliography of the lab's intellectual lineage. Self-authorship, reflective practice, transformative learning, distributed cognition, narrative identity.
- Publications Working papers, conference talks, recorded presentations, and teaching materials.
- About The team, affiliations, and what the lab is and isn't.
- Correspondence Write to the lab — citation, collaboration, practitioner inquiries, or pushback on a published claim.