About

An applied research and design practice building environments where people can hear themselves think.
Why We Exist
The origin

Lo/Be Lab grew out of a simple observation: the institutions responsible for helping people navigate life transitions — universities, career centers, advising offices — were optimized for throughput, not understanding. Students were being sorted, assessed, and placed without ever being asked to slow down and examine what actually mattered to them.

We started building tools to address that gap. Not advice platforms. Not assessment engines. Environments — spatial, narrative, conversational — where people could get their thinking out in the open, see what was actually there, and start putting together a story about who they are and where they're headed.

The approach

Everything we make is a prototype first. We build a tool, put it in front of real students in a real classroom, watch what happens, collect data, and redesign. Every semester is a research cycle. Over 10 years, this has produced 15 distinct tools and programs tested with thousands of people at institutions in 10+ countries.

What Makes Us Different
research, not consulting
We don't deliver a workshop and leave. Everything we build is part of an ongoing research cycle. We study what we make, and what we learn changes what we make next.
field-tested, not theoretical
Our tools are not prototypes sitting on a shelf. They are deployed with real students, in real institutions, every academic term. The data comes from the field, not the lab bench.
environments, not advice
We don't tell people what to do. We build environments where they can hear themselves think — spatial interfaces, narrative workshops, and conversation systems that slow people down and give them room to reflect.
What We Do
For institutions
We work with universities, career centers, and student affairs offices to design and run reflective learning programs. Our tools fit into the rhythm of a semester — they work with existing structures, not against them.
For researchers
We collaborate on design-based research and mixed-methods studies. Our work sits at the overlap of learning sciences, identity development, and human-computer interaction — and we're always looking for research partners.
For students
We build what students actually need: 3D environments for exploring careers, workshops for sorting through your own experience, simple instruments that turn identity into a conversation starter, and journals that show how your thinking changes over time.
Team

Backgrounds in education, psychology, cognitive science, architecture, and design. What we share: the conviction that the spaces people think in shape how they think.

Seth Looper

Founder & Research Director

Designer, researcher, and educator. Background in architecture, cognitive science, and education. He started Lo/Be Lab to figure out whether visual tools and narrative methods could actually help people build more intentional lives. Program Manager at Dartmouth College's Center for Career Design, where he runs the Career Design Lab, DartWorld, and the rest of the lab's programs. Adjunct Faculty at Kent State University.

LinkedIn   Vimeo   Portfolio

Lin Liu

UX Designer

UX designer and research contributor. Studied international politics and law before moving into design, which gives her a useful angle on how educational systems and policies actually shape what students experience. She works across interviews, surveys, and policy data to turn research into things people can use — user insights, visual frameworks, and UX strategies.

Xiaoxi Tan

UX Designer

UX designer and research collaborator. Trained as an architect at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), so she thinks spatially about how digital learning tools should work. She turns research — interviews, data, observation — into design frameworks and UX strategies for the lab's prototypes.

Tianyi Tan

Research Assistant

Research assistant working on cross-cultural studies of student learning and decision-making. Background in economics, statistics, and UX design. Currently finishing her B.A. in Economics with a Statistics minor at the University of Minnesota. She handles data collection, analysis, and helps connect research findings to design decisions.

Hanjing Wang

Marketing Intern

Marketing and research intern. Studying Interactive Media and Business at NYU Shanghai. She works on branding, bilingual content, and figuring out how to talk about the lab's work in ways that actually resonate with students.

Institutional Affiliations
Dartmouth College
Center for Career Design. This is where most of the work happens — Career Design Lab, DartWorld, Launch Studio, and the rest. The center works with the full undergraduate population, and each semester gives us another cycle to test and improve.
Kent State University
Adjunct Faculty. Teaching design-based approaches to career development. Also serves as a second testing ground — do tools built at a small liberal arts college work for a completely different student body?
DALI Lab
Dartmouth's student-led Digital Arts, Leadership, and Innovation Lab. They build DartWorld with us — software engineering, interface design, and prototyping, with new student teams picking it up each term.
15
Tools & Interventions
20K+
Participants
10+
Countries
460
Occupations Mapped