§ Lexicon
The lab's working vocabulary.
Short, citable definitions of the terms the lab uses across its methods and working reports. Each entry distinguishes a term from its nearest cousin and links to where it does its work. Stable by design, so others can point to a definition; revised in place as the thinking sharpens.
Terms
Twelve terms that recur across the lab. The shared thread is a stance the lab calls steering vs. becoming: designing for the person who decides, not deciding for them.
n.
Narrative compression
A staged reduction of a self-story (paragraph, then sentence, then single word) used to surface its load-bearing element. Distinct from summarizing: the goal is salience, what carries the most weight, not brevity.
n. / stance
AI as mirror, not advisor
Using AI to reflect a person's own words, patterns, and evidence back to them so they can interpret it, rather than to generate recommendations about what they should do. Distinct from AI advising: a mirror surfaces evidence and returns judgment to the person; an advisor supplies the judgment.
n.
Card-sort triangulation
Cross-checking a person's self-understanding by having them sort the same material in more than one frame, and reading the disagreements between sorts as signal. Distinct from a single card sort: triangulation treats the gaps between multiple sorts, not one sort's output, as the finding.
n.
Spatial mapping
Representing options or experiences as positions in a navigable space rather than a ranked list, so relationships, distance, and neighborhoods become visible. Distinct from ranking: a map shows the shape of a space and lets the user choose a vantage; a ranking pre-selects one ordering.
n.
The ranked-list problem
The failure mode in which presenting options as a single ordered list collapses a rich decision space into "what's number one," suppressing exploration and ownership. Distinct from information overload: the issue is not too much information, it is the premature imposition of one ordering.
n.
Archetype clustering
Grouping people's reflective outputs (journals, sorts, stories) into recurring patterns, to see what is shared across a cohort without flattening the individual. Distinct from personality typing: archetypes are emergent, provisional descriptions of patterns in the data, not fixed boxes assigned to people.
n.
Longitudinal journaling
Reflective writing collected repeatedly across a term, not once, so that change over time, not a single snapshot, is the unit of study. Distinct from one-off reflection: the value is in the trajectory between entries.
n. / stance
Anchor, then hold space
A two-move facilitation stance: first establish a firm reference point (the anchor), then deliberately withhold direction so the person can do their own sense-making (hold space). Distinct from facilitating as guiding: the anchor is directive, the hold is non-directive, and the skill is knowing when to switch.
n.
Autonomy-preserving design
Designing reflective tools so that interpretation and decision remain with the person: the tool surfaces evidence and structures attention, but does not decide. Distinct from nudging: a nudge steers toward a designer-chosen outcome; autonomy-preserving design builds the person's own capacity to choose (a boost).
n.
The 90-minute constraint
The discipline of designing a complete reflective arc inside a single short session, used as a forcing function for what is essential. Distinct from time pressure: it is a deliberate design parameter that exposes which moves actually carry the work, not an accident of scheduling.
n.
Cohort-scale reflection
Supporting deep reflection across an entire group (for example, a full undergraduate cohort) rather than one motivated individual or a single session. Distinct from one-on-one reflection: the design problem is sustaining depth at scale and across time.
n. / framing
Steering vs. becoming
The lab's organizing contrast: tools that engineer a person toward a chosen behavior (steering, or nudge) versus tools that build the person's own capacity to see and decide (becoming, or boost). Lo/Be Lab works at the becoming end. Distinct from good vs. bad design: both can be rigorous; the difference is where judgment is meant to end up.
Connected layers
These terms are defined here once and used everywhere. For the methods that operationalize them, see methods; for the projects that test them, see working reports.