Peter LoBue

Peter-of-all-trades is what they should call me. My academic and professional careers consist of an eclectic mix of projects spanning from design research to software development.

BACKGROUND

My educational background was driven by my passion to learn about how computers work. Research in Human Computer Interaction and Design Thinking quickly attracted my attention to caring more about how people work and how technology influences their behavior. Working as an Experience Designer in a small consulting group, I had the pleasure of solving human problems with technology alongside all types of personalities and roles. But after four years of climbing the corporate ladder, I wanted to seek out a greater personal challenge - to acquire the skills necessary to realize my own designs. So I set out to learn how to code at a professional level and build my dream app.

MISSION

I want to empower people through technology. Building products is super fun, but it is meaningless without solving real problems that improve peoples' lives.

In an ideal world I would do it all: Dive into a brand new problem, conduct the necessary research, design a solution including software and real-life components, build the software, and execute the adoption plan.

I believe in working as transparently as possible, while exercising utmost empathy for users and teammates. Let's put our egos aside and collaborate.

SELECTED PROJECTS

Objective-C, Swift, Couchbase, EventKit

Team: All me

Whenever - Casual Calendar App

Native iOS app design and implementation

Whenever is a productivity app for people who don't use productivity apps. The goal was to merge the concepts of a digital calendar and to-do list (which I believe are fundamentally the same) into one simple interface, while remaining fully compatible with the iCalendar format.

The app was launched in February 2017 and is undergoing finishing touches.

whenever.io

Objective-C, Fabric, Realm, MapKit, SailsJS, Parse, React Native

Team: Me (product)
+ a friend (business)

Time Machine - Historical Walking Tours

Native iOS app + custom admin dashboard

Time Machine started as a series of QR codes places in windows of businesses throughout my hometown, West Chester, Pennsylvania. Users could scan each code to view an old photograph that was taken at that exact location, to compare to real-life today.

After meeting the founder, I decided to replace the QR codes with an iOS app as my first development project. The app used location monitoring to unlock photos, similar to an easter egg hunt. I also built a dashboard for him to manage the content and add more tours.

We won second place at a competition sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania in June 2015. In January, 2017 the app was featured on entrepreneur.com: 4 Startups Revolutionizing the EdTech World

Currently, I'm rebuilding the app in React Native to support Android.

letsbuildatimemachine.com

Axure, Office

Team: Me + primary client contact, many other clients, designers, developers

B2B Web App for an Automotive Company

Consulting for user experience, business analysis and product management

For a number of projects spanning about two years, I was responsible for the user experience of an automotive company's B2B customer-facing web software solution. From the inception of the client's ideas to polishing final features I was their BA/UX point of contact, creating all functional requirements and design documentation and ensuring correct implementation by developers.

My client demonstrated this tool at an investor's conference in 2014. It has visibility throughout the Fortune 100 company as a flagship product for their focus on customer experience.

Axure, Office

Team: Me + another designer + our manager

IT Services Portal for a Fortune 50 Pharmaceutical Company

Design research, business analysis and prototyping project

This intense, three month project began with evaluating the IT help-desk facing interface of an implementation of ServiceNow, a SaaS IT service desk solution. We researched previous helpdesk metrics, user requirements, functional specifications and ITIL-based process documents. After user testing with agents from India, we presented the client with a prioritized list of recommendations to improve the interface based on budget restrictions and technical limitations of the platform.

During phase 2 of the project, we designed, created and iterated on a prototype of an employee-facing IT services portal that included incident reporting, self-help articles, tutorials, and an e-commerce style ordering system. We conducted testing sessions with employees from every region of the world.

The prototype was the basis for a system deployed to the company's 100,000+ employees and translated into 12 languages.

PHP, JavaFX

Team: Me + PhD candidate

Simulating Additional Area on Tele-Board's Large Shared Display

Digital whiteboard feature implementation and academic experiment in HCI

While attending the HPI School for Design Thinking, I also worked as a student researcher on the team for Tele-Board, a digital whiteboard system (part of the HPI-Stanford Design Thinking Research Project). I implemented some new features to help manage the virtual space on a SMART Board®, and then designed and conducted an experiment to test them.

My findings were published at HCI International 2011, July 9-14 in Orlando, Florida.

Abstract:
Digital whiteboard systems can simulate an infinite amount of surface area on a single display; however the hardware's limited size necessitates supplementary virtual tools to navigate the area. In what ways does this less convenient setup hinder established collaborative workflows? Participants in our pilot study were asked to synthesize data on either a traditional whiteboard setup with multiple touch displays or a single display that had to be navigated virtually. Results show that working under the restrictions of a single display required slightly more time, yet workflows could continue. Users accepted the visual restriction as a condition of working with a digital system. Team members were also impelled to work more closely together, which both helped and hurt collaboration.

Poster (.pdf) • SpringerLink page

PHP, Excel

Team: Me + a professor

Types of Common-Sense Knowledge Needed for Recognizing Textual Entailment

Academic research project in natural language processing

For my capstone project at Temple University, I analyzed and categorized the types of knowledge needed for solving an RTE dataset. I then set up and conducted an experiment where other students evaluated how well-defined the categories were.

The results were published at ACM's Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies 2011 conference, June 19-24, 2011 in Portland, Oregon.

Abstract:
Understanding language requires both linguistic knowledge and knowledge about how the world works, also known as common-sense knowledge. We attempt to characterize the kinds of common-sense knowledge most often involved in recognizing textual entailments. We identify 20 categories of common-sense knowledge that are prevalent in textual entailment, many of which have received scarce attention from researchers building collections of knowledge.

Poster (.pdf) • ACM Digital Library page

Team: Me + 5 other
D-School students

Berlin Air Show 2010 Presentation

Presentation on airport security concepts to top security experts in Germany

Airport security was the topic of our twelve-week project at the HPI D-School in Germany. The project's sponsor, the "Director of the 'Security Research Master Plan' Agency" from the Brandenburg Economic Development Board liked the presentation of our research results so much that he invited us to present them at a workshop for the top airport security experts in Germany. According to him, our fifteen minute presentation summed up the issue of airport security better than any security official could.

Simplified and translated presentation (.pdf)

C++

Team: Me + another undergraduate CS student

Epidemic Routing Protocol for Delay Tolerant Networks

Undergraduate research project in wireless networking

I implemented a delay-tolerant networking protocol in C++ to send information between low-range wireless devices. Fellow students and I then ran an experiment with pedestrians, bicyclists, moving robots and an RC airplane to observe how the data propagated throughout the network.

National Science Foundation funded Research Experience for Undergraduates (NSF REU), SURF-IT 2009 at University of California Santa Cruz

Poster (.pdf)Project page

EDUCATION

9/2009 – 7/2010

Potsdam, Germany

HPI School of Design Thinking

Post-graduate certificate in Design Thinking

8/2005 – 12/2010

Philadelphia, PA

Temple University

B.Sc. in Computer Science and Math; Minor in Business
Honors Program; Phi Beta Kappa; Summa Cum Laude
Semester abroad in Tokyo, Temple University Japan