About Dr. Pete

Teaching and Curriculum Design for UX, Web Design, Development, Digital Marketing 3/6/2020

In 2001 I returned to teaching, this time working with web designers, UX students, and developers via the Art Institute of California, Los Angeles. Over the 2000s I taught thousands of students in the art and tech of the expanding web, and added User Experience (Ux) and Digital Marketing to my skillset. Our department's particular goal was creating "hybrids" - designers who code, coders who design, Uxers comfortable with SEO, and more. More recently, I've been developing courses and programs in UX, Web Design, and Web Development at the undergraduate and graduate level for multiple schools.

UX Prototypes 2/3/2020

I'm a full-stack UX designer. I have conducted UX Research, created user stories, Interaction Design strategy and advanced, interactive UX prototypes. I've also conducted UX Testing for freelance clients. One of my recent projects was Language Learning App (LLA), an advanced UX prototype designed to help young ESL students learn a language in an immersive VR/AR "Magic Window" environment. Using the UX design tool ProtoPie, I created a UX in VR prototype that actually worked - students could navigate and interact with a virtual world via their smartphones. Since I am a web developer, I'm good at creating highly interactive UX prototypes for easy developer handoff. I also audit UX portfolios for Aquent/Vitamin Talent - they consult me for interpreting senior design portfolios.

Creating Sites & Apps 9/14/2019

I've developed in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP/MySQL, including ES6 and NodeJS.In the 1990s I built a secure e-commerce system for Kaleidospace (they didn't exist) and later in the 2000s I experimented with JavaScript-based games. One of my most interesting experiments was Cohort Convert. This PHP/MySQL app takes social data (e.g. Census data) and processes it to show the extent to which generations like Millennials and GenX show real "cohort effects" which can't be explained by regular life-stage analysis.

Web Virtual/Augmented Reality "UX in VR" 9/16/2017

Facebook's acquisition of Oculus signaled the rebirth of the virtual reality era, after false starts in the 1990s and mid-2000s. I felt that the true potential of VR was social, and that the web would provide the best distribution channel for VR experiences. To this end, I have developed WebXR projects, and created the main WebXR group in the greater Los Angeles area.

Sustainable Web Design Theory7/4/2018

In 2010, I became aware of the rising "bloat" of modern web pages - from about 45 kilobytes in the mid-1990s to nearly 3 megabytes today. Analysis of energy use by the web indicates that its "carbon footprint" is much higher than believed. Quite often, the web is not green. I developed a theory for sustainable web design, showing how to minimize carbon footprints for websites, as well as how to introduce a more sustainable workflow into web design and development. The theory has appeared in articles and several recent books.

Books on the Web 3/6/2015

At Kaleidospace (later Indiespace) we realized that the growth of the web required education. So I co-wrote several books on the web with Jeannie Novak, covering Internet-Based Arts and Entertainment, Web Content Management, and Internet streaming of live audio and video. More recently, I've been working on e-books for the emerging ES6 JavaScript standard.

Generational Consulting 1/22/2017

In the late 1990s, our experience marketing indie art and music had taught us that the industry didn't really understand its audience-particularly the emerging "echo boom" today known as the Millennial Generation. Via a series of online posts I was invited by William and Strauss and Neil Howe to join their discussion on Millennials, and ultimately co-wrote a book on "Millennials and Pop Culture" with them. I'm pretty proud of my predictions - in the book I said superheroes would replace anti-heroes for this generation. Since I was a developer, I experimented with massaging social data to more clearly demonstrate the contributions of generations to the zeitgeist.

In the mid-2000s, the great Morley Winograd (author of the higly predictive Millennial Makeover on generational politics) invited me to develop seminars on Millennials and their impact on the industry.

Seminars 3/6/2015

More recently, I've developed seminars and training in Virtual Reality, in particular web-based VR using the WebXR 1.0 API via Meetup.com. These seminars explore WebXR, libraries and frameworks, and the role of User Experience (Ux) in VR design.

Virtual Worlds Exploration 3/6/2015

In the late 2000s, I worked with Eric Elder and other instructors on a concept for virtual world marketing and development. During that time, we used the only practical platform out there - Second Life. Together, we created RPG games on Second Life islands, and ascertained the potential of virtual worlds for marketing and e-commerce. I also consulted via healthcare consulting agency Evolvent on the use of Second Life counseling for Post-Traumatice Stress Disorder (PTSD). I'm applying this past experience to the emerging WebXR world today.

Team Robomonster - A Self-Driving Car in 2005 3/6/2015

In 2004 and 2005, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) sponsored a Grand Challenge for self-driving cars with prizes up to 2 million dollars. At school, a student approached me and asked if we could field a team. I said we needed a car, and he found something better - a rock-crawler suitable for development. Over the next several months, we created RoboMonster, an autonomous vehicle with a "sensor dense" programming architecture, widely different from most of the Artificial Intelligence entries. We were just an "art school", but our team made it to the DARPA semi-finals, being eliminated before the final race in 2005 (Stanford won). Today, self-driving cars are a reality, but the real value was engaging and motivating students to think themselves capable of designing anything.

I Helped Create the 1990s Web 3/6/2015

In 1993, I became aware of the emerging "World Wide Web", and became convinced of its potential to transform society. Nevertheless, I didn't move until I met my future business partner, the amazing Jeannie Novak at UCLA. Together, we decided that the World Wide Web would be a good place to sell art, music, and movies by indie artists, and I left UCLA to co-found Kaleidospace Independent Internet Artists in 1993. We made the first sale of a product through the Web in May 1994, and developed many of the features of the modern web on our site. We built over 1500 websites for independent visual artists, musicians, filmmakers, writers, crafty people, and other creative indies. We also built the first websites for many big-name entertainment companies and created seminars to that helped arts and entertainment professionals get onto the web. The Kspace site lives on at Indiespace.

My Background in Science 3/6/2015

I originally trained in Biology at Loyola University, New Orleans, and went on to graduate school, receiving a Doctorate in Molecular and Cellular Biology (formerly listed as Biophysics and Theoretical Biology) in 1984. After several years workin on polyvalent vaccines, I joined Jeffry Miller's UCLA group, and developed an exhaustive protein engineering/evolutionary comparison for lac repressor. Here I learned how to do 3D modeling on a Silicon Graphics Iris, sparking my interest in 3D and Virtual Worlds. I became interested in high-temperature organisms. and derived the first DNA sequence for hyperthermophylic bacteria including Thermotoga and Pyrobaculum. .