 And welcome to UXLXMasters, live from Lisbon, Portugal. UXLXMasters is the event we always wanted to put together but never could since it's really hard to gather all these brilliant minds in one place on the same date. So we took advantage of the online format to bring you the knowledge of the very best speakers in the UX industry. It's gonna be an incredible three days and I hope you learn loads and meet interesting people from around the globe. We have attendees from 25 different countries. Thank you all. Thank you also to the incredible team that helped put together these main music events. And thank you to our sponsors, especially our main sponsor, OutSystems, the local platform that lets you design and build apps lightning fast. So to kick it off brilliantly, I'd like to introduce you to our opening keynote speaker, Peter Marvin. Peter is the president of Sematic Studios and famously co-author of the Colour Bear Book on Information Architecture, which is just one of six books the author. He joined us in Lisbon way back in 2012. Please welcome Peter Marvin. Well, hello, I'm Peter Marvin and I'm so happy I get to speak with you about tomorrow's architects. This is an odyssey of strange connections. We'll talk about language, classification, culture, madness and death. We'll trespass and transgress, not only because everything is deeply intertwinkled but also so that we're able to see both the forest and the trees. But first, let me tell you about my roots. In the early 1990s, I had an inkling that digital networks would need organizing. And so I went to library school at the University of Michigan, where I fell in love with the internet. And I had a dream. I wanted to organize information so that people could find what they need. And that's precisely what I've done. Over the last 25 years, I've helped all sorts of organizations with their information architecture and user experience challenges. Along the way, I've written a number of animal books about information architecture, findability, search, systems thinking and planning. Implicit in all these books is the idea of change and the hope that with greater understanding, we can make better websites, better systems and better plans. Of course, change can be nearly as impossible as escaping flatland. Flatland is a story about a square who lives in a two-dimensional world occupied by geometric figures such as lines and circles. Thanks to a series of dreams and mystical experiences, the square visits a three-dimensional world and meets a sphere. This is, of course, mind-blowing. Upon return to flatland, the square attempts to convince his fellow shapes of the existence of a third dimension. This does not go well. His vision is seen as madness and eventually the square is imprisoned as a danger to society. When Lou Rosenfeld and I began evangelizing IA in 1994, some folks believed that we were touched by madness. At that time, the design of two D pages, two-dimensional pages totally eclipsed the architecture of multi-dimensional systems. We didn't have the vocabulary. People couldn't see what we were saying. We aspired to make the invisible visible and it was a struggle. Nevertheless, we persisted. We gave talks. We helped clients. We wrote books and it worked. Our madness changed the world. Today, folks are better able to see both the forest and the trees. I enjoyed our success, but I paid a price because all maps are traps. I could not see past the definition of IA that we embedded in our writing and embodied in our consulting. I could not think beyond the structural design of websites and software. And so I spent years held hostage by the polar bear in a flat land of my own creation. From time to time, I caught a fleeting glimpse of a deeper way of understanding the architecture of information. I sense that IA could be more dangerous, not bad, but dangerous. But it took me years to realize the potential of IA to create environments for understanding. To borrow the terminology of Indiyan, I had to shift my focus from solution space to problem space. For example, when I worked with the library at Harvard Business School, my client understood the power of investigating the problem space. She said, if we frame this project as a website redesign, we will have failed before we begin. So we built a dream team that included Steve Portagall and folks from the understanding group. And we interviewed a cross-section of the faculty. And we didn't ask professors about the website or even their use of the library. We asked them, how do you do research? And from these fascinating conversations, we built maps of the research lifecycle. And these maps served as boundary objects with the power to bring librarians and faculty together. Forged with words, categories, bubbles and arrows, these maps are environments for understanding the problem space. This is an information architecture that precedes the design of user experience. Okay, so it's time to address the anglerfish in the room. Earlier, I mentioned my dream of helping people to find what they need. Yet we all know that dark patterns are clouding our practice and challenging our faith. Erica Hall has argued that just as the luminescent pole of the anglerfish lures prey to their death, so too do UX designers lure users into predatory business systems. Recently, Mark Hurst went so far as to reframe UX as user exploitation. Scott Birkin responded by reminding us that since design is simply a set of skills, you can't lose faith in UX any more than you can lose faith in carpentry. And that hope to impact ethics. We must influence decision makers or move into decision-making roles ourselves. Now, before you lose faith in your ability to affect change, let me tell you the story of Dan and the wall. Last year, Dan and I worked on a project together and we had a client, Richard, who could be brutal in his rejection of our ideas. So one day, many months in, Dan had an idea and it was brilliant, but it was also radical and risky. And I said, there's no way Richard will go for that. As far as I was concerned, it was a brick wall standing in our way. That was my mental model. And Dan smiled and said, I know, but I'm gonna pitch it anyway. And he did. And it was painful. And we were all sitting there avoiding eye contact, waiting for Dan to be destroyed. When Richard said, I love this idea, let's do it. And I realized that my mental model was wrong and that the wall was made of paper. I gave a talk last year called Gentle Change. The transcript is available online, in which I argued that if we hope to grow compassion for users, we might learn from those who grow compassion for animals. In user experience and animal rights, what must change is culture, the sum of our behaviors and beliefs. Ways to change culture include information, action, experience and environment. We tend to focus on the first, but the most powerful way is last, because environment eats information for lunch. We shape our buildings thereafter, they shape us. Also last year, I wrote an article named Emancipating Information Architecture, which begins as follows. I hope to free information architecture from the shackles I helped to forge. And I argued that while the practice of IA in the context of business is more challenging and more important than ever, we must also seek ways to apply IA beyond business and beyond digital. And towards that end, I proposed a new definition. Information architecture is the design of language and classification systems to change the world. Our beliefs and behaviors are forged in places made of information. Words are the levers of culture. We shape our categories thereafter, they shape us. The ABCs of LGBT plus is the best IA book I've read in years. Ashley Mardell writes, gender is a system of classification rooted in social ideas about masculinity and femininity. And sex is a social construct, a method of classification invented by humans. And they explain not knowing how to put your identity into words can be isolating and frustrating. Used properly, language has the power to validate people's identities and grant a sense of community. To my delight, Ash Hardell who changed their name in 2016 includes a whole chapter on spectrums and non-linear alternatives such as color wheels as tools to help people go beyond binary. Checkboxes can quote, cause intersex people to feel isolated, invalid and erased and perpetuate intolerance of anything that's not the norm. Whereas spectrums acknowledge that identities can exist in varying degrees of intensity and allow for change and fluidity. This study of identity IA is fascinating but we mustn't lose sight of why it matters. Ash writes, I didn't have the education growing up to tell me that there were genders beyond a male and a female. So discovering there was a term for what I felt was such a relief. And understanding my gender and not letting it determine anything I do is the most freeing feeling I've ever had. Organizing words matters to Ash. And given that most LGBTQ plus youth are bullied in person and online and nearly half of transgender youth attempt suicide, the design of language and classification systems matters to us all. That's why I'm so happy that our daughter Claire Morville invited Rebecca and Jamie Brucehoff to keynote the upcoming IA conference. Mighty Rebecca is a 12 year old activist and Marvel superhero on a mission to improve support for transgender and LGBTQ youth and to make the world a more loving place. Her mom, Jamie is an openly queer woman who writes and speaks about identity, parenting and faith. Together they will tell their story and make the case for IA activism. Rebecca, a self-described word kid says the word transgender gave her identity, community and power. And Jamie explains that, quote, language and classification schemes can be radically affirming or excluding. So this community has the power to build a world where we all fit. As we work together to build a world where we all fit, I hope that we will widen our circle of compassion to include all sentient beings. It's time to undo the damage inflicted by Descartes who crowed, I think therefore I am, back in 1637 and defined animals as automata, machines without minds or souls, brutes incapable of thought. Renee Descartes was morally wrong. As Jeremy Bentham pointed out 200 years later, the question is not can they reason nor can they talk but can they suffer? Descartes was also factually wrong because the answer to this question, are we smart enough to know how smart animals are, is no. Non-human animals remember the past and plan for the future. They think and feel, laugh and play, talk and teach. Again and again due to our own ignorance, we are surprised by the behaviors and beliefs of animals. As Carl Safina reveals in Becoming Wild, all sorts of animals engage in cultural learning that spreads skills, creates identity in a sense of belonging and carries traditions across generations. Culture is not unique to humans and neither is consciousness. In 1871, Charles Darwin famously argued, the difference in mind between human and non-human animals is one of degree and not of kind. In 2012, Stephen Hawking joined an international group of neuroscientists to declare that non-human animals experience consciousness. Science keeps discovering the inconvenient truth that we have more in common than we care to admit. In the words of Stephen Wise, any two beings are infinitely different and infinitely alike. We choose whether to lump or split. How we classify reveals more about ourselves than about what we classify. Renee Descartes was wrong, but his ideas were useful to science, religion and industry. His philosophy is the foundation of contemporary capitalist morality. Factually and morally, Renee Descartes was wrong. What does it say about us that we've believed him for so long? One difference between us and them is that our way of living is unsustainable. That's why I'm drawn to Indigenous wisdom. If we fail to learn from the past, we simply won't have a future. Tyson Yonkaporta is an Aboriginal Australian and a university professor. His book about Indigenous knowledge systems is brilliant. Sand talk invokes the custom of sketching images on the ground together with story, gesture and metaphor in order to convey meaning, build consensus, create knowledge and change culture. This is the table of contents. I wish we had time for yarning about each of these chapters, but since we're trapped in linear time, let's limit ourselves to a sentence. In our law, we know that rocks are sentient and contain spirit. Notice your response. How does that sentence make you feel? Animism says everything in nature is awake, both perceiving its environment and with a sense of its own being. What are we to do with this belief? Can we even understand in a language that lacks respect for animacy? It's hard for us to believe, yet it's dangerous to dismiss. Robin Wall Kimmerer, a professor of environmental biology and a member of the citizen Potawatomi nation writes, quote, in the old times, our elders say the trees talked to each other and they were right. Science has proven in recent years that trees communicate through the air using pheromones and through their root systems using chemical and electrical signals. They share water and nutrients and information. They work together to fight insects and even form interspecies alliances. Trees are communal, forests are super organisms and the elders were way ahead of science. What is it like to be a bat? The honest answer is I don't know. To admit ignorance is humbling, but it's better than false certainty. I don't know the answer, but I believe it's the right question because sentience is a spectrum and because metaphysics and ethics are entangled. And so I have a new dream. It's called sentient sanctuary. I want to create a gathering place dedicated to more happiness and less suffering for all sentient beings. I can't tell you exactly how this vision will unfold. I can't show you a plan or a schedule, but I can assure you there will be goats. This is what I hope to do with my one wild and precious life. My final journey before the borders closed was to Guadalajara where I learned that in Mexico, death is seen as natural, beautiful and spiritual. And that Dia de Muertos is an indigenous celebration that engages friends and family and remembrance of and relationship with the dead. As the movie Coco reveals, the whole point of the day of the dead is that the dead are not really gone. In our culture, death is taboo. Grief is the subject of fear and we suffer for our ignorance. As Stephen Jenkinson writes, dying is traumatizing when it is happening in a time and place that will not make room for dying in its way of living. He says, our responsibility is to know the old stories that include life dying so that life can live and culture lives in the language. If you can't say something, you can't see it either. Last year, my father-in-law, Charles Wickhorst died. Sadly, due to the pandemic, we were unable to hold a proper celebration of his life. So we decided to embrace Dia de Muertos as an annual ritual and tradition for our family. In remembering Charles and all of our friends and family who have died, we remind ourselves that the dead are not really gone. We used to believe the world was flat, a number of people still do. When we see things one way, especially if that way is useful, we're unlikely to see differently. As the square discovered, it's hard to change two-dimensional minds even with the gift of transcendental experience. Henry David Thoreau advised us that rather than hacking at the branches of evil, we must strike at the root. You're unlikely to fix a predatory business system by hacking at the design of its website. The medium that matters is culture. We must strike at the root of behavior and belief. And so we are back where we began, pondering tree roots by Vincent van Gogh. This is his last painting. Vincent was working on it the day he died. In life, he was considered a madman and a failure. In death, his paintings are priceless. Vincent was able to see reality differently and to nudge open our doors of perception. In the swirling skies of the starry night, he captures a fleeting glimpse of turbulent flow, a world where light is both particle and wave. Matter and energy are inter-convertible and nature is alive with spirit. And in these twisted roots before us, Vincent invites us to see both the forest and the trees. It's hard to know what to believe. Our time is liminal. Our problem space is in flux. Our sources of authority are unstable. Will we learn to embrace indigenous wisdom? Will we learn to value the individual and the community and the ecosystem? Will there be a touch of madness in your masterclasses? Will this community step up and change culture? I sure hope so because the best way to escape flatland is together. And because culture is changed by words, categories, pictures, songs, stories and rituals. We all have the ability and the power and the spirit. We are all tomorrow's architects. Thank you for your attention.