Episode 18: Peter Morville on Farming and the Future of Information Architecture Part Two

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Transcript

Announcer:

Welcome to Surfacing. This episode is part two of a two-part conversation with information architect, Peter Morville. In this episode, Peter offers his perspective on the state of information architecture and talks about his methods for tackling IA projects with clients. He also considers systems thinking and some of the challenges that a new generation of designers and information architects face as they endeavor to build impactful digital experiences.

Andy Vitale:

For the people listening who may not know, I'd love to just pull it up a little bit higher and ask you to explain what information architecture is. And especially for those who may have never worked with an information architect, like what should they expect them to do when they hear this term?

Lisa Welchman:

Maybe starting a fight?

Peter Morville:

Yeah. I don't even know so much of... I don't even think it's contested territory anymore. It's more like no one else wants to mess with this stuff. It's too ambiguous, right? I mean, I mostly now get brought in by organizations that have robust user experience teams and nobody there really wants to mess with the information architecture stuff. And it helps, so we can kind of define information architecture as like the structural design of shared information spaces.

Peter Morville:

I find it helpful to talk about it at different levels or layers. So you can talk about tangible information architecture is the middle layer, where you're talking about organization and labeling and navigation, search and so we talk about things like taxonomies and metadata, right? That's all like maybe I should leave out the metadata piece.

Lisa Welchman:

No, don't. Live it in.

Peter Morville:

But it's all kind of, well, but that comes into the what I would call deep IA, right? So the middle layer is kind of like what shows up on a wire frame, it is what people see and they kinda get it and they want to talk about it. But then you've got the deep IA, which is more of like the metadata, the controlled vocabularies, the SOAR, like kind of library science stuff that is more invisible, but it's like infrastructure that makes the experience possible.

Peter Morville:

And so it can be very important and very few UX people know anything about that. And then there's strategic IA, which is kind of what I like the most, which is thinking about the big picture of structure and organization and how it connects to strategy and also just how you effect change within those areas in an organization. And so that gets more into like Lisa's area of governance, right? You're sort of, how does this system fit within and, or change the organization, right?

Peter Morville:

And so governance becomes really important because it's like, well, who owns it? Who owns what pieces? How does it get changed? But that the strategic part of information architecture is incredibly ambiguous, right? And most people haven't even thought about it in an organization.

Andy Vitale:

Right. No, that makes sense. So we have information architects on our team. We've actually got information architects, we have UX researchers, we have UX designers, UI designers, content strategists, UX writers, service designers, we've got them all. So the question that I would ask is, it's a very specialized team, but in a lot of places, it's not. It's more of a generalist that knows a little bit enough to be dangerous of some IA and a little bit of content and UX and UI. So what are the intersections there between those disciplines? Where do you see the similarities that exist? And then where are the harder lines drawn? And does that get to when you get more strategic?

Peter Morville:

Yeah. And this is just based on my perception, I don't feel that there are enough information architects in the world for us to call that like an official role within the UX world. I don't think most UX teams have an information architect. And so that work is mostly just done by UX designers or content strategists or user researchers, or like and then occasionally, that organization may bring in a consultant who specializes because it's like, okay, this is beyond what our team feels comfortable tackling.

Peter Morville:

In your environment where you actually have people who are called information architects, then you have to kind of figure out what are their roles and what are their core strengths, what are they really good at? And how does that relate to what designers do? And those are the kinds of things we were back in the late '90s, early 2000s, where there were the battles of interaction designers and information architects, and everyone's fighting over territory.

Peter Morville:

And it's just I didn't get as upset or bothered by those arguments as a lot of folks, I kind of was more amused by them. But I never felt like they were very productive because they were inherently in deeply political, right? There is no right answer to like what should an information architect do and what should a visual designer do? Each have their own core competencies, but there's gray area where either one could do the work and sometimes a designer might do better IA work than an IA.

Peter Morville:

Like I've worked with designers who sometimes are like, "You're doing better than I am at this stuff." And but they're so political that it's like there's always an undercurrent of like, I want this power or I want to be able to do that. And all those arguments that were on listservs back in the day, it was like, nobody just acknowledged the political piece of it.

Lisa Welchman:

I just could go back to something that you said that I wrote a little note down because it's, yes, my arena is governance and helping people to be intentional about what they're doing and putting it online, right? Which actually harks back to the mindfulness thing, which is a thing you and I have in common. It's just, are you doing what you intend to do? And do you understand what you're trying to do? And so one of the things that you mentioned is that, yes, IA is all over the place, but this deep IA, which I was like, "Don't leave that out, don't leave that out."

Lisa Welchman:

Because I honestly believe it is in that space in particular that we cause a lot of harm online, which would mean a UX person not understanding the library services taxonomic data backend implications of what they're doing. So you're designing something that carries my personally identifiable information and drags it across six systems, right? Some of which are secure some of which aren't. And you're just not thinking through the implications of that in the long haul and the vulnerabilities to me as a user or a customer or a person.

Lisa Welchman:

And so I just wanted to pause on that first section and maybe get some reflection from you because just, yes, from a practitioner perspective, it's kind of amusing that these things are all mixed up, but honestly design existed prior to the web and IT existed prior to the web and marketing existed prior to the web. And a lot of those things went online, but there were some things that I think of as pure play digital, and it's not library services or taxonomy or tagging, all of that stuff was there ahead of time.

Lisa Welchman:

But the capacity of what you can do with it in terms of personalization married with the speed of the web and the global capacity of the internet makes for this possibility that didn't exist before. And from looking at it through a governance lens, it's like, and nobody wants to own it and I'm going, but that's the thing that's killing us, right? And so I'm wondering what your thoughts are about that and where that might land in terms of just a staff level accountability. Like who's going to own it? I hate the word own, but right now nobody's got it and it's kind of all over the place.

Peter Morville:

Yeah. Good question, and it makes me think of this project I worked on for a couple of years with a big organization in Detroit that Andy would know. And it was a really fascinating project focused on enabling people within the organization who were talking on the phone with customers to better access and share knowledge. And so it had the benefit of being a fairly controlled environment with a really significant team responsible, not just for design, but for content and technology, right? So it was like we had the whole piece within the organization, we were working with, they had the whole thing.

Lisa Welchman:

So rare.

Peter Morville:

Yeah. And they're really smart, hardworking, super well-funded folks, right? So it's like you can do anything. Except that this was one of the weaknesses, right? Where it's like we're recommending an information architecture, and even working with the content folks on restructuring content and actually like working on the selection of technology for search and content management, all this stuff. And I kept trying to get through to these fairly young folks on the team that like, the way that content was tagged was going to determine success or failure.

Peter Morville:

And they would just kind of nod and like, "Yep. Yeah, we got it. We got it." And I was like, "No, you don't. I can tell because you would be scared if you understood how difficult controlled vocabularies and metadata and applying those and continuing to evolve the vocabulary. If you had ever done this before, if you understood how hard it is, you would be losing sleep. But instead you're just like, 'yeah, we got it.'" It's like, "No, you don't." And I could not make them get it.

Andy Vitale:

I'm pretty sure they're still struggling with that same thing today.

Lisa Welchman:

I mean, just, I'm going to cling to this for just one second, because honestly, in this space, I feel personally and professionally, lie many solutions. And so people's sort of simplistic, easy, agile sense of getting work done kind of makes me crazy. And so that's all right back in the '90s when it really was simple and kind of lightweight or whatever, but now these things are embedded deeply inside an organization in terms of revenue, inside of individuals in terms of this is their job and it's their vocation and their career path, and also inside the lives of people that use these products and services.

Lisa Welchman:

And so one of the things that you said earlier was haven't seen much progress in the last 10 years. And so what popped up into my head is like that's because they haven't gotten level yet. There are some fundamentals that we need to know how to do, including appropriate tagging, and appropriate use of data and appropriate handling of personally identifiable information. There's capacity that organizations and vocationally professionals we haven't leveled up yet.

Lisa Welchman:

We can't go any farther because we don't know how to do the basic stuff that will just make us make safe stuff. And so does that resonate with you as like a true thing? Please say yes, because I want... I mean, we just can't do it. I guess that's a really long-winded way of saying we can't do it, we don't have the capacity.

Peter Morville:

Yeah. I would say yes, and I just wonder if with the current state of organizational dysfunction, we're going to make much progress anytime soon. Right? This may be partly a result of getting older, but I just have a certain amount of cynicism around our government and our businesses and our culture at this point where I see a lot of larger organizations where it's like the kinds of organizations that are very competitive are like you see like whether you want to call it capitalism or just markets.

Peter Morville:

It's like you go into a city like San Francisco and you go out for breakfast and man, the eggs are better than anything you've ever had. And you're just like, "I didn't even know you could make this stuff this good." And I mean, there's a lot going on there, but part of it is competition, right? It's like there's this very strong motivation, you've got a sophisticated audience who if you don't make really good food, they're going to go down the street.

Peter Morville:

And so where competition is occurring, you see innovation and really high quality, but the playbook, as far as I can tell for all significant sized businesses these days is to gain some level of monopoly power so you don't have to compete, right? And so the incident that happens, it gets all forms of dysfunction flourish, right? And anyone who tries to get help from their internet company or their-

Lisa Welchman:

Healthcare and whatever.

Peter Morville:

... service providers these days, it's like, oh my goodness, healthcare is like, oh, it's just so... It's like a scene out of that movie, Brazil.

Lisa Welchman:

Well, let's flip it... Oh, go ahead, Andy.

Andy Vitale:

No, I was going to say that what happens is the companies start to see that value and taste that value and then get to the point where they say, "How do we now optimize this?" Not, "How do we learn and get better and continue to improve?" It's like, "We're here. So now let's make ourselves more efficient." And I think that gain or that quest for efficiency is what slows down that knowledge over time.

Lisa Welchman:

Yeah. I mean, I think this is the role, we just did an interview with a colleague of mine, Kristina Podnar talking about digital policy. And I think as much as people hate rules, particularly rules that are generated from without an imposed on, within, but kind of that's how rules are, right? Parents make rules for children, children don't make rules for children. I mean, I guess they could, but oftentimes that isn't really what is required, that this really is the role of policy and the intent of policy.

Lisa Welchman:

And I think as I am moving to the EU, it's fascinating interacting with my own government that I've been in for 57 years and interacting with European countries and just how much more sophisticated and evenhanded they are with the use of digital things like GDPR, how my personally identifiable information is handled, even with just weird one-off people that I'm talking to, like business bookkeepers.

Lisa Welchman:

Joe, the bookkeeper in the Netherlands is like, "You can't send me this information this way." They're like, "Blah." And I'm like, "It's really startling to see." And so it's also heartening because it's reminding me that if you have a different intent that you can behave differently. And so the intentionality of intent, right?

Peter Morville:

And you see it all through society like, I mean, my favorite airport in the world is Amsterdam and that I've ever been to. And I think it might've gone downhill a little bit in recent years, but I remember the first few times going through there and just like being in awe of like, "Wow, this is what it's like if you actually design an airport for the people who are in it, like you try to make it nicer and better." It's like, I mean, there was a library in the airport and there's like a practically a rain forest and you can go outdoors and feel the sun on your face while you're still in the secure zone.

Peter Morville:

Like it's incredible and it's the same as you're saying with everything from policies to digital experiences, if you actually have the conditions in which to design for people, I mean, we have the capabilities to do amazing things. We're just, it's more PO politics and culture that gets in the way. It's not that we can't figure out how to do it, we're amazing technologists, using that term very broadly. That the technical side of information architecture hasn't been the challenge for 20 years, it's been the ticks of it that gets in the way.

Lisa Welchman:

So that really leads me to something I really wanted to ask you about which is sort of like the next generation. So And is younger than me by a bit, you're younger than me by a bit less, and so I'm the oldest one here. But still, we're not young, any of us. And so I had the pleasure of speaking with your daughter, Claire, right? Who is following in your footsteps, which is not, I don't think, an intentional thing that happened. So you didn't try to foster any more UX or information architecture people in your family, but there she is.

Lisa Welchman:

And so we had this really delightful conversation about what steps she might take professionally next, and that was fantastic. But I asked her about sort of the younger generation. And for people who are listening, who are just getting started in their career, because honestly, I believe those are the folks who are going to have to catch the good and the bad of what has been done already and to shift it, right? And I do believe that it will be get better, but I don't believe that it will get better using the same behaviors that we've had in the past.

Lisa Welchman:

So I guess striking a more positive note and thinking about the future, what do you see are positive things that a new generation of information architects, UX, content strategists, designers, experienced designers, as I like to call them, are bringing to the table? And what are sort of the tasks to be done, do you think, for those folks?

Peter Morville:

What's interesting with Claire is that since that conversation she has pivoted into crisis management.

Lisa Welchman:

Yeah, she said she was.

Peter Morville:

Yeah. So for most of the time that she was growing up she had absolutely zero interest in what I was doing. She wouldn't read anything that I wrote, and then like a year and a half ago she kind of freaked out about her career. And she did end up in the iSchool at University of Maryland without intending to like... When she picked it, she didn't realize it was kind of the same thing as what I was doing, and then she was mad. So she really didn't want to follow my footsteps.

Peter Morville:

And then for like a year it seemed like maybe she would like, she was like looking at maybe going into UX. And but she's pivoted now into crisis management, and in a few weeks is going to start working with one of the top consulting firms in crisis management on like response and recovery. So like the next big hurricane, she might go towards it. And what I find really... But I've worked with her a lot in the last year and a half on career related stuff and networking stuff.

Peter Morville:

And it's been really nice to work with her in that way. And I think I've been able to help her, but she's injected so much more hope into me because to see a young person actively trying to figure out how can I make positive change in the world? I mean, someone of her generation has seen a lot of bad stuff, right? It's not like they're naive, they're very aware of some of the negative undercurrents in this world, but I mean, for her, she's like, "Well, I'm going to be living through an era where there's probably likely to be more crises, not less. So let me figure out how to help rather than just try to hide."

Peter Morville:

And I find, I think that young kind of, again, not a naive attitude, but kind of a courageous, one of like in some ways it feels like our world's falling apart, whether it's politically or environmentally and to sort of have that like, "Well, okay. But how can I help?" Is energizing. And I think that that can apply in UX, right? It's like, "Okay, there's all kinds of political challenges here, but let me get in and start working."

Peter Morville:

I would sort of say from the perspective of someone who's been doing this a long time, I would just encourage young folks to actually take seriously the notion of framing, like of trying to understand the problem at the right level. So when I mentioned this client I'm working with now it's easy for the folks that I'm working with to get fixated on findability, right? Like, "Okay, we've created this fragmented information environment. We want to make it easier for people to find stuff."

Peter Morville:

Like if we have to do some pretty hard centralizing and kind of mandating like you will organize stuff this way like, "We'll do it to make things better." And I'm just very wary of doing that at the expense of knowledge management, which is broader than findability, right? It's like, and I kind of mentioned like that the high touch piece of this, of like, if everybody perfectly shares documents and files and accesses them all easily via search, and they stopped talking to one another, the effects on that organization could be horrible, right?

Peter Morville:

Like they could have fixed findability and destroyed the organization. And so I think thinking at different levels and thinking from different perspectives and just actively thinking about how are we framing this and what are the costs of limiting our perspective in this way? I think ultimately this is always a little bit tongue in cheek, but I say, I don't advocate for human centered design, I advocate for uncentered design, because anytime you name a center, you're leaving someone out.

Peter Morville:

And so I think we have to... There are no externalities, right? Everything is intertwingled, our actions have effects in a ripple effect across the entire environment, all sentient beings. And it's not that we can't have priorities, but we shouldn't have blind spots. We should recognize that there aren't actually walls between our actions and the effects.

Lisa Welchman:

All I was going to say is this is just reminding me of something that I think about all the time, which is how we've tried to apply this sort of two dimensional, linear factory model to the way that people work and the way that we saw problems and think, and that we're in a system, right? And depending on what you're trying to do in that system, the locale of what's "important" is different, right? So if you're trying to eat food, this part might be different, if you're trying to move things from one to another, that might be important.

Lisa Welchman:

But that doesn't mean that when you're on that particular node, that the other ones get to be ignored or don't need to be maintained, or somehow cared for. And so I think when I think about younger people and the challenges for this generation, it's making that change and realizing that even like this pandemic has been fascinating because folks are working from home more and they're seeing what that's like and understanding what that's like and what a big shift that is in how we think about work.

Lisa Welchman:

And why do we go to work anyway? Well, it used to be all the resources were there and you had to do there, right? Well, that's not the case anymore. And so I think there's just this huge opportunity in this huge shift that I hope I see a glimpse of when I'm truly elderly of just what the world could be when it is deeply decentralized in a meaningful way.

Peter Morville:

Yeah. We've had these artificial compartments are like, oh, I'm at work and now I'm a different person than when at home. And these are different places and we have different cultures. And I started kind of purposefully just mixing and merging those 10 or 15 years ago where I was just like, if you use the word integrity, it's like, I want to be one person, not like, I don't want to have these artificial boundaries. I want to be able to be a real human being at work, not just a worker.

Lisa Welchman:

I mean, like this idea that you go to work deeply away from your family is new-ish in the history of human beings. Like this idea that you leave your family and go do something and come back and give them three tired hours of your day, as opposed to taking your children with you in the field and doing things is... So it's going to be fascinating, I think.

Peter Morville:

But I wanted to touch on something that you kind of hinted at there because you used the word we're engaged engaging in and with systems. And one of my theories about why information architecture kind of faded from the world to a certain degree over the last 20 years now is I had this sense of connection when I started learning more about systems thinking. And so like, there were all these brilliant people writing books and doing research around systems thinking in the 1960s and '70s.

Peter Morville:

And it was like a big thing. I mean, there were books that sold millions of copies about systems thinking back then, but then it just kind of disappeared. It was like, I mean, I felt like I actually discovered it, right? It's like an archeologist. It's like, "Whoa, there's this thing called systems thinking that I've never heard of." And I feel like systems thinking what it has in common with information architecture is you're talking about something that's sufficiently complex, ambiguous, kind of scary because you're recognizing you don't really control things in the way you might like to.

Peter Morville:

That like our culture, especially our business culture likes simple things and things you can measure and you can see this got better or this got worse. And so maybe even unconsciously people just shy away from this stuff. And so there was a period in the information architecture world where everyone was kind of beating themselves up saying, "We just haven't done a good job of marketing ourselves. We just aren't explaining what we do or the value of what we do."

Peter Morville:

And I think no, like there's an immune response to the kinds of things that we do and talk about. And so I don't accept any sense of like we failed as a community. It's just that at least in today's business world, it's not that there aren't pockets, right? I mean, that's why I actually have work, because there are pockets of like some of the best organizations and the best teams within the best organizations that are actually excited to engage in this way with these kinds of problems.

Peter Morville:

And so like, there's this weird self selection where I always end up working with some of the top organizations and it's the best universities, it's the best companies in this sector. I never get to work with the mediocre ones because they just won't do this stuff. Like it's just too complex, they don't like it. But anyway, and so that, I think that that appreciation that we are working with systems and systems are very complex and very often you think you're going to get a certain result by pushing a lever and you get the opposite effect and you need to be honest and be like, "Okay, that didn't work. Let's push the other direction." You need to be more experimental and you need to... Another thing that's not welcomed in most, at least US business culture is like saying, I don't know. Like, we could probably find out, but I don't know.

Andy Vitale:

And that goes back to fear.

Peter Morville:

Yeah.

Lisa Welchman:

Yeah. Somebody approached me about a talk once and they said, "We need you to answer whatever." And I was like, "Well, that's complex." And they're like, "Well, we need the definitive blah, blah, blah, sound bite version." I was like, "Okay, I'm just not your person." And so I mean it's similar with the governance work that I do it. It's funny I'm an independent consultant and I used to have a small consulting firm, but for the most part I've worked fairly independently or in small ways.

Lisa Welchman:

And I'm always competing with huge, like McKinsey for business, because it's usually these really big companies that are actually going to not be afraid of the word governance, not shy away and understand complexity. Also very, very long lived companies, companies that have just existed for hundreds of years or over 100 years in the US or something, understanding what it takes to sustain yourself over time, as opposed to sort of like the fast hit.

Lisa Welchman:

And I sort of blame, I'll use the B word blame, this on going back to intentionality and strategy, right? Like, why do you exist? What are you trying to achieve? And really honestly, if that answer is somewhere around to make the most money it's probably never going to align to any type of ethical, technically solid, completely safe framework, unless having that allows you to make the most money, which in some heavily regulated types of vertical markets basis, finance and healthcare, it's going to align to some stuff like that because you can't kill people, you can't lose my money, I have to trust this model.

Lisa Welchman:

And so those things will align to that. But most things don't like buying food online or buying shopping online, most of those things don't. And so I think it'll just end up not being that way. And that's where the cultural values represented by policy, whether that's national policy or international policy, will show up and you'll get these different flavors of things, which to be honest with you is just the way the world is. That's why different places in the world are different, different nations in the world have different value systems. So, but it's a worldwide web, right? So it's complicated.

Peter Morville:

And that's why I sort of struggled a little bit with like your questions around what's the state of design and so forth? Because so I gave a talk, I think last here called Gentle Change. And one of the things I tease apart are the different tools that we can use for trying to effect change. And people in my world are addicted to information as the tool for affecting change, right? Like if someone's doing something wrong, let's give him more information, that'll fix it.

Peter Morville:

And yet in that talk I acknowledge like a far more powerful lever is environment. And mostly if you want someone to change, you change the broader environment. And so like people inside businesses are not going to change unless the broader market environment changes, right? Like people are "satisficing" with a certain degree of selfishness to look after themselves and their families.

Peter Morville:

And at every level from the new person who joins to the CEO. And so that's the role of government to design the right environment so that businesses are healthy and productive and good for the world. And that hasn't been happening all that well, certainly in the United States. So the future of design is going to be shaped by the broader environment. And so it becomes Politics, with a capital P.

Andy Vitale:

So as companies change and environments try to change, the one thing you talked about earlier is change fatigue. So what are some of the signs of change fatigue for people who are looking to make changes and companies, or even our design process that we talk about being so iterative? How do we iterate well enough without creating that change fatigue?

Peter Morville:

Yeah. Good question. So the particular organization I'm working with my right now, it's a funny thing because they have a lot of different platforms that they're using for document sharing from Microsoft Outlook, to Teams, to Box, I kind of lose track, but there's like all these different, a bunch of shared servers, like all these very shared servers with different access levels. And so the information is incredibly fragmented by platform or place, right? The digital places that this stuff lives in.

Peter Morville:

There's only a few formats that they really use, right? These are lawyers. So it's like Microsoft Doc, which then gets converted to PDF and back, Outlook files and a little bit of Excel. So it's like there's more platforms than there are formats, which is kind of a weird thing. And so as I try to think about how could we make this all searchable? That's something that's in my mind, but part of the change fatigue is with the proliferation and constant turnover of platforms, right?

Peter Morville:

It's like, well, last year we were told we had to use Dropbox and then six months later, we shifted to Box. And we were told we had to use Skype, but now Skype is out and Zoom is in, and these are lawyers. Like for us, sometimes it's kind of fun to play with new technologies and to learn new stuff because it's like it's an opportunity to pick up tips, right? Like, "Oh, what's Zoom doing well. Like, let me play with this and see how it works and maybe I can some design ideas from it."

Peter Morville:

But for somebody who's just trying to be a lawyer and do good work on behalf of their nonprofit, they do not want to be spending their time figuring out, how do I shift from Skype to Zoom? And how do I record and share my screen? And a lot of them, there's a mix of age ranges in the organization. Certainly the older folks are like, they start every conversation with like, "I'm not particularly tech savvy." And these poor people have just been beat up by new platform after new platform.

Peter Morville:

And so I'm very mindful of that and I think, again, there's a lot of levers we could push that would actually make things worse. So it's like is there a way to reduce? Instead of saying, "And the solution to all of this is this totally new platform." Like is there a way we could actually least say, "You know what? Let's build on what you've got and let's get rid of a couple of these."

Lisa Welchman:

Well, that sounds like human centering design, right? Well, you're expressing some compassion for the people in the process and I think that is just super important.

Peter Morville:

Yeah, well, I'm going to broaden it though, because most of them have dogs or cats and they're going to be nicer to their dogs and cats.

Lisa Welchman:

So well, how about this? It's better for the system.

Peter Morville:

Right. Yeah.

Andy Vitale:

That's interesting because tools are a thing that design designers fall in love with more so than... And you always tell people like don't fall in love with the tool, fall in love with solving the problem and the tools will always change, but there are so many tools that do essentially almost the same thing now. And I see the change fatigue as like designers are hot for a certain tool, and then it's like, "Hey, wait a minute, we didn't really understand how to use that, and you're throwing another tool at us and another tool that does the same thing."

Andy Vitale:

So it's a similar situation, but I guess they're a little bit more tech savvy and they do want to understand how to have that sense of play for sure. But I feel like as a community, as a discipline, we're creating that change fit amongst ourselves, which is another reason potentially why we're not continuing to grow and learn, like we talked about, it's a way that we're just back to optimizing again.

Peter Morville:

Yeah. And it's a problem that's not going to go away, right? Because, again, as comp developed some level of monopoly power, they kind of stop getting better. And so like for a while Webex seemed pretty good for video conferencing and then it sort of seemed kind of not so good. And then Zoom came out and you saw what was possible. I mean, honestly, my favorite thing about Zoom at the moment is it's the only video conferencing tool that doesn't make my MacBook turn on its fan.

Andy Vitale:

There you go. Yeah.

Peter Morville:

And so I'm like, "Please just let's just use Zoom because like, because my Mac is happy." But a tool is good for a year or two, and then all of a sudden some part of it just seems like, why can't they support this? And so then there is just this split between people who kind of like trying new stuff and people who just find it very scary, or just at least time waste. And so I don't know what the answer is there. I guess we just...

Peter Morville:

Again, it's like, I always start with all the stuff of like, if you can at least be honest, that's a pretty good starting point to recognize it's actually complicated. There's going to be some people who get helped and some people get hurt with this decision that we stick with the old tool or switch to a new one. And then even if we decide we're switching to new one, let's take that empathy and turn it into training programs and support programs to kind of help the folks who are a little bit slower to adopt new stuff.

Peter Morville:

But I think we're going to keep getting forced into this sort of planned obsolescence or unplanned obsolescence of just keeping changing and changing. And again, for me, it's fun. I like new stuff, I like learning. I mean, I think there's a similarity here with approach to diversity, right? Like I totally don't... I understand intellectually, but I don't get people who are afraid of those who are different, because for me, it's like, "Hey, you're different. Like you're weird, tell me about it. I'm going to learn, this is cool. I didn't know there was someone like you, it's fun." But like there's like a scary percentage of people who are afraid of different.

Lisa Welchman:

Well, I mean, that sort of brings us full circle in conversation in talking about fear which sort of breaks my compassionate heart, that so much of what we're developing and creating seems to be centered around that space, whether or not it's thinking about people being fearful in their workplace or personally fearful for their safety or all of those things combining together as they can and do on the web so much.

Lisa Welchman:

So hopefully generationally, as the next generation comes along can help that part out a little bit better. But I think we are only going to make and put online the representation of who we are as a people. And so if we're governed by those sort of fearful drives, it's going to be challenging.

Peter Morville:

Well, that why I make a point of, of explicitly talking about fear because I think it's incredibly healthy. And I've done this with different groups and a lot of times people get really excited. Like it's been there all the time, but when you talk about it, it's like, "Wow, we could talk about fear?" And I love the idea, I got this from this woman who wrote a book about fear. She was an extreme skier and so she was like an adrenaline junkie.

Peter Morville:

She was voted one of the top people in the world most likely to die skiing, and then thankfully she didn't die. And she kind of recovered from her addiction to fear and became someone who studied fear and coaches people to kind of deal with their fears. And what she argues, which I agree with is that the best approach to fear is curiosity and a sense of adventure. So you start with honesty, right? Like, "I'm afraid." And you're like, "That's interesting." Like, "What am I really afraid of? Why am I afraid? What's really going to happen?"

Peter Morville:

And then if you just couple that with like that little bit of sense of adventure like, "Well, let's see." I think people can make incredible breakthroughs. I think we can all be better people and better teams and maybe better species if we kind of deal with fear head on, if we acknowledge it and talk about it, then if we just repress it. So I think it's good to talk about it.

Andy Vitale:

I'd love to read that book.

Lisa Welchman:

And you're definitely confronting your own fears by having this farm, so you're going to get a lot of practice on that, it seems like. So I guess just as a way to kind of wrap up the conversation, you're not young, but you're not old. So what do you see yourself doing sort of vocationally on the information architecture front for the next 50 years, because you're healthy, you're a runner, you've got your farm, going to at least live to be 101 still working, right? So how does that play out for you, do you think?

Peter Morville:

I don't know. It's funny because four years ago or so, and he, who shall not be named in this conversation was elected. And my fear was kind of at maximum throttle, and I was just feeling pretty disgusted with our society and with capitalism and I kept my mouth shut, but there was a period of time where I was like, I think I just want to get out of this consulting business completely. Like, I don't want to be engaged with businesses in this capitalist world.

Peter Morville:

And so that was a piece of what got me very seriously thinking about moving to a more rural place, buying a property, starting an animal sanctuary, doing something really different. And then over the last few years, as I kind of settled down emotionally and I kind of realized I really like consulting and doing information architecture, I love the intellectual piece of it. And I want to do this new thing. And so now I'm more of a model of trying to do both.

Peter Morville:

And it's possible that the farm/sanctuary will eventually drown out the consulting and the IA side. I'm open to that possibility, but right now I'm enjoying consulting and don't really want to stop. And actually in really weird ways I've managed to like stuff them together, right? Like I've been giving talks and writing articles where I'm making comparisons between thinking about the rights of users or designing for users and the rights of animals. And so that's one of my kind of weird idiosyncratic things, is I love making those strange connections, taking things that you would normally put together.

Lisa Welchman:

It's the intertwingled in you.

Peter Morville:

Exactly. So I'll probably keep intertwingling for a while.

Lisa Welchman:

There you go, Peter Morville is a system.

Andy Vitale:

So, Peter, for those who might want to reach out to you or find out more about you, what's the best way for them to do so?

Peter Morville:

So my two websites or semanticstudios.com and Intertwingled.org. I am Morville on Twitter. Yeah, and I'm pretty findable.

Lisa Welchman:

You don't even have to use search, or maybe you do.

Andy Vitale:

Well, thanks so much for coming on, it's been a great conversation.

Lisa Welchman:

It's been fun.

Peter Morville:

Yeah. It's been great to talk with both of you, I really enjoyed it. And, Lisa, good luck on your upcoming adventure.

Lisa Welchman:

Thank you. Good luck with the farm.

Peter Morville:

Yeah, thanks. But what I found... Just one last kind of point here, and I'll kind of connect you back to mindfulness to end. So in order to make this move work, I have had to go into bulldozer mode multiple times where it's like I have a ton to get done, I have got to put on blinders, I kind of like repress my feelings, physical and emotional, I just get stuff done. And then I like have these moments where I'm like I'm not really sure I like who I am at the moment. Like, I'm kind of grumpy and I get angry easily and right.

Peter Morville:

But it's kind of necessary to get a lot done sometimes. But then I catch myself and I kind of come back to like, okay, this is not who I want to be or how I want to be. And again, I like literally really acknowledged earlier today, okay, it's time to get back to meditating a little bit because I need to get centered and get a little bit more peaceful because I'm living in this beautiful place, I've got some really cool stuff I get to do.

Lisa Welchman:

Finally.

Peter Morville:

And so I'm sure you'll go through some of those similar things, but you'll get to the other side.

Lisa Welchman:

Yeah. I really appreciate that because this morning I got up and once I looked over at my meditation table and was like, "When's the last time you were actually sitting there?" Number one, my house is completely ripped up and I told Andy, I think I'm at maximum like, pardon my French, [Foreign language 00:51:08] at this point where I've got no living room furniture, things are half packed or whatever.

Lisa Welchman:

But I also have a sense of humor about it because I've done this before, where it's just like you turn the soil over and it's kind of a mess and you see all the worms and oh, isn't that interesting. And I'll land eventually, but I definitely appreciate that reminder because it's something else making this move, switching countries is going to be a fascinating experience. So thanks for that insight, I appreciate it.

Peter Morville:

Yeah. Well, good luck and, again, thanks to both of you, it was a lot of fun.

Andy Vitale:

Yep.

Lisa Welchman:

Thanks for being with us. Appreciate it.

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