Redwoods

A Design System Community

Welcome to Redwoods, a group of life-long learners committed to supporting each other on the journey of design system maturity.

Reach out if you'd like to learn more

Over many years, I’ve conducted hundreds of interviews with design system leads across company sizes. I’ve facilitated industry surveys, researched the impact a company’s culture has on it’s design system, put this research to work with many organizations, and I’ve learned a lot.

The Problem

In all of that research, the biggest gap I’ve identified is that companies don’t know how to support the teams doing this work. We are leaving these people on an island, and it’s resulting in design systems that don’t generate the results we had hoped for. I'm someone who believes in the impact a design system can have—I’ve seen it work—but systems have to be nurtured.

The way we do that is by nurturing the people working on them.

I know how much money companies (like yours) are investing in design systems. I know how long they’ve been trying and how many times they’ve had to restart. I’m here to tell you, it doesn’t have to be that way.

The Opportunity

To address all of this, I’m gauging interest in a paid community for people working on design systems. This will be a safe place where we can talk about the real challenges we’re facing, support each other though those challenges, and start to generate the results we’ve been promising. I have a ton of ideas for how to do this, and we’re going to put those ideas into practice together.

Why Join?

I was in Muir Woods a few years ago. This is a coastal redwood forest—a genuinely spiritual place to visit. The ground is covered in pine needles, there is no noise, the smell is so pure… And you’re surrounded by trees as tall as the Statue of Liberty. It’s truly breathtaking.

When people first moved into the area, they cut down these trees for the lumber but would always leave a few standing. Inevitably, after a short time, those trees that were left would fall over.

You see, even though these trees are hundreds of feet tall, their roots only go down about ten feet. Those same roots grow out, horizontally, as much as 80 feet and intertwine with roots of other redwoods in the area. These trees actually hold each other up.

This is what Redwoods Design System Community is. We need a space to hold each other up, to support each other. I believe there’s an authentic way to do that through this very community. I hope you’ll come along.

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