Speaking

Design system work is as much about the space between the components as it is about the components themselves. In this keynote presentation I share takeaways from my experience hosting The Question, a twice-monthly collaborative learning conversation where the design system community answers a very specific question and dives into the data together.

This presentation weaves the narrative of the coastal redwoods together with the power of language and classic systems thinking. The result is an edifying realization of the impact a system can have when we remember that we need each other to move our industry forward in a sustainable way.

Most organizations don’t have a clearly articulated, shared understanding of the definition of a design system. Oftentimes, even those closest to the design system haven’t aligned on this. Armed with this recognition, I spent many months examining and comparing design systems across industries and company sizes. The end result is The Anatomy of a Design System.

This model breaks down the layers of a system as well as the parts that make up each layer. Having a clear explanation, along with easy to understand visuals, helps teams find that missing shared understanding and encourages the necessary conversations to find their own design system anatomy.

Read The Anatomy of a Design System article

For the last five to ten years, systematic design and development practices have been growing and growing. It’s no wonder that, once we put a name on this snowball (hello, design systems), it only picked up speed. If you manage more than one site, if you support more than one brand, if you want to be more efficient or more consistent or more unified in your product building approach—this presentation is for you.

We’ll dig into the four major concepts covered by my Design System Maturity Model, developed from years of interviews and industry-wide surveys.

• The four stages of design system maturity
• How a design system’s origin story impacts its path through maturity
• A framework for maturing in a healthy way
• A framework for maintaining stability

Read the Design System Maturity Model article

The technical and creative aspects of a design system are undoubtedly important, but they are only two parts of a three-part puzzle. The third piece? Culture. Organizational culture, the subculture of a design system team, and (most importantly) the relationship between the two is vital to the success or failure of any systematic program.

In this presentation, I share a model for understanding organizational culture, offer tools for evaluating your own culture, and expose how this knowledge can dramatically impact the approach you take with your design system.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re swimming against the current, this is the presentation for you.

Read the Design System Culture article

Design systems are much more than tokens, components and code libraries. While the technical and creative assets are essential, there’s an often overlooked force that shapes their success: culture.

Whether it’s the culture of your broader organization or the subculture within your design system team, the relationship between the two has a direct impact on how your system is built, adopted, and sustained. When these cultural forces are misaligned, even the most well-crafted systems struggle to gain traction.

This half or full-day workshop will pull back the curtain on how culture impacts a design system program, and give you the tools to assess and adapt your approach accordingly.

This workshop is designed for anyone working on or around design systems who:

• Feels like they’re constantly running into resistance
• Wants to improve system adoption, contribution, alignment
• Is navigating complex organizational dynamics
• Leads or supports a design system team
• Works in product, UX, engineering, or design operations

Throughout the day, we’ll engage in conversation, reflection, and practical activities designed to equip you with real skills:

• Spot the Signs: Learn how to identify cultural signals in teams’ behaviors and language
• See It in Action: Watch Ben conduct a live cultural assessment
• Practice the Process: Run your own cultural analysis using a structured framework

You’ll gain a deep understanding of:

• What we mean when we say “culture”
• The different types of organizational cultures
• How culture impacts the success or failure of systematic efforts
• How to move your processes from a series of steps to a spectrum of ways of working
• Why some teams experience constant friction—and how to address it

By the end of the workshop, you’ll be able to:

• Assess your personal cultural leaning
• Assess your design system team’s cultural dynamics
• Assess your organization’s broader cultural landscape
• Identify process changes to reduce friction and improve alignment
• Apply a lightweight Google Sheets-based tool to run future assessments

Design systems don’t exist in a vacuum—they reflect, amplify, and sometimes challenge the culture they live in. When done well, they help scale healthy patterns. When done without cultural awareness, they invite resistance and stall progress.

This workshop will give you the insight and confidence to navigate the human side of systems—and to lead your design system with more empathy, clarity, and impact.

We won’t be designing in Figma.

We won’t be writing code.

We will be using spreadsheets.

We will be learning from each other.

And we will have fun doing it.

Read the Design System Culture article

This workshop is designed to expand your team’s thinking about what systems are and how to nurture their healthy maturity inside the unique culture of your organization. We’ll dive deep into what design systems are, we’ll discuss the four stages of design system maturity, and we’ll wrap up with a detailed explanation of the impact an organization’s culture has on a design system.

Each section has activities and breakout discussions intended to help attendees make the material practical in their specific context.