The feed of updates to bencallahan.com
Ask a design system team how they’ll raise the quality of the products they support, and you’ll usually hear one of two options. The first is to make better components, perhaps with more opinionated defaults. The second is to tighten up the quality gates: give the DS team the authority to approve quality, not just the aspiration to improve it. These are both good plans. But they don’t necessarily…
Design System Decision Matrix Product Team · Design System Build vs. Buy Decision Matrix A weighted scoring tool for evaluating whether to develop a custom design system or adopt a starter/commercial one. Adjust weights and scores to reflect your team’s context. How to use: Drag the sliders to adjust how much each factor matters to your team (weights must total 100%). Use the +/− buttons to score…
Before you read any further, answer one question, quietly to yourself: Does your design system create “ sameness” in the products that have adopted it? Now, I want you to think about the feeling that question generated in you. Did you feel any defensiveness creep in? The question itself doesn’t assume a right or wrong answer. Some of you reading this will assume the ideal answer is “ yes” and some…
I’ve learned, over the years, to trust my instincts. A few years ago I felt the nudge to find more community in the design system space. I had joined Slack groups, attended and spoken at design system events, and participated in webinars about the subject—all of which were great. However, something was still missing. My experience in these scenarios felt the same: a small number of people were…
“ A location where airflows meet, characteristically marked by an upwelling of air.” It’s been a while since I’ve had a week like the last week of October, 2025. This is the week when zeroheight brought people from around the world together in Bristol, UK to learn, hang out, and talk design systems. This was Converge, 2025. Probably like you, I’ve been to my share of industry events. The content…
I can’t believe this, but after years of conversations, reading, collaborating with internal teams, coaching design system leads, and facilitating large community conversations, I’m so very proud to announce the upcoming release of my book, Maturing Design Systems , published by Smashing Books. Book cover titled, Maturing Design Systems A few years back, I met up with Vitaly in Berlin at a coffee…
I was very fortunate to attend Penpot Fest 2025 on Oct 9 and 10 in Madrid, Spain. I was there to take it all in, not to speak or facilitate. To be honest, I felt a bit like an outsider—I haven’t participated in their past events, and I’ve only just begun getting to know their amazing community and team. Because of this, I wasn’t really quite sure what to expect. Let me tell you what I learned.…
Any artist will tell you that the tools they use impact their art. The same is true for us—the tools we use in our design systems work certainly impact the approaches we take. Given that we are not only using tools, we are building them for our consumers, it felt like this was a concept worth exploring. That’s the topic Natalya Shelburne and I asked the design system community for Episode 061 of…
For a design system program where the goal is often stable, high quality, durable output, how much instability, lack of quality, or impermanence can we tolerate in our tools? That’s the question Nathan Curtis and I asked the design system community for Episode 060 of The Question . On August 21, 2025, Nathan and I facilitated a deep dive discussion into the data we gathered from 95 design system…
Nobody knows exactly where all of this is going, and that’s the fun part… Last week, as part of my bi-monthly research show, The Question , I gathered with a group of very thoughtful design system practitioners to talk about the role of AI in our design system programs. This wasn’t a hype session, it was a real conversation grounded in data from 74 of you who responded to three simple questions:…
In a recent episode of The Question , Adrianne Daley and I invited the design system community to dig into one of those quiet-but-critical topics: tracking design system deviation. ( Review the raw data , check out FigJam file , or watch the recap .) We asked design system practitioners three questions: Are you tracking deviations from the design system in any way? If so, how do you do this? If…
The Question: Episode 053 Wrap-up On Friday, May 16 of 2025 we held the Episode 053 design system deep dive conversation as part of a series called The Question . Thanks for being part of it. Design System of the Future. The Question was shared via email, on LinkedIn , and Bluesky and I received 61 responses. Review the FigJam file , and the raw data , and listen to the opening music (Never Enough…
I don’t like garlic. It’s not a dislike for the taste in the moment, so much as an extreme dislike for the way it stays with you—sometimes for days—after a particularly garlicky meal. Interestingly enough, both of my brothers love garlic. They roast it by itself and keep it at the ready so they can have a very strong garlic profile in their cooking. When I prepare a dish, I don’t even see garlic…
Most design system teams I interact with feel like they are still not getting all the impact they had hoped for from their systems. There are two primary reasons this happens. An over-reliance on design system assets (things like tokens and components, etc.) to make impact across an entire suite of digital interfaces. A lack of understanding around the culture change needed that allows a design…
The Question: Episode 35 Wrap-up On Friday, October 25 of 2024 we held the Episode 35 design system deep dive conversation as part of a series called The Question . Thanks for being part of it. Elyse Holladay and Ben Callahan were co hosts for this episode of The Question, facilitating a deep dive discussion on what to work on in your design system program. The Question was shared via email, on…
The Question: Episode 31 Wrap-up On Friday, September 6th of 2024 we held the Episode 31 design system deep dive conversation as part of a series called The Question . Thanks for being part of it. Davy Fung and Ben Callahan were co hosts for this episode of The Question, facilitating a deep dive on design system micro-adoption. The Question was shared via email, on LinkedIn , and X and I received…