Ben Callahan

Thursday 4 June | Delivery day

Assessing organisational culture

This workshop will clearly articulate what culture is, why it's important to understand it, how to assess it, and what to do with that information.

For the last 6 years, Ben has been developing an organisational culture assessment approach that helps folks who work on digital products to better understand the nuance of the various teams they support or work alongside.

He’ll demonstrate the technique and attendees will get a chance to run an assessment.

This session is for anyone who is feeling resistance in their organisation.

Thursday 4 June | Delivery day

Wisdom from the trees

What does it actually mean to create impact with a design system? It's a question most design system teams wrestle with, and the answer is rarely found in the assets those teams create.

Ben has spent the last few years hosting The Question, a live, collaborative learning and research show that brings together hundreds of design system practitioners to wrestle with the field's difficult problems. In this talk, he shares what he's learned about the natural tension between product designers and system designers, about when to innovate and when to standardise, and about tearing things apart vs. understanding why they exist in the first place.

Weaving together systems thinking, complexity science, and indigenous plant knowledge, this presentation suggests that design system work is fundamentally culture work, and that the most powerful tool at your disposal isn't something you build in Figma or React. It's the shared language you create and the organisational worldview that language makes possible.