Episode 080 Recap: Visualizing Design System Health with Ben Callahan, Robin Di Capua, and Taylor Cashdan

To celebrate 80 episodes, Ben Callahan is joined by Robin Di Capua and Taylor Cashdan, who built the Redwoods Compass, a self-reflective tool for looking at design system health without grading it.

The survey went to 1,118 design system practitioners and received 52 responses to two questions, along with a first-ever homework assignment: a blank spider chart to fill in by instinct. The conversation covers what "health" even means, how the Compass's six categories emerged from Redwoods workshops, why five of those six aren't about the assets themselves, a respondent who realized mid-answer that none of their metrics measured health, and how the Compass keeps all data local.

Show Notes
00:02 — Welcome to episode 080
00:15 — Introducing Robin and Taylor
01:58 — The two survey questions and spider chart homework
03:56 — What is design system health?
04:58 — Human health as an analogy
05:25 — No single indicator of health
06:49 — Redwoods action groups and the Compass's origins
07:54 — What the Compass is, and isn't
08:47 — Six categories and the spider chart
10:58 — Collecting charts to find patterns
11:34 — Workshopping the categories with Redwoods
13:08 — Five of six categories aren't about assets
13:56 — Shipping a button five hundred times
15:14 — Nobody wrote "design tokens" on a sticky note
15:45 — Pivoting from readiness to health
16:47 — Tracking change over time
17:14 — A respondent's mid-answer realization
18:43 — Validating the Compass's framing
19:47 — Why intangibles need conversation, not scores
20:50 — One tool among many
21:41 — How the Compass works locally
23:00 — zeroheight's maturity model and next week's panel
24:18 — How to share feedback
25:11 — Closing

Where to Find the Hosts
Ben Callahan is Founder of Sparkbox (https://sparkbox.com) and Redwoods Design System Community (https://joinredwoods.com). Read his writings, have him present at your event, or engage with him as a coach or consultant at https://bencallahan.com

Robin Di Capua is a designer on the design system team at GetYourGuide in Zurich. Connect with him on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/3VYboQI

Taylor Cashdan is a design systems practitioner who has worked across enterprise, startup, and consulting teams. Connect with him on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/4cZhbKq

Get the Raw Data
Access the complete survey data from Episode 080 to conduct your own analysis: https://bit.ly/4c18Fx5

Review the FigJam Notes
Dig into the collaborative notes we took as a community during the deep dive: https://bit.ly/4wZmHH7

Join the Conversation
The Question explores design systems topics through community research and deep-dive discussions. Participate in future episodes and contribute to the next survey: https://bit.ly/answerTheQuestion

Music licensed through Soundstripe.
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