Log in or create a free Rosenverse account to watch this video.
Log in Create free account100s of community videos are available to free members. Conference talks are generally available to Gold members.
Get Your Whole Team Testing to Design for Impact
Summary
Experimentation can be intimidating to non-data science folk. But Erin wants to get everyone excited about A/B testing. In this talk, Erin shares the Conversion Design process. It centers A/B testing as a way to gather high-quality evidence to make highly informed decisions to improve your digital product. She also introduces the Good Experimental Design toolkit. These easy-to-follow templates usher teams through the logic needed to design trustworthy experiments that you can learn from.
Key Insights
-
•
Conversion design combines design, science, and business to intentionally create measurable improvements, not just arbitrary changes.
-
•
Ronald Fisher’s 1919 work exposed how poor experimental design led to decades of unreliable scientific data.
-
•
Conversion originates from the Latin word meaning to transform or change, which is broader than just sales or profit.
-
•
Traditional linear product development processes miss the complex, iterative nature of real-world systems.
-
•
Systems thinking offers a more accurate way to understand and manage design experiments within interconnected environments.
-
•
A rigorous conversion design process includes seven phases: understand, hypothesize, prioritize, create, test, analyze, and decide.
-
•
Experiments grounded in well-documented hypotheses based on research have higher success rates than guesses.
-
•
Randomized 50/50 AB testing is the gold standard for isolating the true effect of design changes by evenly distributing confounds.
-
•
Experimentation buckets—product foundations, content/motivation, accessibility/usability, and bug fixes—help prioritize work effectively.
-
•
Ethical considerations and guardrail metrics are crucial to ensure changes benefit all stakeholders sustainably and without manipulation.
Notable Quotes
"Conversion means change, not just sales or profit."
"Design is the rendering of intent — bringing ideas into form that solve the problem."
"Decades worth of agricultural experimental data was garbage because of poor experimental design."
"Most product teams stay on the bottom rungs of evidence, relying on opinions or observational data instead of randomized trials."
"You can never purely test an idea, only the implementation of the idea."
"Randomization is magic — it evenly distributes confounds so the observed effect is caused by your change."
"Not all changes create value; some do nothing or even make things worse."
"You have to think critically about how a change impacts all stakeholders, not just the main business metric."
"Ethics evolve faster than laws; just because something is legal doesn’t make it ethical."
"If an experiment I design made the front page news tomorrow, how would I feel about it?"
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"We flipped some onboarding traditions from physical notes to online kudos boards, keeping the welcoming spirit alive."
Marjorie Stainback Molly Fargotstein Stephanie MarshWhat Research Ops Professionals Have Learned from COVID-19
July 16, 2020
"94% of companies exclude disability from their diversity and inclusion initiatives, a major missed opportunity to advance accessibility."
Sheri Byrne-HaberThe Importance of Accessible Design Systems
January 8, 2024
"We’re not doing this for the good of research. Research is merely a means to an end."
Andy WarrUnder My (Research) Umbrella: The Benefits and Challenges of Building a Unified Insights Function
March 25, 2024
"Watching short clips of assistive technology users struggling can create a powerful empathy shift."
Gabriela BarnevaOperationalizing Inclusive Design in Design Ops
September 11, 2025
"I am uncomfortable too. Change is uncomfortable, exhausting, but it can also be fun and exciting."
Maria SkaadenPanel Discussion: Methodologies and Work Environments
November 8, 2018
"Anything that you can do is needed because our institutions were inherited from the past and need us to lead them toward the future."
Jamie Beck Alexander Nina Gregg Shawn Petersen Bill DeRoucheyHow can you find your role in climate?
January 17, 2024
"It’s okay if these junior roles are short term; they help get started and expand the overall design ops talent pool."
Laine Riley Prokay Lisa GordonCarving a Path for Early Career DesignOps Practitioners
September 9, 2022
"We can make this thing go faster, more people can access it, but we can have benefits for the planet as well."
James ChudleyDecarbonising User Journeys: How minimising enables us to do more with less
February 19, 2025
"Use whatever information is available in the tool. Views, downloads, and links in Slack channels are all helpful adoption metrics."
Gabrielle VerderberDocumentation Your Team Will Actually Use
October 3, 2023
