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.
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
"The sum is greater than the parts—how qualitative and quantitative research play together."
Renee BouwensLanding Product Impact: Aligning Research as a Foundational Driver for Delivering the World’s Best Products
December 15, 2023
"Users prefer the simpler and more delightful design even without usability testing."
How to Identify and Increase your "Experience Quotient"
June 15, 2018
"If you put one person across three teams, every day they have to decide who they’re going to piss off."
Jeff GothelfThe Intersection of Lean and Design
January 10, 2019
"To do the kind of work we aspire to do, we need to better understand the role of resilience."
Chris GeisonTheme 1 Intro
March 9, 2022
"I am so incredibly proud of Dante, Courtney, Olney, and Gonzalo for their care and effort in the curation process."
Bria AlexanderTheme Two Intro
September 8, 2022
"It’s up to designers to be the antidote, to articulate all these changes as one movement."
Erin HauberDesign is Not the Frosting on the Scaled Agile Layer Cake
October 24, 2019
"AI-powered personalization is the next best content recommendation at scale, tailoring experiences without excessive content creation."
Gillian Salerno-Rebic Mark MicheliFrom Insight to Impact: How JourneySpark Used WEVO Pulse + Pro to Drive a 50% Lift in Ad Engagement
June 11, 2025
"Innovation is very much a team sport."
Laura KleinUnique challenges of innovation in enterprises
April 23, 2020
"Low UX maturity is often a symptom of a bigger problem in how you build product, not just design adoption."
Bob Baxley Sara Asche Anderson Sharon Bautista Frank Duran Jamie Kaspszak Abbey Smalley Sylas SouzaTheme 4: Discussion
January 8, 2024
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
How do cookie banners commonly use deceptive patterns to influence user consent?
What are de-risking sessions in service design and how do they help prepare stakeholders for co-creation?
Why do designers often rely on legal compliance approvals instead of legal knowledge when designing privacy features?