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
"What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know, it’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so."
Nova Wehman-BrownWe've Never Done This Before
June 4, 2019
"AI is both absolutely necessary and completely terrifying for science."
Rachael Dietkus, LCSW Llewyn Paine Nishanshi Shukla David WomackAI: Passionate defenses and reasoned critique [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
September 18, 2024
"Carbon removal is necessary to hit climate goals because reducing emissions alone won’t be enough."
Marissa Cui Rachel He Michael Leggett Manos SaratsisClimate Design Product Showcase
March 13, 2024
"The integration of AI into clinical workflows is creating urgent demand for sharper UX thinking, not less."
Eric ShumakeDiagnosis UX: Building Influence in Healthcare Design
April 9, 2026
"Establish yourself as a trusted expert advisor whose work drives meaningful positive change."
Megan BlockerGetting to the “So What?”: How Management Consulting Practices Can Transform Your Approach to Research
March 26, 2024
"Politics and ego conflicts are inevitable and separate challenges that seriously impact merger integration."
Jorge ArangoMeeting of the Waters: Designing for Successful Inorganic Growth
August 12, 2021
"The cybernetic feedback loop is sensing, comparing to a goal, and acting to correct course."
Paul Pangaro, PhDSystems Disciplines: Table Stakes for 21st Century Organizations
June 6, 2023
"Each team should talk about their core values like integrity, accountability, and respect to work together with the same mindset."
Jon Fukuda Amy Evans Ignacio Martinez Joe MeersmanThe Big Question about Innovation: A Panel Discussion
September 25, 2024
"When you put in that effort, you’re going to get the advocacy not only from your team but within the organization."
Frank DuranPartnership Playbook: Lessons Learned in Effective Partnership
January 8, 2024
