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
"Starting from specific, edge user groups often leads to more powerful breakthroughs than middle-of-the-road personas."
Neil BarrieWidening the Aperture: The Case for Taking a Broader Lens to the Dialogue between Products and Culture
March 25, 2024
"Every major brand has a dark side brought to you by design on purpose, 40 hours a week."
George AyeThat Quiet Little Voice: When Design and Ethics Collide
November 16, 2022
"Progress over perfection—that’s how accessibility wins get made and sustained."
Nicole Bergstrom Anna Cook Kate Kalcevich Saara Kamppari-MillerAccessibilityOps: Moving beyond “nice to have”
September 19, 2024
"How do you influence bosses who don’t understand design, product, or technology? That’s a key challenge."
Louis Rosenfeld Christian CrumlishOpening Remarks
November 29, 2023
"Climate UX feels like 1995 again, an exciting time of discovery and cross-domain jumps."
Louis Rosenfeld Matt Jones Olga Khroustaleva Michael Leggett Karol MunozDo you want to work on climate? (Climate UX Discussion Series)
November 15, 2023
"The constraints in enterprise pushed us to focus more on an employee-centered approach for product decisions."
Catherine DubutBridging Physical and Digital Spaces: Approaches to Retail Service Design
March 18, 2021
"Growth PMs think this way because it’s the only kind of thinking the system we’re working within can operationalize."
Kurt McCullochFaster alone, further together: Rebuilding collaboration in the age of AI research
March 10, 2026
"The experience vision provided a tangible goal that everyone could work towards, focusing on the user's experience rather than the technology."
Davis Neable Guy SegalHow to Drive a Design Project When you Don’t Have a Design Team
June 10, 2021
"We must be explicit about what we mean when we say collaboration or rigor to avoid vague expectations."
Julie Norvaisas Pert Eilers Mina JonssonBack to basics, or start from scratch?
March 12, 2025