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
"For every business metric, there is always a companion human-centric metric."
Himanshu BharadwajIf design had a heart
April 16, 2026
"We should not replace our curiosity and experience with AI but should instead use AI to speed up summarization and then slow down for human sensemaking."
Weidan LiQualitative synthesis with ChatGPT: Better or worse than human intelligence?
June 4, 2024
"Digital channels now have higher standards—customers expect personalization at all times."
Andrew Custage Michael MallettThe Digital Journey: Research on Consumer Frustration and Loyalty
March 29, 2023
"Design automation will reduce armies of workers to maybe just a single operator of the machine."
Erin MaloneUnderstanding the past to prepare for the future
July 19, 2024
"Your time is so valuable. Ask yourself what’s the best use of your time when pivoting careers."
Sara ConklinExit Interview: 20 Years of Tech, One Very Big Bet, and a Lot of Heat Pumps
April 10, 2026
"Find an unindicted co-conspirator in your company with a problem you can help solve, and the rest will follow."
Discussion
June 9, 2017
"You don’t need an MD or PhD to be effective in healthcare UX; humility, curiosity, and preparation are essential."
Theresa NeilDesigning for Wellness: Specializing in Healthcare
May 22, 2024
"There is a tension between moving faster and going deeper, and the way through is tapping into the huge reservoir of creative capital in organizations."
Wendy Johansson Surya VankaDesign at Scale: Behind the Scenes
April 29, 2021
"Story pointing UX work would help us plan capacity and avoid being surprised by last minute discovery work."
Jack MoffettSAFe or Sorry?
May 29, 2019