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
"It comes down to confidence and comfort to articulate why something has value and whether it’s working or not."
Vicky Teinaki Michele Marut Tim ParmeeShort Take #3: UX/Product Lessons from Your Industry Peers
December 6, 2022
"Noba submitted my name without asking me to present today, which shows how much we've grown to trust each other."
Nova Wehman-BrownWe've Never Done This Before
June 4, 2019
"Power is the ability to change another person’s reality."
George AyeThat Quiet Little Voice: When Design and Ethics Collide
November 16, 2022
"Every project has a financial job to be done, whether it’s impacting revenue, reducing churn, or cutting costs."
Giff ConstableFinancial fluency for product leaders: AMA with Giff Constable
April 11, 2024
"If you build for the next model, even if it can hardly do something now, it will probably do it well in the future."
Peter Van DijckHands on AI #3: Claude Code for UX people
October 22, 2025
"You are either navigating with a white cane or a service dog because you are not gonna want both of your hands full."
Kate KalcevichDesigning inclusively with AI
June 5, 2024
"You can make an impact by speaking the language of the people you’re talking to—using plain language instead of jargon."
Charlotte Vorbeck Shahzma Esmail Edward Alton Sarah McArthur Ariel KennanPipeline to Civic Design
December 9, 2021
"You can own the infrastructure that allows knowledge to flow but you can't actually own the knowledge itself."
Kate TowseyAsk Me Anything (AMA) with Kate Towsey
April 2, 2025
"Networking isn’t just asking for favors — it’s about building relationships and doing something for others first."
Dave Hoffer Joanne WeaverUX Job Search AMA #2 with Joanne Weaver and Dave Hoffer
May 21, 2025
