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
"We intentionally created space to talk about career goals, stress, and how to support each other as a team."
Gina Mendolia Jasmine ToyCoordinated collaboration: a Service Design & DesignOps love story
November 19, 2025
"There’s a class distinction in who can or cannot avoid going to the office; 70% of workers never left the office during the pandemic."
Jennifer Bolduc Diane Gregorio Emily DayWhat's involved with getting people back to work?: A panel discussion
July 1, 2021
"Anticipate resistance; if a project has a lot of scrutiny, controversial insights are likely."
Robin BeersBeyond Insights: Researchers as Organizational Change Catalysts
March 25, 2024
"Afrofuturistic research techniques aren’t just cultural displays, but social design methods with explicit intent and thought behind them."
Florence OkoyeAfroFuturism and UX Research
March 27, 2023
"Involving partners means tell me and I forget, show me and I may remember, involve me and I will understand."
Anat Fintzi Rachel MinnicksDelivering at Scale: Making Traction with Resistant Partners
June 9, 2022
"By the time the report comes out, your immediate team should have already moved on with implementing feedback."
Anna Avrekh Dr. John Pagonis Klara Pelcl Sina SchreiberExpert Panel: Leading in and with Research
March 10, 2022
"If we are designing experiences that don’t work for everyone today, we’re designing experiences that in a couple of years will exclude ourselves."
Sam ProulxAccessibility: An Opportunity to Innovate
June 8, 2022
"Sharing our playbook with engineering helped push design diversity thinking beyond our own team up to the C-suite level."
Michelle MorrisonCulture Design
May 21, 2020
"Visualization isn’t about beautiful artifacts but about creating accessible spaces for stakeholders to collaborate."
Dharani PereraThe mandala of service design: unlocking alignment and action through service design
November 20, 2025
