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
"The squint test helps you see if the right elements are popping on the page without distraction."
Billy CarlsonPro-level UI Tips for Beginners
September 9, 2022
"Up to 90% of time in work streams is delay or waiting time, not active work."
Mark InterranteCollaboration Flows in Product Development
June 9, 2017
"Fenty Beauty launched 40 shades at once, filling a gap no major cosmetic brand had addressed before."
Joi FreemanA New Vantage Point: Building a Pipeline for Multifaceted Research(ers)
March 30, 2020
"Now it's really accessible for everyone, not just designers, to do visual thinking using these tools."
Shipra Kayan Robert Kortenoeven Eileen TangEmerging principles for using AI in Design: What the product design team at Miro has learned from deeply integrating AI in their workflow
June 11, 2025
"AI systems can present speculative connections as established facts, so confidence ratings are critical."
Patrick BoehlerFishing for Real Needs: Reimagining Journalism Needs with AI
June 10, 2025
"By sitting at the table with sales and marketing, we can catch bias and produce more rigorous research."
Chris Geison Cristen Torrey Eric MahlstedtWhat is Research Strategy?: A Panel of Research Leaders Discuss this Emergent Question
March 4, 2021
"It’s important to create a clear value proposition that ties your work to the larger organizational mission."
Jackie AjouxLeveling-Up: A Single-Player’s Guide to the DesignOps Team-of-One
January 8, 2024
"AI is here to stay, challenging our norms and shaping our future."
Alnie FigueroaThe Future of Design Operations: Transforming Our Craft
September 10, 2025
"AI-moderated interviews will help drill down on depth without sacrificing scalability or requiring scheduling moderators."
Andy Barraclough Betsy NelsonFrom Costly Complexity to Efficient Insights: Why UX Teams Are Switching To Voxpopme
September 23, 2024
