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
"Previously Alina spent two days fixing styles in Figma; with plugins, she now does it in 30 minutes."
Farid SabitovAutomatization for Large Enterprise Teams
January 8, 2024
"People working in government are absolutely idealistic, hardworking, well educated, and open minded."
Charlotte Vorbeck Shahzma Esmail Edward Alton Sarah McArthur Ariel KennanPipeline to Civic Design
December 9, 2021
"Treat unemployment as a full-time job; be relentless and turn over every stone to improve your chances."
Corey LongHiring in DesignOps: A Critical Study on How to Hire and Get Hired
September 23, 2024
"We need more than just designers to transform society; it requires a broader mindset shift."
Bob BaxleyTheme 4: Intro
January 8, 2024
"Don’t tell government teams you’re using design thinking—use their language and let them experience it first."
Steve ChaparroBringing Into Alignment Brand, Culture and Space
August 13, 2020
"The mayor and CEO were concerned that if the city stepped in on early childhood education, they'd own it forever."
Sarah AuslanderIncremental Steps to Drive Radical Innovation in Policy Design
November 18, 2022
"If the scale delivers bad news, we jump on and off to check; if it delivers good news, we accept it quickly."
Sara LogelYour Colleagues are Your Users Too
March 29, 2023
"In ID, practitioners try to never use the word understand in project goals because it’s too vague for actionable behaviors."
Zen RenTaking Inspiration from Instructional Design for Research
March 10, 2022
"You have to keep the fight, keep looking back at where you started."
JD Buckley Margot Dear Jim Kalbach Janaki KumarCOMMUNICATE: Discussion
June 14, 2018
