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 had to connect empathy to strategic value so that executives and teams felt the impact on their work."
Matt StoneScaling Empathy, A Case Study in Change Management
June 11, 2021
"Junior people are often afraid to ask questions because they don't want to look dumb."
Louis RosenfeldGenAI for UXers: A Rosenbot Demo and Discussion
June 11, 2025
"We developed a list of 47 common touchpoints for B2B journeys based on extensive past research."
Sean DolanA Practical Look at Creating More Usable Enterprise Customer Journeys
October 31, 2019
"Machines cannot be accountable; responsibility is always human."
Patrizia BertiniDesigning Within the Lines: How the EU AI Act Can Spark Better AI Innovation
December 11, 2025
"Playbacks are stakeholder-focused meetings that sell the work’s story and drive buy-in, different from critiques focused on craft."
Joseph MeersmanSweating the Pixel: Scaling Quality through Critique
June 10, 2021
"Climate startups are a thing, and they really need UX expertise early on."
Louis Rosenfeld Matt Jones Olga Khroustaleva Michael Leggett Karol MunozDo you want to work on climate? (Climate UX Discussion Series)
November 15, 2023
"In government, the org chart really matters – it influences who talks to whom and who gets to interface."
Michael LandEstablishing Design Operations in Government
February 18, 2021
"Leadership usually determines whether psychological safety is built or eroded in a culture."
Alla WeinbergDesign Teams Need Psychological Safety: Here’s How to Create It
September 8, 2022
"If you feel uncomfortable or bullied, please let us know because it’s very important to keep the vibes positive."
Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
October 3, 2023
