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 are map makers… helping businesses understand their customers so they don’t make the wrong decisions or end up somewhere they don’t want to be."
Robert SchwartzWe're Here for the Humans
June 9, 2017
"Product and UX ought to be allies presenting a united front at the table, not competing for supremacy."
Aditi Ruiz Christian Crumlish Farid SabitovPulse Check: Empathy Mapping Your Product Manager, Pt. 2
December 6, 2022
"Traditional usability labs often force assistive tech users to use unfamiliar setups, creating barriers."
Sam ProulxSUS: A System Unusable for Twenty Percent of the Population
June 9, 2021
"Drag and drop ease, and collaborative affinity diagramming in the tool, were unexpected but very welcome advantages."
Taylor Jennings Joe Nelson Alex KnollRepository Retrospective: Learnings from Introducing a Central Place for UX Research
March 9, 2022
"We mapped the process visually to see gaps and where we could reduce context switching."
Ned Dwyer Jadyn AguilarThe Future of DesignOps is Tool Consolidation
September 23, 2024
"Psychological safety is the number one factor determining team effectiveness and performance."
Alla WeinbergDesign Teams Need Psychological Safety: Here’s How to Create It
September 9, 2022
"Organizational silos are killers."
Maria GiudiceRemaking the Making Company: Moving from Product to Experience
June 9, 2016
"Green spaces are not luxuries—they're necessities for urban life."
Ali Jeffery Sheri ChudowHow DesignOps Helped Enable Wall Street to Work Remotely
October 22, 2020
"This is a beautifully aged stew, delicious ideas that have a sum that’s greater than the parts."
Louis Rosenfeld Christian CrumlishOpening Remarks
November 29, 2023
