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
"This isn’t about Skynet; it’s about simple signals of awareness that adapt to immediate context."
Josh Clark Veronika KindredSentient Scenes and Radically Adaptive Experiences
June 11, 2025
"If given a choice in my career and my personal life, I will choose process over ambiguity every single time."
Amy ThibodeauOpening Keynote: Process and Ambiguity
October 23, 2019
"Discomfort should not be dismissed; it’s a signpost for necessary change."
Rachael Dietkus, LCSWThe power to heal and harm
March 13, 2025
"Sometimes it helps to have an ally who champions you and acts as a gatekeeper for design requests."
Erika Kincaid Brenna Heaps Jessica TsukimuraConnecting the Dots: How to Foster Collaboration and Build a Strong Design Review Culture
June 8, 2022
"I call it the digital crisis complex — a frenzy to digitize everything as fast as possible without pausing to validate impact."
Leah BuleyClosing Plenary: The Crisis of Digital
March 31, 2020
"Not every task has to be completed; if a participant can’t find a way, that means the experience can be improved."
Samuel Proulx Laur BaekInclusive Research: Debunking Myths and Getting Started
March 12, 2025
"I started thinking of the UI layer as the experimentation layer."
Bill ScottLean Engineering: Engineering for Learning and Experimentation in the Enterprise
May 14, 2015
"Magic eight ball thinking is the risk of blindly accepting AI answers without critical evaluation."
Savina HawkinsHarnessing AI in UXR: Practical Strategies for Positive Impact
March 26, 2024
"Mobile screens have forced designers to create simplified interfaces without reducing features."
Sam ProulxMobile Accessibility and You
June 9, 2022
