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
"Combining deep usability studies with site intercepts gives you both step-by-step insights and a moment-in-time view of user pain."
Mike Oren Janice WiitalaDesign Research Strategy & Strategic Design Research
February 3, 2022
"The challenge for us is how might we act more skillfully under conditions of VUCA."
Jorge ArangoDesign as an Antidote to VUCA
May 9, 2019
"Thou art community, connection, and meaning – the product is not just code or design, it is a shared experience between humans and dogs."
Kevin M. HoffmanTheme 2: Enterprise Team Journey
June 3, 2019
"A big challenge is that a lot of governmental sites are filled with legally correct but totally incomprehensible content."
Yalenka Mariën Marie MervaillieDesigning for Digital Inclusion in the Belgian Government
December 8, 2021
"We set a goal to hire at least 25% of early career roles from underrepresented demographics. This year we reached 37%."
Kurdin Bazaz Liz Rytting Alex KarrCulture, DIBS & Recruiting
June 10, 2021
"Iterative engagement models mean we test, learn, and adapt rather than seeking a perfect solution from the start."
Aaron Stienstra Lashanda HodgeLeveraging Civic Design to Advance Equity and Rebuild Trust in the US Federal Government
December 8, 2021
"We need a reckoning of research operations—what it is now and what it can become."
Fatimah RichmondThe Future of ReOps as a Strategic Function: A Roadmap for Getting There
March 25, 2024
"AI can help manage cognitive overload and speed up work when you have short timeframes and no team."
Yulya Besplemennova[Demo] Stress-testing GenAI in user research synthesis
June 4, 2024
"If you want to have tattoos, you can have tattoos and show them."
Jen Crim Jess Quittner Saritha Kattekola Alex Karr Gurbani PahwaCulture, DIBS & Recruiting
June 11, 2021
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
What are the technical challenges designers face when trying to run and update production code locally?
What is the difference between AI skills, competencies, and capabilities in a design context?
What role can familiar communication channels like WhatsApp play in deploying AI tools in resource-limited settings?