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
"To have a strategy you need to think about how to prioritize, because you can’t do all the research requests that come in."
George Zhang Molly StevensUX Research Excellence Framework
March 11, 2021
"You don’t have to sit through two hours a day; we’ll spend about 15 minutes on setup then you’ll pair up and do the exercise."
Dave GrayGroup Activity: Making Sense of DesignOps
November 7, 2017
"Leadership doesn’t only mean managing; it can be mentoring, product leadership, or technical influence."
Ian SwinsonDesigning and Driving UX Careers
June 8, 2016
"We are moving from direct work to mediated work, from wanting things perfect to good enough for now, and from complete to adaptive and growing systems."
Hugh DubberlyProblems with Problems: Reconsidering the Frame of Designing as Problem-Solving
June 19, 2019
"Complex systems are not chaos but non-deterministic due to interdependencies and autonomy within the system."
Jen BriselliLearning is the north star: service design for adaptive capacity
November 19, 2025
"We don’t need another hero — we’re on a journey together, sometimes converging, sometimes diverging."
Frances Yllana Ann Buechner Jess Jones Betsy RamacciaD.E.A.R.R. Diaries (Discipline, Experience, Architecture, Reflection + Revolution)
November 16, 2022
"No one is married to a company; people will leave if their needs aren’t met, so retention and team happiness are important success indicators."
Angelos ArnisState of DesignOps: Learnings from the 2021 Global Report
October 1, 2021
"Publishing a position paper at IBM takes months of review to align all stakeholders and avoid any suggestion of greenwashing."
Chris HammondEmbedding sustainability into enterprise design and development: A journey towards "sustainability consciousness"
April 2, 2025
"Watching short clips of assistive technology users struggling can create a powerful empathy shift."
Gabriela BarnevaOperationalizing Inclusive Design in Design Ops
September 11, 2025
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
What are the key financial metrics that influence product and service design decisions?
Why are service designers uniquely positioned to lead accessibility and inclusion efforts?
What tools or formats work best to align diverse teams with different digital literacy levels on a market launch process?