Design for Impact
Your Guide to Designing Effective Product Experiments
Design for Impact is a down-to-earth A/B testing guide. It features the Conversion Design process to operationalize effective experimentation in your company. In it, Erin Weigel gives you practical tips and tools to design better experiments at scale. She does this with self-deprecating humor that will leave you smiling—if not laughing aloud. As a bonus, The Good Experimental Design toolkit presents everything you learn into step-by-step process for you to use each day.
Who Should Read This Book
If you’re a curious person working in tech who wants to deliver impactful work, you should read this book. If you’re a business leader looking to help your team make better decisions, you should read this book. If you want to level-up your approach to experimentation, you should read this book. In short, everyone—from CEOs to marketers, engineers, product people, through to designers and content folks—should read this book.
Takeaways
- Learn a fun, balanced approach to digital product experimentation to get your whole team testing customer-centric ideas.
- Stop making changes and start making improvements with the Conversion Design process.
- Follow the Good Experimental Design toolkit so that you and your entire team design for impact together.
- Clear up confusion around A/B testing with helpful tools and practical advice.
- Look for loads of actionable tips for effective product experimentation to give your team insight into the big picture.
- Make the complex math behind why experimentation works easy and understandable.
Design for Impact is a down-to-earth A/B testing guide. It features the Conversion Design process to operationalize effective experimentation in your company. In it, Erin Weigel gives you practical tips and tools to design better experiments at scale. She does this with self-deprecating humor that will leave you smiling—if not laughing aloud. As a bonus, The Good Experimental Design toolkit presents everything you learn into step-by-step process for you to use each day.
Who Should Read This Book
If you’re a curious person working in tech who wants to deliver impactful work, you should read this book. If you’re a business leader looking to help your team make better decisions, you should read this book. If you want to level-up your approach to experimentation, you should read this book. In short, everyone—from CEOs to marketers, engineers, product people, through to designers and content folks—should read this book.
Takeaways
- Learn a fun, balanced approach to digital product experimentation to get your whole team testing customer-centric ideas.
- Stop making changes and start making improvements with the Conversion Design process.
- Follow the Good Experimental Design toolkit so that you and your entire team design for impact together.
- Clear up confusion around A/B testing with helpful tools and practical advice.
- Look for loads of actionable tips for effective product experimentation to give your team insight into the big picture.
- Make the complex math behind why experimentation works easy and understandable.
Testimonials
“In Design for Impact, Weigel turns the art of design into a science experiment you’ll actually want to do. Forget gut feelings—this book is all about the thrill of evidence, the beauty of data, and making decisions that pack a punch. A must-read if you’re into winning arguments with hard facts and transforming your ideas into undeniable success stories.”
—Janna Bastow, CEO and Co-founder, ProdPad
“This is a must-have read for anyone trying to get into experimentation. It’s basically an Experimentation Bible. Erin was able to take incredibly challenging concepts and distill them into easy-to-digest readings, which are actually interesting to read! The crowdsourcing of building this book shouldn’t be overlooked either—this isn’t Erin declaring what to do. Rather, it’s the sharpest minds in the CRO community discussing their thoughts and opinions, and Erin has distilled those thoughts into a book to make it accessible for everyone!”
—Shiva Manjunath, Host and founder of the experimentation podcast From A to B
“Design for Impact is a masterpiece; it is modern product discovery from a designer’s perspective. Erin brings an iterative and experimental approach that enables designers and gives them the knowledge to create better products!”
—Phil Hornby, Founder, for product people
“Design for Impact makes “brain-breaking” maths fun and intuitive. Through practical examples backed up by comprehensive explanations of the underlying theory, it will help you run good experiments.”
—Liam Furman, Data Scientist, Experimentation Consultant, www.LiamFurman.com
“It’s a valuable tool for students who want to better understand the experimentation culture within tech companies and organizations.”
—Dr. Natalia Sánchez-Querubin, Assistant Professor in Digital Culture, University of Amsterdam
“Erin Weigel offers practical and valuable insights to the world of experimentation. Covering process, prioritization, optimizing workflows, and statistical concepts, all intertwined with splashes of humor—it’s a welcomed dose of practicality for experimentation I wish I was provided when starting in the industry. Buy this book if you want to jumpstart the experimentation practices and principles in your workplace.”
—Preston Daniel, Product Manager—Personalization
“Weigel’s book is a beacon for product teams, offering the Conversion Design model and a comprehensive toolkit for refined experimentation processes. It’s the cornerstone of building an Experimentation Culture.”
—Adam Thomas, Principal, Approaching One
“An awesome, practical guide for teams looking to use experimentation to grow their online businesses. It works!”
—Darren Huston, CEO, BlackPines Capital Partners and former CEO, Booking.com
“Learning through trial and error takes too long and costs too much. Instead, learn from these hard-won lessons from a practitioner with more than a decade of experimentation experience.”
—Peep Laja, CEO at Wynter
“Fundamental for improving online products and data-driven decision-making. Plus, Weigel’s writing is light, funny, and supported by tons of helpful visuals.”
— Lucia van den Brink, Founder, Increase Conversion Rate.com and Women in Experimentation
“Wow, Design for Impact really hit the mark for me! As someone deep into experimentation, I found the math sections super insightful. What stood out was how Erin breaks down complex math into something anyone can get. Whether you’re new to the game or have been around the block a few times, this book has something for you. Big recommend for anyone looking to make sense of data and drive real change. Kudos to Erin for making this gem accessible and fun to dive into!”
—Jonas Alves, CEO, ABsmartly
Table of Contents
Chapter One Conversion Design Drives Impact
Chapter Two The Understand Phase: Uncovering Impactful Insights
Chapter Three The Hypothesize Phase: Think Clear, Logical Thoughts
Chapter Four The Prioritize Phase: The Work and the Workflow
Chapter Five The Create Phase: Set Your Idea Up for Success
Chapter Six The Test Phase: Test Like You’re Wrong
Chapter Seven The Analyze Phase: Learn from the Data
Chapter Eight The Decide Phase: Make an Optimal Choice
Chapter Nine Scale It: Drive Impact Across Your Organization
Sample Chapter
This is a sample chapter from Erin Weigel‘s book Design for Impact: Your Guide to Designing Effective Product Experiments. 2024, Rosenfeld Media.
Chapter 1: Conversion Design Drives Impact
THE POINT
Many product design and development teams use opinions to make decisions. A better approach is to gather reliable evidence, measure the impact of their work, and make optimal decisions by learning from the Conversion Design process.
Have you ever sat around a table at work and discussed endlessly which version of a design is best? I know I have. Early in my first real tech job at a meal delivery service, I was asked to redesign part of a home page. The goal was to sell more of our secondary product line, which was meal replacement shakes. With the task in hand, I got started.
I designed one option with photos of people. Product photos dominated a second design, and a third one used only icons and words. I even had a fourth version with icons, people, and products, which, admittedly, was a bit much. Then our team had to decide which version to use.
