Behavioral Insights: is A/B testing unethical?
Behavioral Insights.
With this week's articles, you will learn how Booking.com and Skyscanner use their internal experimentation platform. And we'll discuss whether A/B testing is unethical.
1. Moving fast, breaking things, and fixing them as quickly as possible
Lukas Vermeer explains how Booking.com uses online controlled experiments to release new features faster and more safely: "Experiments allow us to deploy new code faster and more safely, to turn off individual features quickly — and in some cases even automatically — when needed, and help us validate that our product changes have the expected impact on the user experience." [read more]
2. Democratizing Experimentation at Skyscanner with Dr. Jekyll
The experimentation platform at Skyscanner is called Dr. Jekyll. In this article Karen Campa explains how she designed the interface in such a way that users are helped with 1) formulating a hypothesis and 2) powering an experiment. Seems like an easy to use interface. [read more]
3. Is A/B testing unethical?
This article addresses some potential ethical issues around A/B testing. It is based on an interesting scientific paper, where the need for stricter protocols is discussed. In my opinion, blaming A/B testing for unethical practices is unjustified. A/B testing is only a method to evaluate the impact of different content or features. None of the options tested should be unethical. [read more]
Have a good week!
— Kevin
*|INTERESTED:Would you also like insights in Dutch?:Yes please / ja graag|*ps. Op donderdag 14 februari sprak ik op Dialogue Donderdag over het opzetten van een experiment gedreven cultuur. Hier lees je het verslag.*|END:INTERESTED|*