[Summer Series] Erin Weigel: My Experimentation Career Journey
Your overview of interesting reads, events and jobs for the experimental mind.
Hi, I am enjoying my holiday in Scotland and currently on the beautiful Isle of Skye. This newsletter will also go into holiday mode. Last year I asked experimenters about how they spend their summer. This year we will share stories from experimenters about their career. Erin Weigel will kickoff the series. And this is already a very interesting read.
In a couple of weeks I will be back to sharing interesting articles.
💡Erin Weigel: My Experimentation Career Journey
The goal of this interview series is to inspire and help people to transition their career into a new or next experimentation related role. In this edition Erin Weigel shares her journey. You can follow Erin on LinkedIn, Twitter and erindoesthings.com.
Hi there 👋 My name is Erin, and I do things. A thing I do that you’re probably most interested in is experimentation. (Though I also do design systems, accessibility, and am fixing up an abandoned villa in France. I also like to garden.)
I’ve been running experiments and learning from them for more than 12 years. I learned most of what I know about data-informed design from my time working at Booking.com. I started as a UX designer, then grew into a Principal designer over my nine years there. I also worked as a data science product manager and eventually in the leadership role responsible for design systems and accessibility.
During my time at Booking I ran more than 1,400 experiments and helped grow the design team from about 30 people to over 350. I learned not only a TON about experimentation, but also about building and growing an experimentation culture. In my “free time” I’m writing a book about experimentation and the conversion design process called, “Design for Impact.” It’s published by Rosenfeld Media and will be available sometime in 2024!
What is your current experimentation role and what do you do?
I’m currently a senior design manager at Deliveroo. It’s a UK-based food delivery company that has a strong presence in Asia.
I’m responsible for the company’s design system. I set the strategy and priorities as we work on optimizing the design foundations (color, type, spacing, UI) at scale.
I’m also responsible for the Rider Kit. It’s what delivery people wear while they work. My teammate, Sam, does the physical product designs. Then, we collaborate with Rider Operations and Data Science to run experiments in the real world. This helps us understand if the products we provide have the impact we aim for. I love the challenge of experimenting in the physical world.
How did you enter the experimentation space? What was your first experimentation related role?
My first experimentation role was at a small weight-loss company in the USA. But, I’ve never had the word “experimentation” in my title. I’ve always been a designer. Experimentation is just a core part of how I make good design decisions. Without it, there’s too much subjective opinion. And more often than not—opinion leads people astray.
My first experiments were run on email marketing campaigns. I noticed they used very small font sizes and had many images with text without alternative text. So, I redesigned their templates to use a minimum 16px font-size and used plain text as much as possible.
When the marketing team reviewed the results they saw a 120% improvement on sales.
The director asked, “What changed?” The analyst replied, “Erin made some design changes.” Then, I explained what I did that had the impact.
It was that moment when I realized that design implementation can be the difference between failure or success. I got hooked on learning if the changes I made had the impact I aimed for. As luck would have it, my next job was at Booking.com where I had the freedom and ability to learn as much as I wanted about user-centered design through experimentation.
How did you start to learn experimentation?
I didn’t realize this was a unique way to work. It seemed obvious to me, but I had no idea how things worked “under the hood.” I relied a lot on data scientists to help me analyze the results. The main person I learned from was Lukas Vermeer. We started at Booking on the same day and were in the same onboarding group. I learned how to read the data myself by walking up to Lukas’s desk and saying, “LUKAS WHAT IN THE WORLD IS GOING ON HERE?” He helped me understand what all the visualizations meant and when results were and were not reliable. Eventually, I’d walk up to him and tell him what I thought I saw in the results. When he confirmed my analyses more than he said, “uhhh no” I felt confident enough to not bug him so much about data analysis. Instead, we talked about other things like Scurvy, Ebola, cannibalism, and other weird stuff (we like to read weird books).
In the full interview you will also learn what Erin does to keep up with the ever-changing industry. She also sharesher recommendations to someone who is looking to join the experimentation industry.
🚀 Job opportunities
Looking for a new challenge in experimentation? Find 100+ experimentation related jobs on ExperimentationJobs.com. These jobs are from all over the world, on-site, fully remote or hybrid. Take a look and start pivoting your career.
This week's featured roles:
🆕 Growth Marketing Engineer at Dreamdata (Copenhagen, Denmark)
🆕 Sr Mgr, Product Analytics & Experimentation at Kickstarter (Remote, USA)
🆕 Experimentation / CRO Lead at RSA (Horsham, Untied Kingdom)
🆕 CRO Specialist at Bynder (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Are you hiring? Submit here
👍 Thanks for reading
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