Making Data Driven Product Decisions // Deepa Subramaniam, Charity Water

DEEPA SUBRAMANIAM

DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT, CHARITY WATER @IAMDEEPA

748 MILLION PEOPLE ON THE PLANET DON’T HAVE ACCESS TO CLEAN DRINKING WATER

DATA-DRIVEN DESIGN EXPERIMENTATION

Learn about the water crisis and the work charity: water does around the world

L E A R N

EDUCATIONAL PLATFORM

Give directly to charity: water including one-time donations and monthly giving

G I V E

DIRECT DONATION PLATFORM

A crowdfunding platform where anyone can run a campaign to raise money for clean water

R A I S E

FUNDRAISING PLATFORM

24 countries

5.2M people served

16,127 water projects

CHARITY WATER’S WORK IN THE PAST EIGHT YEARS

Testing keeps you honest

Testing keeps you moving forward

Testing produces data

Data gives you power

“..half of product features are not only wasted, but actually have a negative impact on user experience and ultimately business goals.”

-Indeed Study, 2013

TEAMWORK

» Identify what to test, why and how success will be determined. Ideas for testing are often based on user research or data mining

» Watch test, report on results, identify, statistically sound response rate, pivot if necessary

» With test criteria in mind, design small, measurable test variants

» Ensure test is as unbiased as possible, one key element should differ between test variants

» Instrument via analytics such that test metric(s) can be tracked

» Implement test and watch for biases

ENGINEERINGDESIGNPRODUCT

TESTING IS HUMBLING

Anchor your test in a hypothesis

Avoid attaching emotion to the process

Stay as neutral as possible

61% 39%

50%

100%

conversion

60.82%63.18%

CC + Paypal CC-Only

$25.00

$50.00

median gift size

$45.00$43.00

people are giving at the same rate and the same amount regardless of payment options presented

RESULTS CAN BE SURPRISING

Dig deep into the results before overreacting to data

Data points in a void are meaningless.

Zoom in, or out, to find the story

QUANT + QUAL

test small, measurable design changes

qualitative instincts tell you where to test

quantitative data produce powerful results