Panelists Vanessa Janowski of Vari Solutions, Ivy Reyes of Pinterest, Maisy Samuelson of Shutterstock and Cinna Wu of Facebook hosted the panel Back-End to the Future: A/B Testing What Counts on Saturday at SXSW. A/B testing refers to experimenting with two different variants of a variable or software and seeing what a user’s preference is between the two and which is more effective. The panel discussed the future of A/B testing at four leading technology companies and their approaches, as well as innovation in back-end testing, and the use of machine learning to automate testing and how A/B testing could be used to improve these processes as well.

After the panel, I caught up with Ivy Reyes of Pinterest, who gave an overview of the panel discussion and offered some advice for companies interested in improving A/B testing.