Prevent conflicting experiments with layers
WHAT IT TESTS: enforcing mutual exclusion via layered assignment. OUTLINE: group conflicting experiments into one layer so a user's per-layer bucket maps to at most one of them; orthogonal layers can overlap.
WHAT IT TESTS: whether you can structurally prevent two experiments from colliding on the same surface. ANSWER OUTLINE: introduce layers (or domains): a layer partitions traffic, and all experiments competing for the same surface, like checkout, live in one layer so they are mutually exclusive. A user is deterministically hashed within the layer to a bucket that maps to at most one experiment, so they can never be in two checkout tests at once. Independent surfaces use separate orthogonal layers that can overlap freely.
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- #experimentation
- #layers
- #mutual-exclusion
- #assignment
- #platform-design
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