I’m uncertain about uncertainty. In a fast changing world, especially a business world, we’re encouraged to embrace uncertainty. We’re encouraged to become comfortable being uncomfortable. That those most capable of change are the ones that survive.

But here’s the problem… I think I’ve got reasonable grounds to think that uncertainty is one of the precursors to a bad experience.

fraught
adjective

“full of unpleasant things such as problems or dangers”

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/fraught

If an employee is uncertain whether their boss will scream at them today, the experience of working in that office is likely to be fraught.

If a manager is uncertain whether an employee will meet a mission-critical deadline, that manager’s experience is likely to be fraught.

If a client is uncertain whether someone they’ve paid to do a job is going to show up or not, that customer experience is going to be fraught.

But it’s certainly not that case that uncertainty always leads to bad experience. The uncertainty with uncertainty is that sometimes uncertainty is an essential ingredient of what makes an experience great.

I think that a great of what makes the giving of gifts a great experience is that they’re wrapped, that you’re uncertain of what’s inside. And yet receiving a gift is seldom fraught.

And once we have even one counter-example we know that uncertainty itself isn’t bad.

So where’s the line?

It’s our job as people invested in experience design is to determine what are the characteristics of situations in which the uncertainty sets up a good experience, and what are the characteristics that set up a bad experience.