“I just started riding, no plan,” Jay said.
“I ended up somewhere in Missouri…it was one of those rides,” my friend Jay described his afternoon bike ride in rural Arkansas. Everyone nodded their heads knowingly. Not having a plan is most of the fun in gravel biking. Unfamiliar brick-red clay roads and twisting hollers nestled between rolling farmland, with only the silent crunching of pebbles under your tires, you can get yourself lost. Which, of course, is exactly the point.
Jay’s ride captures a foundational truth in experience design: uncertainty, used intentionally, creates meaning. Great experiences strike a careful balance between removing bad uncertainty and amplifying good uncertainty.
Planned uncertainty is the goal of most experience design for leisure. Getting into a bit of trouble is always part of the fun, provided it isn’t lethal. As another friend of mine, who is fond of extreme off-roading, explained to me, “If we didn’t have any problems, it wouldn’t be much of an adventure, would it?”
However, uncertainty is a double-edged sword. For millennia, humans endeavored to reduce uncertainty. Whether it was to soothe anxiety about the sun’s reappearance by creating a sun chariot myth, performing ceremonies to provoke the sky to produce rain, or reducing uncertainty in stock markets, we have always strived to reduce uncertainty.
In our personal lives, we engage in rituals and habits to reduce uncertainty. Some of these methods are helpful (e.g., planning, expert advice); others merely provide the illusion of reducing uncertainty (e.g., knocking on wood three times). Humans usually go to great lengths to reduce uncertainty… until they want it.
The trick in experience design is understanding when people want uncertainty and when they do not. Let’s first take a look at where uncertainty is unwelcome.
Unwelcome Uncertainty
Everyday Avoidance of Uncertainty
In our day-to-day lives, we hate uncertainty and go to great lengths to avoid it. Specifically, we are highly motivated to remove unwanted surprises; that is the anxious anticipation of anxiety, as my former professor Dr. George Boeree would call it. As experience designers, we can help with that unwanted uncertainty. Unfortunately, many times that opportunity to do so is either ignored or avoided.
Systems to Reduce Uncertainty
Most people have visited their local deli or meat counter and waited for the deli clerk to dispense exact quantities of Swiss cheese, pastrami, or any manner of deli foods. When it is not busy, it is obvious who is next in line; in cases where it is very busy, who is in the queue becomes ambiguous for both customers and the clerk.
A common solution for this problem is the ticketing or “take-a-number” system, used effectively in everything from IT support to the DMV. This reduces social ambiguity (and potential angry customers) by making the order clear to everyone. Surprisingly, some very large grocery stores do not use this system, though it is a small fix that reduces irritation.
Air travel is one of the biggest opportunity areas for reducing uncertainty. When a flight is delayed — due to weather, congestion, or maintenance issues — it is understandably difficult to forecast when things will be fixed.
However, what good airlines (and airplane captains) do is inform customers of status. While airline customers have zero influence on getting the plane into the air, understanding the situation provides a sense of control. In the same way ancient civilizations felt more certain knowing the sun would rise because the gods brought it across the sky in their chariots, or that your Domino’s pizza is en route because it says so on the tracker, customers today want to know what is going on, even if that data is not 100% accurate.
Some rational employees may conclude that if nothing has changed in the delay status, there is nothing to share. That’s not true. People want to know they are not forgotten. Even if there is no news, communicating any status helps reduce anxiety and makes customers more likely to forgive you when the situation is resolved.
Uncertainty Concierges
Another strategy for reducing uncertainty is preparing people for what is going to happen before it does, especially in high-risk situations.
The concept of the “realistic job preview” has long held an esteemed place in organizational behavior. The idea is to give job candidates a look at what the job is, both good and bad, before they accept an offer. There is strong empirical support that this reduces voluntary turnover by 5% to 20%.
Buying your first home is a stressful and uncertain undertaking. Really good realtors know this and act as concierges through the process. Our friend Sheryl Carman is a master of the craft. She guides first-time buyers through pre-approvals, appraisals, inspections, and closing, and provides measured and neutral advice throughout. Moreover, she has a large network of people who can help her do things she can’t.
Health care is another opportunity where you can separate poor providers from good and great ones by the information they provide. With a litany of specialists and organizations, undergoing any surgical procedure can be extremely stressful. The physical risks, financial implications, and unfamiliar process contribute to anxiety.
Great health-care providers understand this and provide guidance through a patient navigator. Duke Health makes use of such patient navigators to act as the quarterback, informing patients and advocating for them throughout any procedure.
Companies engaged in high-risk, low-familiarity customer scenarios should understand the journey and provide processes and people to help mitigate uncertainties. Reducing unwanted uncertainty leads to happier customers. Happier customers tend to return, advocate for the brand, and cost less to serve.
Negative Uncertainty Removal
The best way to reduce uncertainty is to remove it completely. Uber removed the guesswork of how much, how long, and where to get picked up in the taxi experience. Marriott and others led the charge in creating self-checkout, removing the uncertainty of waiting in line, quickly followed by airlines and grocery stores. Amazon, REI, and others remove uncertainty by offering “no-questions-asked” return policies.
Welcomed Uncertainty
There are many circumstances in which customers actively seek uncertainty. Scary roller coasters, horror movies, and gambling are examples of when people knowingly seek uncertainty and take pleasure in it.
There are two flavors of uncertainty that are welcomed by customers; positive-valence uncertainty (fun or surprise) and negative-valence uncertainty (scary or fearful)
Scary Uncertainty
Horror movies generated nearly $1 billion in receipts in 2024 in the United States. In that same year the U.S. spent more than than $172 billion gambling, which usually results in personal losses. Why? Because it is fun. We get a dopamine rush from the click-click-click of the roller coaster climbing and the 80-degree high-speed dives.
The trick is making people feel psychologically safe and not letting fun fear transform into real fear. There have been instances when experience designers pushed people over the edge from perceived fear to real fear. During the initial screenings of The Exorcist (1973), audience members fled in panic or fainted. A New York Times reviewer reported “the stale odour of vomit” in the theater. In 2016, the Evil Clown panic led pranksters to dress as clowns and scare people, leading to 12 arrests and at least one death.
As long as participants feel they can safely get off the ride when they want, fear is fun. When contrived fear becomes real fear, things get hairy. As H.P. Lovecraft wrote, “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”
Fun Uncertainty
Most adventure fits this category. In these instances, uncertainty is the fun. Think back to your best, most memorable night out, dinner, date, or road trip. Were they predictable and expected or new and unexpected? The best times always seem to occur in the hole-in-the-wall restaurant, striking a conversation with a random person, or the dirt road you accidentally turned down, only to discover beauty beyond description.
Preconditions for Fun Uncertainty
I’ve found there are two preconditions that allow for uncertainty to become fun:
- Customers must be in the right mindset. A random pop-up puzzle during online banking is the wrong time. A deep philosophical question at the drive-through while rushing to work is ill-timed.
- Include people who like uncertainty. Those high the personality traits of openness to experience and low in neuroticism tend to enjoy wandering through ambiguity.
Experience designers should recognize these preconditions. This dimension is most utilized in leisure and entertainment. Companies such as Intrepid Travel and G Adventures offer small-group adventure tours. Withlocals provides spontaneous local tours for those who don’t want “cookie-cutter” options. “Chaos Menu” or “Chef Surprise” restaurants, such as Kitchen Table, Zeniya, and Ebbe, offer menus that change daily based on the seasons or the chef’s mood.
Creating surprising fun in eating and toys has a long tradition. Kinder Sorpresa, Cracker Jacks, and 1970s cereal boxes offered small surprises buried in sugary goodness. Swanson’s TV dinners included embossed scenes on frozen entrees to motivate users to clear unappetizing food.
The toy industry is a master of micro-surprises. Pop Mart’s Blind Box collectible toys come sealed in mystery boxes. Spin Master has Hatchimals that “hatch” from eggs, and MGA created L.O.L. Surprise!, always featuring an unboxing surprise. More recently, “blind date books” wrap books in brown paper with only the genre listed.
Why We Hate (and Love) Uncertainty
Humans have a love-hate relationship with uncertainty. This is reflected in our asymmetrical experience of gains and losses. Humans experience losses more heavily than gains. Idioms such as “a bird in hand is worth two in the bush” reflect this intuition. Modern psychological research puts the weight at about 2 to 2 and half. In other words, losing $100 feels about twice as bad as gaining $100 feels good.
Why?
There is likely an evolutionary basis for our relationship with uncertainty. A species’ survival depends on not being reckless and relying on what is tried and true. Knowing where mastodon herds roamed or which tubers reliably grew meant survival.
However, if our loss aversion ratio were larger than 2 to 1, humans might never have changed anything, leading to extinction. This is why Homo Sapiens survived while Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Floresiensis did not. They were ecological specialists sticking with the tried and true. When the environment changed, they were caught off guard.
Evolution is, by definition, risk-taking. At some point, 80,000 years ago, a risk-taking human ate a new mushroom and found it tasted good rather than killing him. Ten thousand years ago, an early agrarian ignored the odd taste of fermented grape juice and invented wine. In 1928, Alexander Fleming noticed a mold killing bacteria on a plate and inadvertently discovered penicillin. It was perfected before WWII and saved millions from infections, one of the leading causes of death in earlier wars. At some point, someone got into a ship and sailed off to another continent; sea serpents and the edge of the earth be damned.
Conclusion
In designing experience, we must balance reducing uncertainty with preserving the fun aspects of it. Much like bacteria, necessary for survival but dangerous in excess, uncertainty comes in both good and bad forms. The art of experience design lies in finding the right balance for the right context.