Evolution, uncertainty, & product design.
You and me – we're both products of nature's iterative experiments.
Our instincts have been fine-tuned to lead us to things that help us survive for long enough to reproduce (and then survive some more till the survival of our kids didn't depend on ours). On the surface, we like to highlight what makes us unique, but deep down, we're products of the same source code.
You might think we don't like uncertainty, but we do. Not of all kinds, but of a certain flavor. The kind that gives us hope. The kind we feel when we're about to close a deal. The kind that grips us when we're playing on those damned slot machines. The kind we feel when we're about to refresh Instagram one more time.
In other words, we like uncertainty that has a perceived positive expected value. We like it so much, we even have a word for it – excitement.
Unsurprisingly, we hate the other kind – uncertainty with perceived negative expected value. We have a word for that too – anxiety.
In fact, we hate feeling anxious more than we love feeling excited.
If you think about it, it makes sense. We evolved in the wild. And survival in the wild isn't easy. One dumb move and we'd probably get eaten by a bear. Game over. But one right move, and we'd survive for just another day. Not a big deal. A bear could still eat us tomorrow.
Okay, enough about bears. What does this have to do with product design? I'm no expert, but I'll lay down my thought process in case it's helpful.
First, let me create a custom metric. Let's call it 'The Uncertainty Coefficient'.
The Uncertainty Coefficient = Excitement caused - Anxiety created
All product experiences that we choose to repeatedly indulge in (not the ones we're forced to indulge in) have a positive Uncertainty Coefficient. Sometimes it's imperceptible and minuscule. But it is always positive.
A customer will not repeatedly interact with a product unless it creates more excitement than anxiety in their lives. And since anxiety is more easily caused than excitement, when designing products, we must focus more on removing anxiety-causing triggers than on creating exciting experiences.