Picture a user going through your product this week. Before they ever see your screens, they read a landing page marketing wrote. Halfway through, they hit a bug engineering shipped on Friday. They contact support and get a reply that somehow makes things worse. And the whole time, they’re squinting at a cracked five-year-old phone in direct sunlight. Did I mention they had a broken finger?

You designed the screens. Probably good ones. But the experience happened everywhere else.

This is the idea I call the UX Uncertainty Principle: you can’t truly design a user’s experience. You can only design the conditions that make a good one more likely. When we pretend we control the whole thing, good work still produces bad outcomes, and we’re left wondering why.

So what do we actually control?

Less than our job titles suggest, but more than it feels like on a bad week.

One way to see the forces working against you is VUCA:

• Volatility: Things change fast. The roadmap you planned in Q1 looks like a historical document by Q2.
• Uncertainty: You don’t know what’s coming. Will that feature get funded? Will the API exist next sprint?
• Complexity: Lots of moving parts, all connected. Change one thing and three others wobble.
• Ambiguity: Even the information you have can mean different things. Ask five stakeholders what “simple” means and enjoy your five answers.

Naming these doesn’t make them go away. But it does stop them from blindsiding you, and it helps you figure out where your effort will actually pay off.

Try this before Wednesday

Pick one project you’re working on right now and grab a sticky note (digital counts).

1. Write down one thing about the user’s experience that you don’t control.
2. Label it: is it volatility, uncertainty, complexity, or ambiguity?
3. Ask yourself: what’s one thing I could influence that would soften its impact?

That third question is where your leverage lives. And it’s exactly what we’ll practice together.

Join the hands-on workshop

📅 Wednesday, November 4 | 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM EST

Save your spot now!

Julia Ysabela Fernandez and I are running a live, hands-on workshop on working through this stuff in real time.

Here’s what you’ll do:

• Get a working framework. A short intro to VUCA as a way to name the forces outside your control.
• Work real scenarios. Most of the hour is hands-on. You’ll tackle situations pulled from real software teams, the kind where the requirements changed, the data is missing, and the deadline didn’t move.
• Find your leverage. For each scenario, you’ll figure out what you can influence and how to move forward with incomplete information.

You’ll leave having practiced a way of working through ambiguity, not just having heard about one.

Fair warning: this isn’t a camera-off, inbox-open kind of hour. You’ll be working. And the best answers in the room will come from the people in it.

Grab your ticket now!

See you on the 4th,
Jeremy

P.S. If your project has changed direction more times this quarter than you’d like to admit, this workshop was made for you. Bring that project. We’ll put it to work.

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