From a physical shopkeeper point-of-view, the last several releases of Shopify web admin and Shopify iOS have made things difficult to add, update and maintain inventory, and the Shopify POS for iOS has made the customer checkout experience more difficult, resulting in clerks taking longer find products and add them to cart, and to turnover customers.
As a former UI/UX lead, these design changes seem very developer-centric and not at all user-centric. It seems like the importance of the design process has been made a low-priority resulting in an increasingly bad user experience in exchange for making easier for developers.
- Sebastian
I suggest that Shopify create user acceptance test groups and UI/UX focus groups made up of actual users of the different Shopify systems. During the design phase interact with the UI/UX focus groups to review features and discuss potential changes, and then test wire frames and prototypes. Prior to release, engage the UAT group to alpha and beta test releases.
The most important thing is to get input and feedback from actual users, not just the development and marketing teams.