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Takeaways - Inside Shopify UX Podcast Episode “Designing Complex Systems”
Lola Oyelayo-Pearson, Christine Zoltok, and I had a chat on the Inside Shopify UX podcast, released this week. We talked about how to design for complex systems, decision-making around dark patterns, and a whole lot more. Here are some takeaways.
I loved the way Christine defined complex systems: “Lots of different audiences, second and third-order consequences of choices that get made, a lot of decisions that have consequences two or three levels down the line, competing interests, stuff that’s visible and invisible.”
We agreed that designing for complex systems entails decision-making that can impact two or three levels down the line and takes into account the possible consequences for actions. (Did someone say strategic foresight?)
Stay flexible when building for the long term
“The mission of the checkout team has evolved a lot over the years at Shopify. Some of the goals of that team were to build the foundational best checkout experience that we possibly could for new merchants.” — Christine
A lot of trust was needed to ensure the credibility of Shopify back then, and to set the standards for what a good checkout experience should be on the internet. Now that Shopify has grown bigger…
