I tend to agree in general, however what you're talking about is a V E R Y big effort, a total redesign. The approach you describe (focus groups, mock ups, better involvement of community input) is something I've been saying for years that we've needed, but unfortunately the 2 things that keep that approach from being implemented is 1) cost and 2) time to complete the required work, both in up front design & architecture as well as the work to implement it.

To create a quality UI/UX for a product that meets users needs requires first to identify your target user audience, and that is rarely included in crypto project planning. Once identified those users need to be engaged to provide feedback the UI team needs to hone the UI into a product the users are pleased to use. That takes people skills, and many (most?) programmers fall short in that department.

Lastly I'll comment that I didn't quite understand:

Not so much in the Exchange itself, as that is fairly on par with others, but in the REST of the Bitshares experience.

the distinction you're referring to with that sentence. BitShares IS THE DEX (Decentralized EXchange) . Would you please elaborate on this point? There are different aspects to the ecosystem, the wallet is the biggest wrt UI/UX but even within the wallet are different aspects: trading (big implications for trading pros AND casual, amateur traders), exchanging, creating assets, and a really big one: how to incentivize users to vote to counter the widespread voter apathy that severely impacts the governance model.

Could the gamification, dopamine hit-feedback designs that facebook has used so effectively to "hook" users and essentially make them addicts be used to create an incentive to vote (and also encourage quality voting), or would it have negative side affects even if employed for that specific purpose?