If you agree that on some level complex systems go hand-in-hand with complex problems (or complex problem domains), then perhaps it makes sense to tap into the research and development community to see what they are up to. From your description, you may be specifically interested in the Visual Analytics community.
From a recent call-for-papers for the IEEE VAST Conference, Visual Analytics is defined as:
Visual Analytics is the science of analytical reasoning supported by
highly interactive visual interfaces. People use visual analytics
tools and techniques in all aspects of science, engineering, business,
and government to synthesize information into knowledge; derive
insight from massive, dynamic, and often conflicting data; detect the
expected and discover the unexpected; provide timely, defensible, and
understandable assessments; and communicate assessments effectively
for action. The issues stimulating this body of research provide a
grand challenge in science: turning information overload into the
opportunity of the decade. Visual analytics requires interdisciplinary
science, going beyond traditional scientific and information
visualization to include statistics, mathematics, knowledge
representation, management and discovery technologies, cognitive and
perceptual sciences, decision sciences, and more.
As a starting point, look at the annual VAST conference competition to see the scale/complexity of the problems that are currently "interesting" to the research community. Maybe even consider attending one of the conferences, and interacting with some of the sponsoring companies (maybe pick up trial versions of software etc).
I think half the battle is figuring out who is actually developing software solutions in these often highly niche product areas. Conferences (IEEE VisWeek as one example) and user groups can help to bridge that gap. Blogs will mainly try to condense information, which may not always be what you want.
Lastly, if you want a completely different point of view, a book was published recently (August 2012) that focuses on the interaction techniques and interfaces used in science fiction films. It is titled "Make It So: Interaction Design Lessons from Science Fiction". I haven't personally read the book, so I can't comment on its contents, but here is a short description from the publisher's site:
Many designers enjoy the interfaces seen in science fiction films and
television shows. Freed from the rigorous constraints of designing for
real users, sci-fi production designers develop blue-sky interfaces
that are inspiring, humorous, and even instructive. By carefully
studying these “outsider” user interfaces, designers can derive
lessons that make their real-world designs more cutting edge and
successful.
So, my suggestion is to keep up with the latest complex problems, and see how people try to solve them, instead of trying to sift through hundreds of applications and blogs and distill some UI/UX trend. I would wager that every truly complex problem requires a unique solution.
