I make heavy use of three-finger-swipe-up gesture to see all windows in the current space and thumbnails of spaces. (System prefs -> Trackpad -> More gestures)

I make heavy use of three-finger-swipe-up gesture to see all windows in the current space and thumbnails of spaces. (System prefs -> Trackpad -> More gestures) The dock I keep minimized, not much use for it with spaces because it has global state. Cmd+h is handy for hiding global apps out of way (can be revealed again with cmd+tab).