All good questions. Good user experience is subjective and hard to define what is “good”. Reading the book “Design of everyday things” helped me think about wha

All good questions. Good user experience is subjective and hard to define what is “good”. Reading the book “Design of everyday things” helped me think about what are good designs. In good designs, function dictates form- they are designed around how it is to be used. I think desktop environments do think about user experience, and try to have a cohesive experience. Bad experience is easier to identify. Many programs, even major ones such as GIMP, libreoffice, or thunderbird don’t (in my opinion) prioritise user experience over features. As for blue sky thinking, while there are some interesting projects, I think linux just needs some consistency and a good baseline of UX to allow non technical consumers to easily use it. In many regards Apple gets this right on macOS (although maybe less so with recent changes, and with reduced options for power users), and many third party apps for Mac think carefully about their design. For the record, some unusual UX I like include concepts app (iOS), scrivener, iA writer, ‘bum too’ desktop environment, and pathways.nice.org.uk (niche) I would like to financially donate as I lack time and necessary level of skill to directly help with projects.