Hello @Mike_Q
I feel you pain…
I am a long time user of GIMP myself…
There is indeed a small UX team (to work on the user expereince related to the GUIs).
For instance, here is one guy:
Unfortunately as you probably know, the manpower to develop and improve things is really small (to say the least).
Usually bug fixing has the top priortiy and, as of today, GIMP 3.0 is currently in the works and about to be released.
As regards UX stuff, this topic is really controversial…
At this regards, just take a look at this “similar” post regarding darktable:
The opinions posted are really mixed depending on the different users…
It is impossibly to satisfy everyone’s workflow… 