This is open source -- you get to see how the sausage is made.

Seriously, KDE isn't new. Desktop has really shitty defaults, which is a major problem considering how many people don't know how to change the settings. I'm talking about "not a computer person" people, here.

Are you actually disagreeing, though? We both seem to agree it needs work. And you're correct the challenge is partly an institutional one -- recruiting and retaining design talent and manpower, and fashioning new ways of working together. It's something we're aware of and working on, and if you'd like to work on it with us we'll welcome you with open arms.

The KDE community isn't unaware of its weak spots and isn't satsified with its weak spots; addressing weak spots is Real Work[tm] though, and doesn't always happen over night. We'd like to think we've made some progress (for example we've identified some things that don't work from past attempts, and that's useful institutional knowledge as well), though. And that it's very much worth doing.

tl;dr If open source is bad at product design, we'd rather not accept that as law of nature and work out how to get better. If that's a challenge you have an appetite for ...

My corporation has a strict KDE/Qt-first policy for any linux apps, due to the useability and comfort that comes from a KDE desktop.

I still keep my users at KDE 4.x for now, because 5.x is not quite ready yet. but it's very close.

so, I guess this is me actually disagreeing with your actual disagreement.

For example, look at the compact status bar: really small text and icons. Then look at the navigation icons on the bottom of the screen, the dialer tab icons, the contact pictures: all huge. But then there's the text next to each contact picture: tiny again.

For an early project, no, it's quite nice. They did not change a thing from QML apps, and it works fine already, without any design changes.

> The design is all over the place.

The design is clearly not all over the place, and is way better than any early Android or Ubuntu version. It's an early prototype.

Edit: In fact, where do the people interested in UI design actually meet and make their sausages in KDE? I can't seem to find a central place similar to http://design.canonical.com/

There is this gap between having the programming knowledge to 'submit a patch' and other kinds of large scale organisation/design skill.

Disclaimer: not me I'm a civilian.

And the UIs for all this stuff are going to be done in QML, and if you can do HTML and CSS QML is much easier and more intuitive. It puts all the animations, gestures, etc in the QML files and they have a visual designer in QtQuick so you don't actually need to write code at all if you don't want to.

"The goal of the KDE VDG is to create a central point for all visual design work – a one-stop for all KDE's visual design needs, if its logo's, icons, visuals, illustrations, launch pages, plasma themes or presentation and promo-material."

Above from the 'what' page on that site. Might be just my expectations but I read that Web site as being about branding and visual design rather than UI and workflows.

The 'who' page mini-bios do not appear to have anyone from a UI / workflow background - or is it that am I just out of date with the job titles that cover those skills these days?

https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-usability

There appears to be a kde-usability group, but their mailing list archive is not public, you have to subscribe.

PS: Fedora 22 KDE spin does look really nice in my opinion.