I am far from a UX expert, but I have a few suggestions for improving the user experience, which will also benefit new players.

1. Less is more.

Limit in-mission text to what needs to be done. If back-story should be provided, it should be done prior to accepting the mission. Once they accept the mission, text should be straight forward with as few words as possible.

2. Revamp the UI. Now that "we" have a graphic designer, let him start working on the default interface if he isn't already. I'll break this down into a few areas:

a) less blue, more modern look and feel. Something more spacey/chromey.
b) smaller crisper fonts. Existing fonts are kind of cartooney and take up too much space.
c) Standardize UI paths. As it stands now, user must click at the top, then the right, then secondary top menu, then find what they want in the center, then bottom, etc. User has to jump around the screen to find what they want. Streamline this so the UI always offers a top down approach, or main entries are always on the right, etc.

3. Incorporate group/channel/other common functions into a menu screen. Give users a selectable list of player names they have seen in chat with the ability to perform actions.

4. Incorporate the useful parts of popular plugins into the default UI. Example:

a) Targetless sector list.
b) User local standing displayed when targeted.
c) Enter/Leave events displayed when players enter/leave sector.

(/rant on)

I cant believe that the game was released without the above features as its more or less unplayable without them

and the radar is next to useless its by far the worst ive ever seen in any space mmo

(/rant off)

I never took issue with the radar, I've been playing this game a long time. I've always used it pretty well, I'm not sure if this is one man's opinion or a lot of new people dislike the radar.

I do kind of agree, the ui could be redone again, especially with the new graphic artist around. I'd hate to be forced to use targetless though. Make that toggled somehow >.>

1. and 2. YES, PLEASE!!!!

Let all text walls back in station, and optional to read. Only brief resumes, very objective, available when you are flying.

3. and 4. I'm too newbie to have an opinion about those.

I don't use targetless either, and I do just fine.
The radar does suck though. It gives a terrible representation of 'depth' and large objects.

+1000000000 to not requiring plugins to see someone else's standing. New players are flying pretty much blind to the faction standing system. You should not have to shoot at and hit someone else's ship to find out if you're going to lose standing from killing them.

+1 to all

+100000 to 3 & 4 because of windows RT (doesn't work with plugins)

Redoing the UI isn't just an artist thing. Yes, he could create new images for the UI, but there is also a lot of involved code behind it, and we don't know his exact skillset. Further, people keep saying we need a new UI, but no one ever comes up with any drafts for one. I don't know what help it would be if there were any, though.

+1 Savet.

Drev: the radars are plenty useful. They are the most intuitive space-game radars I have ever used, when it comes to target acquisition. They do suck at determining distance and battlefield layout, but they are far from useless. What I'd like is an optional 3d radar in the bottom center, so that I could use both types at the same time. I'd also like more configuration options for the existing radar, to customize dot colors, shapes, sizes, etc. Even if it was just a lua api so that I could write a plugin to make it work the way I want. (I want to flag various ships with different colors/shapes.)

Draug, I outlined a few areas the ui could be improved. I'm happy to mock up some wire-frames if it's an idea they will pursue, but I'm not going to expend too much energy on various use cases until there's traction.

Yes, Savet, I agree with all points.

However on number 4, this would need to be able to be disabled. Some players don't like spam of enter/leave events.
TCS uses a lot of detail in those events, so VO should only give notice of "Player Entered sector/Player Left Sector", not all of the Out of range, left range, changed standings, spam spam spam etc.

+1 to all suggestions.

We really should LEARN from good experiences, and add many existing third-party features to main interface:

-Skins: Why blue or chrome, when you can choose? And choose one for each alt/nation/ship...
So, VO should include skins at lest for each nation, and option to download more. The perfect visuals would be each ship of each nation having its own visuals, from PDA to HUD.

-Plugins: Integrate the best ones, most popular, as official addons. Things like TCS really should be way more easy to install, integrated into game UI, what requires Guild Sw to be hosting those projects.

-Mission Text should be "optional" and more readable when desired. Like a popup window on main HUD, or larger page on PDA, that you CAN add or remove when desired.
And the "short objectives" should get highlighted also, since in most cases it is enough to read that "[_] Kill X bots" than whole mission background.

-Comms need love. One plugin already tries that, adding TABs. That's a good start, but a selectable, drop-down list of channels (numeric, guild, sector, etc), preferably with hovering HELP on channel usage.
Still on comms, give love and highlight to Non-English channels. The drop-down list is the best start.