I'm not the sort to particularly care about the aesthetics/design of things, but I read the entire post and agree with most of it. I did want to throw one mention on smithing stamina:
I think a queue would add a lot more complexity to the UI, and the programming, which are both bad things. I think the way to make smithing less onerous is to make refining faster, in particular make charcoal much easier to get, and have perks unlock bulk refining of lower tier bars. The reason smithing is frustratingly slow is that right now, even with the charcoal perk it's still 23 smithing actions required to make 1 ingot of thalmaskene (30 if you don't have the charcoal perk)
I made a thread about this if you want to see my opinions in more detail