Sorry, my company sent me to Dallas TX. for school the same day the sources were released, so I am a little behind in my "GUI advocacy" along with about everything else, but I have to argue with "blenders greatness lies in it's interface". 
Please notice at no point in this presentation did I say "get rid of the hot keys". Blenders greatness was that it was free, and it had good animation tools. Its interface is something that you have to learn how to work around. If I took a hammer and drove a nail in your head, eventually you would get used to it, but that doesn't mean everyone should have one.(" No... really, once you get used to it, it's pretty handy! And it helps keep your hat on in the wind!")
Some of this is just cut and paste from elysiun because I can't figure out how to explain it better that I had there , and I want to get this idea over into this forum....so onto Blenders "perfect" ui ( ton, I really do know the diff
, so in this post at least, I am useing ui and gui as the user interactive widgets, and not includeing the 3d windows and tools 
)Blender has a GREAT GUI CONCEPT but it is far from being perfectly implemented.
Please notice at no point in this presentation did I say "get rid of the hot keys". When you start C4D, the interface has about 89 buttons and menus, all clearly marked, big enough to be easy to read/see, and fairly easy to navigate.
When you start NOW3D, the interface has about 41 buttons and menus, all clearly marked, big enough to be easy to read/see, and fairly easy to navigate. To be fair though, they are still trying to impliment modeling tools.
When you start Wings3D, the interface has about 21 buttons and menus, all clearly marked, big enough to be easy to read/see, and fairly easy to navigate.
So if you gave NOW3D every tool available in Wings3D you would have about 62 things you could interact with, all clearly marked, big enough to be easy to read/see, and fairly easy to navigate.
Of course you must realize that these are the default setting, and they can be changed to suit you.
When you start Blender, you have about 114 buttons and menus, if you consolidate some so you only count things like all the layer buttons as one button. Some are hard to read, some don't have tips, and some give you no clue at all. By default, you start in the mode that you set your render settings (what you need last ) and when you select the edit button, if you have it set to open with no objects so you don't have to delete everything first, the button window opens empty, instead of at least with a button ( an additional button to the 74 that are already just there in the edit window won't hurt anything IMO ) to create a new object. The edit button is in the middle instead of on the far left, where reading left to right it would be the first function you would (usually) use, but the render settings function is on the far right, makeing it the last function you would use (usually correct).
So you see, what I would like to do, at least for the "friendly version", would consolidate function groups, actually make the work flow a little more intuitive and logical, and get rid of some of the "bulk and hard to use".
Please notice at no point in this presentation did I say "get rid of the hot keys". Menus and icons:
If I ran a graphics company, and all I cared about was production time, and time is money, I would have no trouble at all with an inhouse training program to teach my artists for 3-4 weeks how to use some archane hot key system that optimises speed. And if you don't believe my time scale, look around the internet for graphic art classes and read where instructers say they would like to use blender (free, good animation) but can't teach 3d ART and the blender interface in the same semester so they use some other program (C4D, MAYA, etc) where they CAN!
Please notice at no point in this presentation did I say "get rid of the hot keys". There is no reason at all to intentionally place this kind of burdon upon casual users and hobbiests. Doing this intentionally excludes these people. The only reason I can think of for this kind of thinking is if you were a professional graphic artist and you were afraid that easy to use cgi programs was the challenge to your job instead of artistic ability. I just can't see how a system that uses menus and icons in a logical way, and makes the program easier to use, in addition to the current system, hurts either the program or the users. Of course, I also don't buy into forceing the people useing the program into useing it the way I want them to either. So I completely discount the idea of don't make it easy to force them to use the hot keys. I don't care how someone wants to use it. I only care about whether or not they can make it translate their ideas into art.
Please notice at no point in this presentation did I say "get rid of the hot keys". 
) Thats not to say i am very good with it , most ppl who have been using it for 4 wks can do what i can 
). This module would simply provide an interface to the main code, but the skins would be stored locally on the users computer.This should allow updates to the code etc through CVS to not effect the skin of the user (kinda like the priciple behind OO programming). Obviously when a new button/menu option was required the skinning module would have to notify the user that there GUI required an addition, but how this would be added would be up to the user. Such a system shouldn't be that hard to implement, but will require some programming changes to the main Blender code to sore indexes to all the functions in Blender. The skinning module would then allow the user to reference these indexes how they wished (menus, hot keys, buttons etc). I'm not saying such a application would be trivial to code, but it shouldn't be that difficult, and would allow each user to choose how they wanted Blender to look, without forcing them away from the main development of the program.