The UI is what it is, but you should rather ask the relevant question: which of the steps is "Develop a clean UI which goes beyond the one inherited almost for free from the desktop"?

Not that you are going to get an answer from me to such question, but at least you would have asked the right thing.

About the useful application, it was stated that part of the experiment with making the tablets was also to see how much the community would have been able to provide for itself.

On that side we have seen quite good examples.