You can drag icons from Dash to the launcher where they will always be at
your fingertips and you can rearrange items in the launcher. The Launcher
should hide away when you are working and not take up real estate. You can
also learn the hot keys to bring things up more quickly. There is an
investment that we all make in computing. It varies with the person and
their needs. We all need to know the basics so that we can get things done
and some will go further to tinker and customize the desktop environment to
make it their own. This takes times, but it can payoff with learning to do
things faster and the skills are transferable. I am not suggesting that
users should have to do this, just that playing around and even messing
things up occasionally is not a bad idea. That is one way to learn. Most
mistakes are not big and are reversible.

However, I agree with what you are saying Unity is more work than it needs
to be. I find GNOME shell to be much the same. You need to cover more
ground than you do on a traditional desktop. That being said they are
interesting ideas and I find that those should be explored. And they will
both improve over time.

I think that these conversations will seem silly in a year or two. We are
experiencing the growing pains that comes with learning something new. Once
we get good at it we can look back at laugh at ourselves for thinking it
hard. But, nobody needs to go through this change.

There are ways around it and they should be explored too. I would start by
installing one alternative desktop environment and playing with it too,
such as Kubuntu or Xubuntu. Who knows maybe you will surprise yourself and
just find what you are looking for? Keep Unity around to play around with
from time to time. I don't think that it is going to go away. It will take
about five minutes to install Kubuntu and a bit less for Xubuntu. Use the
Software Center or Synaptic. Search for kubuntu-desktop or xubuntu-desktop.
Install. Logout and switch the session to KDE Plasma (whatever it is called
in the menu) or XFCE or Xubuntu. Logon and you will be in another world.
Both will look familiar but different. They will work as a traditional
desktop environment but not the same as GNOME classic. You
can customize either by moving the panel to the top, change wallpaper, add
and subtract things, move things around, etc. And all of your favourite
GNOME apps will work!