The problem of the Dashboard, is the problem of the Hyperlinked Internet.

With ready linking-ability, comes the challenge of presenting & selecting the links available.

Or to use the common expression, the problem is one of Navigation.
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Complaints are heard, about the number & complexity of links & choices being presented to the user or visitor. Not just in the Dashboard environment, but on websites in general, and really, throughout the full breadth & height of the Internet itself.

The response of 'some' has been to identify the wealth of choice & options as 'the problem', and undertake to eliminate it. Yeah, I think that's misguided.

The WordPress 'backend', or Administration, or Dashboard, is an add-on. It can be completely replaced. Various types of techie users and serious entities using WordPress, do rip the whole dang thing out and install their own system.

It seems attractive & reasonable to me, for WordPress itself to offer the product with several different such backends, aimed at several levels/kinds of users:

1.) The Nice Consumer's solution. Those who don't want to be confronted by what they experience as an excess of in-yer-face Facts & Expectations. "I just wanna type in my post"! A huge swath of the complaint-action can be eliminated, by addressing this category alone.

2.) The Sorcerer's Apprentice solution. Those who like to see lots of Check Boxes & Radio Buttons; with as much of the functional guts as feasible made accessible through a prepared interface (not so much 'hand-holding', as 'paint-by-numbers'). The popularity of the Atahualpa theme, with over 200 options, and the #1 downloaded theme across more than half a decade .... demonstrates convincingly that this approach is attractive to a large class of WordPress user.

3.) The Professional Developer's solution. Lastly, advanced users of several kinds can be lumped together by their common preference for a solution-set that assumes one is engaged pretty-much full-time with WordPress and other geeky stuff. This category self-identifies as 'insiders' and elites.

Personally, I would prefer to see these kinds of solutions in the Plugin repository. WordPress Admin may be a little too much of a hairball these days, for that to be practical, but I do see signs that we are headed for a future in which WP becomes more-amenable to this level of modification, through plugins.

Meanwhile, WordPress itself could offer a range of versions, perhaps as a stop-gap while rationalization of the API slowly comes about.