I like that this is an active area of consideration. I think there is lots of room for improvement.

But I also think that what we have today in Gnome and KDE is pretty good, and a part of the problem is that people don't realize how good they can be.

I think demo videos showing actual power users doing real work in each of the major DE's would go a long way. Part of the allure of tiling VM's is that they are an efficient way to work for certain types of users, but part of it is that those users are advocates and have impressive demo videos showing exactly how tiling VM's can be awesome, while a Gnome or KDE user is left to kind of figure it out, or worse, discover how they differ from a familiar windows or macos.

(I may be unaware of a great source of exactly what I ask for and if so please tell me!)