Do people actually like all of the overdesigned clutter to the point where it makes them not want to switch sites?
To me, the stripped down clarity on Lemmy is a feature. I remember back in the day when people flocked to Facebook from MySpace, in large part because they were sick of eye gouging customized pages and just wanted a simple, consistent interface. The content, not the buttons to click on it are the draw right?
I agree that a major blocker for the average people to enter the fediverse is indeed the lack of UX design in general. Collapsing comment threads comes to mind, for example, or a better layout for reactions (up-downvote is in top right corner, but reply/boos is bottom left, not really the best approach).