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Drupal out-of-the-box leaves a lot to be desired in terms of self-explanatory user interface.  This has been one of the project's major stumbling blocks in terms of being easily adopted by DiYers as well as commercial firms familiar with CMS' offering more candy-like administrative dashboards etc...

However, with a few simple modules you can positively affect the user experience of logged-in site members and clean up some of the clutter Drupal normally displays with ease.  Here are three modules we routinely use on client projects and suggest checking out:

1. Administration Menu - this replaces Drupal's administrative functions from the main de facto navigation menu and horizontally lays out a clean top-positioned drop-down menu with groupings of tasks by configuration, building and content management.
2. Better Messages - this takes Drupal's system and error messages out of the main content area of your theme and uses jqueryto generate Growl-like messages which float on top of content - fading in and out for a smooth, non-startling experience.
3. Form Tips - normally Drupal forms (like node/add/page etc...) are quite visually cluttered - even though putting help text in next to each field aides administrators its unnecessarily displayed as always-on by default.  This module hides the help tips to only display when your mouse hovers over an icon next to relevant fields, again using jquery to display and then hide the help message.

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