Yes, Gnome (like many free software projects) have UI experts working on it too. But it's a difference if Eugenia writes some report, maybe (or maybe not) influencing the decision of the Nautilus developers on how to implement something, or if the UI design team in a company says to the coder: "you implement it like this, even if you don't like it."

I mean, as I and many friends first read about this "spatial design" (i.e. Win95A file manager behaviour), all of us were very skeptic and found that it would be a step backwards. I don't know how the exact situation is on the gnome discussion boards, but from the reaction here on slashdot it seems that they (the Nautilus devs) just ignore the thoughts and experiences of their current users, just like The Gimp team is ignoring a large base of potential users by not making the inclusion of a MDI mode a top priority.