I've been using the zen setting for a couple weeks now and am enjoying it for the most part. One thing I noticed is that I don't have access to the mute/ignore stuff in people's profiles, which I would like to still have access to so I can still regulate my feed.
If it were up to me, I would also like to still be able to view people's bios, although I can see why some would want that excluded in zen mode.
And one last thought: (although I could easily do this with a line of custom css), I wouldn't mind if the "sort by" line in feed, global, and chatter were to be removed in zen mode. Simplify the interface to just use feed, chatter, and global, without the number of shares, since it's being hidden on each individual post anyways.
I'd love to hear other peoples' thoughts on this, especially if they're using zen mode. I'd be curious to know how many others are using the setting.
Through TMI, you can actually see that 2.3% of Hubski is using Zen Mode. That is...a very small amount. I've never tried it, but I might! Your ideas seem pretty good, though I can't speak on all of them since I've never used it. Someone with more experience might be able to speak on it, though.
Pretty sure all the mute/ignore stuff is still active. The only thing that kind of bugs me is that absent seeing a comment from somebody that I'm obviously ignoring, there's no way to easily go back, review the list (if I have one...?), un-mute/ignore as necessary. I like the idea re. "sort by," although I also like actively digging through stuff that maybe hasn't been shared just for lack of opportunity and kind of helping it along. Used to bug me that I can't see peoples' bio blurbs, but I've come around to appreciating that. Forces you to interact purely on the level of the words they offer you, rather than interacting on some loosely-founded preconception of who they are, how old, how they define themselves at the moment, etc. The one design thing that still bugs me: the little notification wheel at the top that shows whether you have unread whatever. Given that the rest of zen mode uses the really neat gear icon instead of the wheel, it'd be nice if the notification wheel followed suit, and changed colors accordingly. Totally unnecessary nitpick.