A goal behind this redesign was to make navigation easy for visitors and users alike. Using an interface similar to many other popular websites, the redesign allows for more customisation from a navigation standpoint. The skin not only allows for a customisable sidebar like every other skin, but also has customisable links in the header for wikis to add popular links in. Wikia has a similar capability in its skin. This header customisation can be seen at http://georgebarnick.com/refreshed-beta/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Refreshed-navigation.
I don't know if any of the design ideas behind the Refreshed skin's redesign would be useful to you, but some things I think, especially the improved customisation of the navigation, would be useful to either be incorporated into Winter or something other design project.