Good stuff, overall. :-)
Re: slide 30 - "Do analysis on all the uses of the star icon (watch list) and bookmark icon in a systematic way, considering all the uses of each"
There was a brief mention of this in May Galloway's Wikimania2014
presentation. See this slide:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1VYGOLDKQ4Sntv9UgkH34KUk_FyjAaUvc1eiocF_x8dc/edit#slide=id.g370b74046_0112I think there was also a related page on mw.o but I can't find it.
I would strongly caution against using the 5 pointed star icon for yet another meaning (especially as it is so prominently used in both Chrome/Firefox interfaces as a plain browser-bookmark, and prominently within wikis as the add-to-watchlist link.)
The "downward arrow (towards a horizontal line, or from a cloud)" seem to be somewhat common alternative:
- I'd recommend the former.