Your are giving the answer by yourself: design! :) I don't think that we can improve anything on the content. It's as diverse as the people that are moving and interacting on this platform. But there is still great potential in organizing that content. The front end is very basic, I'd even say a bit oldschool; and doesn't help users to find what they might be interested in. Plus: it doesn't help authors to shine in their relevant sections. Just giving one example: in my opinion every user should have a dashboard that can be personalized according to interests, e.g. a food blogger might want to see the latest food stories at the top.
Steemit has a great personality but needs a style checkup so to say :-)
Good to know that design improvements have already been announced by Steemit Inc. So that one must be just a question of time...
Thanks for asking ;-)