The only justififcation for the new Ui would be if we would get max party cap of 6 and we would need more space for portraits. If that's not the case, i would really like to know why we need all that dead space on the left of UI.
I doubt it's fully intentional. The UI as was had character's icon as a central piece - it stayed this way. The old UI couldn't support new weapon skills as they vary in amount now, so they were added as skills. Reaction Menu was used as a tamplate for metamagic. It will no doubt receive inmprovements before release, but I hope they will go further then just optimise what they have.
