Views UI currently has detailed mockups and a minimally working prototype for the main screen, latest progress is at [1], with further background discussion in the views developers group. There's been a lot of movement this week, and now it's narrowed down anyone ought to be able to help with refinements. As soon as the UI is workable, that'll make it much easier to write views handlers, which is likely to be the lowest barrier to entry for getting involved with actual coding. Obviously anyone starting early on this could also document the process to speed up integration of view-dependent modules when it gets closer to beta/rc. In terms of saving developer time, the views issue queue [2] is very busy. Helping with bug reports and support requests against Views 1 will make it a much friendlier place to work in when it comes to alpha testing Views 2. The Panels issue queue[3] is also pretty busy, so helping there saves developer time as well. [1] http://groups.drupal.org/node/8428 [2] http://drupal.org/project/issues/views [3] http://drupal.org/project/issues/panels