Hi, As first advice, I would tell you to stick with default UI if you first want to learn and understand it so you can more easily rely on tutorials. There's still improvment you can easily do like installing PitiWazou Pie Menus (http://www.blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?348496-Addon-Wazou-s-Pie-Menus ), changing…
One not super well known feature is a fly-cam mode. It lets you run around like an FPS game and things. It can be pretty useful for level editing. Here is a BlenderGuru video demoing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcZmyD9jkI4