[Win Conway]

I skimmed the thread a bit but it seems to me that the first problem you have here is the total lack of useful hardware controllers, they are all either MCU style or just super simple.
The best plugin controller is still the BCR because of the number of dials vs cost.
The best console controller would simply be a ton of the 8 ch fader/extender units from somebody like Icon, so you can actually have 1:1, 40 cheapo moving faders is much better than 8 moving faders of an MCU in my eyes, and the price difference is surprisingly not that different all things considered.

1st off for the faders, they are touch sensitive, when you touch the faders have the channel names all appear in a floating panel on the computer monitor, that is way way better than trying to read tiny little LCD displays on hardware "Wonder what this channel is, touch it, bam it shows the name on screen"

2nd for the BCR type controller, create a two way visual configuration, an online database would soon build up.
In the configuration app, you would see an image of the plugin you are about to control, this would be shown based on the current plugin selection, floating over this would be a broken down version of the currently selected hardware (BCR in this case), these would have arrows pointing from the plugin image to the matching hardware controls.

These are just ideas, but this is the sort of thing that should be done, negating crappy tiny LCD and boosting the value of limited controllers like the cheap 8 way fader packs from Icon and such.

Personally i would even like to see a DAW controller app like you are planning to be able to run on an extra monitor, so you could have huge name displays and VUs and such.