Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it)

BTW, to expand on this specific issue, all versions of Windows (the market leading OS) allow users to move the panel to any edge of the screen, by simply unlocking it and then dragging it, and apparently in OS X you can do the same, although you need to use the command line.

How one can even IMAGINE of not having a feature which used to be available on ALL previous desktop environments (GNOME 2, Windows, OS X) and that has obvious use cases (such as maximizing the number of lines of a document that are visible, or just liking it another way) boggles the mind.