* learn about what the project is, a short description on what it is, how to install, where to find more documentation
* look at / search the files or clone the repo
* search bugreports or create a new bugreport
Your default project page looks quite similar to gitorious, which looks more like a place to just host your repository and not a place to interact with the project. Bitbucket's default looks way better for example, and github's is quite good too.
My suggestion to make Gitlab fit better into my workflow:
* default page/tab for project root should be configurable, either on per project or per user basis: I'd like to have the README as default for example, the Activity page by default interests me less.
* there should be a tab for issues on the default page, its more important than to see the activity IMHO
* you've got the clone URL in an easily accessible place, good!
* the Files view is quite similar to Github's (good!), but I can't figure out how to search (either fulltext or filename)
* I don't see a button to create a new issue (I'm not logged in, should I login first? Github has a new issue button that takes you to login)
* how do I search in issues (fulltext?)
* how do I search for project names, or inside projects/issues globally?
* the default project page should somehow highlight or focus on making it easy and obvious the main aspects on how you'd interact with the project, if all features are shown in equal style it feels somewhat cluttered and overloaded.
P.S.: should I open a feature request about these on the gitlab site?