I've only experienced an evacuation from the outside, in my previous job as a firefighter. Even then it wasn't the full shebang, and the pax were relatively calm about the whole thing.
I can only imagine what a genuine evac would be like, but even during training on the simulator, with fully prepped crew, its like trying to herd a stampede of wild buffalo (no offence to fellow crew intended) through the eye of a needle.
From an engineering perspective, the biggest issue I have is the lack of visibility. If we evacuate, we have to make sure that the area outside the door is safe. Considering that there are two enormous wings full of fuel vapour immediately outside, theres potential for a lot of danger. (Its unrealistic to engineer an aircraft with the wings well away from the doors I guess).
The doors come equipped with a tiny portal window, or none at all. It takes too long to be able to accurately assess the outside conditions and slows things up. If its at night, or smoke is everywhere, mistakes could easily be made.
The slides don't have a large runoff area at the base, if the a/c lands on the undercarriage. This could lead to pax landing on one another at the bottom, and creating further injury. it also makes for a steep angle for the slide itself.
The doors allow for one or two pax side by side to deplane. It would be tempting to request for wider doorways, although the downside is that the evacuation would be less controllable for the hosties.
Facing all the seats backwards would increase the survival of the initial impact. The travelling public might take some convincing of this however.
When there is an evacuation, some nice little exit signs come on, like you see in the movie theatres. Whether anyone would actually take notice of these whilst evacuating in a mad panic is debatable. Some diffused (so as not to blind everyone)yet powerful lights around the door frame that come on once the slide is inflated would be more of an incentive for people to aim for. (I can imagine people talking about it like a near death epxperience however "I was in a dark tunnel, with a bright light at the end").
This is about all that springs to mind right now, email if you want to clarify any of this, or have any other Q's
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