See "Topics in this section" below for Maya settings you can use to adapt the user interface to your needs.
The Maya interface is built using the Qt framework. You can create custom UI for Maya using Qt Designer. For Windows and Linux users, Qt Designer is installed with Maya. For Mac OS X users, you can find Qt Designer directly at the Qt Development Tools website; or, you can build Qt from source. Maya 2016 uses a version of Qt 4.8.6 that has been modified by Autodesk to include some changes needed by the Maya UI. The full, modified Qt 4.8.6 source can be found at http://www.autodesk.com/lgplsource, along with other packages used by Autodesk products. In the <installation directory>/support/opensource/Qt folder, one can find build instructions and a patch file of changes from the original Qt 4.8.6 source archive.
You can load your custom UI into Maya using the loadUI command.