Speaking of bridges ...
Re-watching DS9, the
Defiant's bridge makes some odd choices ... especially if you're thinking about it from the perspective of having to shoot it, positioning the camera, and the angles you can get where the principal actors are all in frame or positioned towards the action.
Unlike most of the other bridge set designs, which tend to be circular in how they position the crew around the set, the bridge is much more linear and shaped more like a rectangular-ish room. And it seems like the circular design has some advantages, in terms of camera angles.
The cast members who sit at the consoles on the sides of the
Defiant set, if they're pretending to operate their bridge station, either have their back to the captain's chair and the center of the room, or they have to sit sideways relative to the console to both look at Sisko and forward towards the viewscreen.
In order to shoot it, you either have the cast looking backwards over their shoulder towards Sisko to deliver dialogue, or they have to break away the set where the camera is positioned in front of the cast member and they say their lines where they're looking almost directly into camera with Sisko in the background, or they sit almost sideways if the camera is looking down the bridge from the front.
The NX-01 bridge has a similar shape to the
Defiant's, but they get around these issues by putting the main cast's bridge stations not on the walls, but facing forward and towards the captain's chair and viewscreen.
There's also the table in the back of the bridge, which I'm guessing they originally wanted to be a place where the crew could have discussions, but the area is way too small for that if there's more than two people in the shot. It's probably the reason the "Mess Hall" set is usually used as the equivalent to TNG's "Observation Lounge" in order to have the cast discuss issues aboard the ship, and why it seems like they were ready to abandon the table altogether if the holo-communicator from DS9's "For the Uniform" ever became a thing.
It should be also noted that reportedly a lot of these issues cropped up during the initial iteration of the
Defiant's bridge for "The Search," where it gets heavily reworked after the season 3 opener to make it a little bit better to shoot on (e.g., a second row of monitors are added to the side consoles, the consoles and the cage around the captain's chair are changed, the captain's chair and helm sit on separate raised platforms instead of sharing one long raised platform).