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I don't really have a dog in this fight, but I would have thought (for sake of risk/reward and diversity) the changes might look like this:

All of the barges need to have their fitting and base hull/armor/shield re-balanced so that they need to be fitted like other subcaps(i.e. fitted shield extenders etc instead of implicit buffer.) Players that fit well and pay attention should be rewarded, and should be offered different fitting options to support varied play style. Hull cost should be reduced, but the cost of strip miners and other mining upgrades should be increased to increase the probability of profitable ganking under ideal conditions.

Hulk: least tank, small ore hold, highest yield, range bonus to strip miners, balanced towards high risk, high reward play(fleet, orca/hauler on grid, jet can mining.) Fitting should be most restrictive to balance highly rewarding yield and scaleability vs other barges. Should be profitable and relatively easy to gank.

Mack: medium tank, largest ore hold, medium yield, balanced for solo/small scale mining and varied playstyles. Probably needs it's yield increased a little to help compete with the skiff, the hold alone doesn't really seem to cut it. Moderate fitting to allow enough tank to dissuade casual gankers (though not a determined group) when fit for maximum tank. Should be moderate difficulty to gank, but still profitable to gank when untanked in lower security highsec.

Skiff: most tank, medium ore hold, lowest yield, drone damage bonus, balanced for minimum risk/isk per hour solo or fleet. Largest fitting space to facilitate tank. Should be difficult to gank when fit with a good tank, but moderate when untanked. A more radical option might be to simply reduce to tank to only slightly higher than the mackinaw, but increase it's agility and maybe give it a secondary bonus to warp core strength or the ability to fit MJDs so that it remains a low risk mining ship, but is much more so for players who pay attention.

Also, have you considered more mid-slot mining modules? Maybe they could work like tracking computers and the base range of all strip miners could be reduced slightly to compensate. These mining tracking computers might even have a secondary bonus, to further incentivize their use, such as the chance for a mining cycle to generate a block of compressed ore of a certain type. You could consider adding secondary bonuses to survey scanners as well. Ore hold rigs would be a good substitution for tanking/ice mining rigs. Anything would be better than the status quo of mandatory shield resist modules.

Hell, you could even add 'ancillary' strip miners, with extremely short range, optimized so that non-afk miners fit with 'mining tracking computers' and hyperspatials or ore hold rigs might out-compete afk players. For them to work, players would need to utilize a high risk, high reward fit to reap the optimal benefits. Very large mining bonus, with a cooldown similar to the reloads of AAR or ASBs, possibly unaffected by mining boosts to facilitate small scale mining. Warp in, mine until the ore hold is full, warp to station when ancillary modules are on cooldown and repeat, with greater yield at the cost of less tank. Maybe 'mining bastion modules' that force you to stay on grid for a short time, but are only useable in low, null or wh space could be fun for people in t1 barges.

Not a miner, just throwing some ideas on the table in the interest of new play-styles and fitting variety.

This seems like a nothing burger to me. If you're going to make changes, might as well make some bigger ones that make mining better / more interesting. These changes just seem to make things harder to fit.

Mid slot modules sound good to me too.

No amount of tweaking will change the fact that it's always better to field extra mining ships instead of that escort and take safety measures that don't involve making people to not play the game even if they earn more ISK this way, as well as corresponding risks, which are still more likely to be justified by extra production rather than by chance that some ship will be saved by combat-shipped fleetmates.

Not to mention that balancing income that relies on market is rather hard.

I really like the bulkiness of the new graphical design, they now look like they cloud withstand collisions with some smaller asteroids.

I also think that the removal of the role boni makes it easier for new players to distinguish between the roles of the Barges - I remember having to double-check the statement that the Procurer and die Retriever have similar yield, since at a first glance the Retriever clearly had double the amount of turrets. Sure, it was just a matter of looking up the Role Bonus, but this was easy for me because by then I already had some some calculations in EVE.

I do believe that now it is clearer now that all three Barges can mine the same amount per cycle, while the Covetor gets that stuff faster, the Procurer more secure and the Retriever with less warping back to station.

Well, that was underwhelming. Just like the visual revamp.

Looks like you're still required to receive boosts to have any notable ISK income.

Don't the ORE strip miners and ice harvesters have a range bonus?

I think part of the reasoning behind higher yield but long cycles is that the attentive player can increase yield by aborting a strip harvester cycle early, or even just leaving an asteroid behind once it no longer has a full cycle's worth of ore to extract.

Read this and save it as desktop background.
Then print it out 1000 times and hang in on your walls, so you can always look at it as if you were practicing for your SATs.

I am actually surprised that the retriever and mackinaw are in the top spot with the skiff and the procurer all the way down towards the lower end. I would be interested to see figures on for instance, how much time is spent in space in the various barges rather than ore mined. I expect the top ships are used in highly optimised fleet mining setups which skew the usage results.

All in all though at a glance the changes look good and the new barge artwork looks great. Good job.

So the only reason to train Exhumer to 5 will be for more shild resistances only ?

Sorry but thats not EVE ... who in Highsec would ever invest 30days of training with no reason ?

If you realy want to shift the use from Mackinaw to Hulk/Skiff there should be a real benefit from it.

Excample suggestions for Exhumer:
+3% CPU or/and
+3% Powergrid or/and
-3% of miningcrystal Damage

Increasing Orehold with each level.
Mackinaw should reach the 35k with Exhumer @L5
Skiff and Hulk will recieve 1k more each Level starting with their current Orecargo Value.

shortly said ... give Hulk/Skiff some "sexiness".
I the original suggested change these are mostly "choose your skin" :)