Is the ‘Declare Variable XXX’ part to indicate that you have to explicitly create those variables before you can use them in a rule?
And if I’m reading between the lines, it sounds like you wanted to have the condition be able to directly use an expression rather than requiring the use of a true/false variable. I don’t think there’s a feature request for that yet, but it’s certainly something that passed my mind.
Combining all this feedback, it sounds like if you could shorten the steps for being able to use device state within expressions somehow without having to declare global variables and could use that expression directly in an IF Condition, it would significantly improve the elegance factor that you’re looking for?
While this is great feedback, I would reiterate that feature requests are really the best way to get enhancements in place. This kind of discussion is super helpful for clarifying what the pain points are, but the feature requests (and the associated voting system) help us better understand what’s most important to the community as a whole and what we should work on next. 
Check out the following recent thread for some discussion on arrays and some examples:
Expression 'IF' statement or looping through an Array? - #2 by josh
Once you’ve had a chance to review things, if you’re still looking for some help creating/updating your rule, feel free to create a new thread and share some more details.