Modules/User Interface/Get Involved As Designer

= Getting Involved as a Designer =

The UI module is hoping to find experienced UI/UX designers (and icon designers) to become active team members. It may not be exactly clear how to get involved, so this page should give some instructions and advice.

Note that this page isn't a job offer. However, if a designer shows that they can bring significant contributions to the project, it's certainly possible for the UI module to request development grants from the Blender Foundation.

Communication
Have a look at the main module page for information on who does what in the module, as well as a list of contact channels.

Expectations
UI and UX are opinionated fields. It's relatively easy to come up with design ideas, or to identify existing design problems. There are plenty of both, that's not really where help is needed. Blender development is highly active; there is a constant stream of new UI design challenges every day. At the same time, a number of big projects bring their own complex design problems. A designer who picks up these daily tasks and shows "good taste" and reason in addressing them would add great value to the Blender project. Further, help is needed to work out the Human Interface Guidelines for Blender, as well as improving the general design processes.

We hope to find designers who want to understand and embrace the identity of Blender, together with its design philosophy. ''Why are we making Blender? Who are we making it for?'' A "good" designer (whatever that means) should explore such questions first. A lot is possible on that basis. You can take part in shaping the future of Blender from there.

Getting Started
Basic platforms to know:
 * Most development and design work happens in the UI module project on projects.blender.org.
 * The workboard contains a huge list of tasks.
 * The WIP Human Interface Guidelines.
 * The UI devtalk forum is a source of additional information on everything usability and UI design. If you want to get involved with design/development, it's a good idea to post questions there as a way to preserve the conversation for other people facing the same problems.
 * For more informal chatting use blender.chat, especially the #user-interface channel (for general discussions about UI/UX) and the #user-interface-module channel (for discussions on concrete development topics with the module - more strictly moderated).

Possible first tasks:
 * Help out in design review and testing of pull requests. You can ask for test builds if you don't compile Blender yourself.
 * Conduct usability tests or user interviews, build personas, write user stories, ...
 * Create an analysis of (parts of) the current UI and/or its history. While this doesn't bring immediate deliverables to a Blender release, it will help you understand context, and it shows that you are understand the importance of such context for quality design work.
 * Contribute to (ideally active) design tasks from the huge backlog of tasks on the workboard.
 * Create proposals to address existing design problems in Blender and post them in the UI section on devtalk. Please ask for permission in the module chat first.

General advice:
 * Familiarize yourself with the Blender UI design paradigms and other guidelines.
 * Get involved in projects which you think are important for Blender and where you can be of most help, not just projects you find the most fun to work on. This shows good judgement when picking priorities.
 * Be patient. UI developers are busy with various projects so they are often not available for elaborate feedback. Your involvement may help addressing this on the longer run!
 * Don't spend a lot of time on design tasks that were not approved. Some people like to have initial working version before they present it, but this is always at your own risk. Plenty of times did designs/patches have to be rejected after somebody put significant work into them. This is quite awkward and not a nice experience for anybody involved.
 * While not strictly necessary for design work, it's useful to have your own Blender build set up, and to know how checkout pull requests