Skip to content

Human Interface Guidelines

A common design language for Blender

The Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) help contributors make great user interfaces, with a common design language throughout Blender. They give practical guidance, help avoid common pitfalls, and show why certain patterns are chosen over others.

The HIG is a resource for all contributors. That includes core developers, add-on developers and designers.

Work in Progress

The Human Interface Guidelines are still in development. They are unpolished and a lot of content is missing still.

Overview

  • Design Paradigms: The broad patterns defining the design philosophy of Blender.
  • General Patterns: More specific patterns applying to the user interface as a whole. Covers topics like writing styles, colors, accessibility, icons, ... This is a great place to learn how to think about design on a practical level.
  • Components: Guides for the individual elements used in Blender to compose its user interface, and how to use them.
  • User Feedback: Helpful feedback can elevate the user experience to the next level. The guidelines here show effective ways to speak to users with more than just text.
  • Glossary: Important terms and definitions to make the language used for the HIG and to design the Blender user interface more precise, without ambiguity.

Contribute

The HIG is created and maintained by the User Interface Module. Contributions can follow the usual contribution process for the developer documentation, and tag reports, tasks and pull requests with Module: User Interface.