I have left the employment of the Blender Foundation and have returned to my previous life of blissful retirement. The TL;DR is that we had irreconcilable differences regarding my role in UI decision-making: I felt I should have some.
From Blender 2.8 onward I was responsible for a large portion of the UI-related improvements, fixes, and changes. These were all things that I personally thought were needed in the program and therefore planned, designed, mocked up, experimented with, tested, and then fought to be incorporated into the code. I was largely successful and I feel very proud of all my work over these many years.
I had hoped that over time I would gain more agency, autonomy, responsibility, and authority but unfortunately this never happened. Being excluded from decision-making, or even just not being asked my opinion on matters, is a problem for my (oversized) ego. We are moving toward a more “top-down” design approach and it was clear that I was not considered part of the “top” within a module that I feel I resurrected.
I do wish them all well and for success in the future. They are certainly free to forge a path of their own making, and I know there will be many great improvements in Blender yet to come.
Harley, for whatever it’s worth - I followed probably all of your updates, tests, experiments of the past 2 to 3 years. While there was an occasional one that I thought “maybe not the best idea”, I also noticed how graciously you always accepted comments on things you were considering. You really treated the situation like a conversation, not a dictate – and it was so appreciated, just as you are appreciated.
The amount of improvements you made to the user experience just cannot be measured in terms of how nice it makes it feel to work with things.
It’s so unfortunate that your contributions were limited in the ways that you’ve discussed above. Your keen eye for detail, and the way you’ve gone about trying to refine the small things that add up to such a bigger picture, will be truly missed. Thanks so much for everything you’ve done.
PS: Camera locked to view button. That makes such a difference in every minute of my 3D life. I know how long it took for you to get that approved (and I suppose that illustrates the situation in some ways). So thank you for that effort, in particular.
This is disappointing but I am glad you are standing for yourself. I fondly remember all the posts you made before working with them, and all the changes you’ve made have definitely been a huge QOL improvement for myself as well as others.
It got to the point over the last few years that I never really concerned myself with UI since “Harley’s got it”.
I’m devastated by this news- your work is what inspired me to track Blender development and start customizing Blender myself. I’ve spent hours poring over your PRs to understand how to make the UI tweaks I want to make, and I’ve merged many of yours that never made it in into my own fork. I’ve learned so much from you about UI/UX design, and your contributions are truly invaluable. Blender is better because of you. I don’t know how It will survive without you. Enjoy your retirement!
I may not know a lot about Blender’s development history in-depth, but one thing I do know is that one of the main reasons Blender 2.8 broke into the mainstream was the UI changes made it way more accessible to new users. Crazy how the rest of the Blender Foundation wouldn’t give more influence to someone so pivotal to Blender’s popularity today.
Sad to hear. Have to say from behalf of those at the Bforartists GUI fork team, we have enjoyed and appreciated all your code, hard work, and attention to detail. Thanks for everything you’ve done over the years. If you want another playground to play in, you know there may be another home for you in the fork repository!
We generally always open to experimental GUI code.
Sorry to hear this Harley. Your work definitely made Blender way less painfull to use. So many improvements! I believe you fully deserve to have the equal say with “top” guys. It’s a shame you won’t be contributing to Blender but it’s wholly the BF’s fault for not recognizing the value you brought to the project.
You can definately be proud for all the work you’ve done and have a good retirement now.
That is incomprehensible. My experience is you have always been very flexible and accomodating of the opinions of others in every design discussion I have read or participated in, so I don’t know that the “ego” explanation holds much water.
As someone who makes a living using Blender (not to disparage the opinions of hobbyists which are just as valid) I can attest to the significant increase in usability you brought to Blender, between window management, text handling, tooltips, and all manners of qol improvements and display fixes throughout the interface…
Now I don’t know what sort of decision was made without looking to you for input, or if that was a pattern, or if there’s something more, it’s hard to judge from where I am standing.
This kind of announcement tends to heat the spirits : I want to know more, I want to help fix this. But it’s not my call to make… so I’m going to keep cool. This is still very upsetting.
And obviously the following statement
is interesting in the sense that while most everybody knows the project is more structured than it ever was, it’s difficult from the outside to get a feeling for how those structural changes impact the individual developer experience. I suppose design by committee is always difficult, but was it ever an insurmountable problem in any one of the tasks your worked on?
So, you are retired? what are you going to do next?
Of course, it’s not about Harley’s ego. I won’t point fingers but some “top“ guys are very protective of UI/UX decisions and consider its their personal turf agressively minimizing impact from other people on design tasks and high level decisions.
Yea, I read between the lines. Almost inevitably this kind of post devolves into something more political than it starts off as, because ultimately it’s a human friction problem, and humans have names. Not a problem if you ask me, but I would brace for it, heh.
Your work was amazing, you worked/solved some of the biggest problem/annoyance points in any software not just blender. God bless
the real problem I think it is more about the culture of BF, Blender have become a product now, and in a way the Blender Foundation is beginning to think like a corporation about things like sustained development, hence the Top Down approach
but that has its down side and mistakes
Thank you very much for the continuous efforts you put into the blender project !
The UI team made a lot of steady improvements over the last years and it had huge impact on the user experience and to everyone following that, it’s clear that you played a big role in that beside initiating it.
And as others pointed out, I also appreciated a lot the positive and gentle way you were communicating.
As it’s super sad to see someone who’s making such a good contribution to the project moving away, it’s also understandable as we are human and sometimes human stuff get in the way, to a point it’s not sustainable anymore…
I wish you all the best for your next projects and I’m sure everyone will appreciate working with you if it’s something you’re still into. Also I hope we’ll see you around sometimes as you are definitely part of the big blender family/community !
