shinpr Blueprint Standards
Purpose
Blueprint artifacts define the structural foundation that prototypes and UI specifications build upon. They bridge the gap between validated opportunities and tangible product design.
Blueprint artifacts answer: "What pages exist, how do users move between them, what data lives where, and what does the product feel like?"
Artifact Overview
| Artifact | Question It Answers | Template |
|---|---|---|
| Information Architecture | What pages exist and how are they organized? | references/ia-template.md |
| User Flows | How do users move through the product to achieve goals? | references/flow-template.md |
| Content Model | What data types exist and how do they relate? | references/content-model-template.md |
| Brand Direction | What does the product look and feel like? | references/brand-direction-template.md |
| AI Interaction Model | How does the user interact with AI features? | references/ai-interaction-model-template.md |
When Blueprint Artifacts Are Required
Create or update only the artifacts needed to keep shared structure coherent across multiple hypotheses or to supply a decision required by a current prototype or downstream specification. Reuse existing decisions; a prototype can proceed directly when its observable boundary needs no shared structural decision.
Relationship to Other Artifacts
docs/product/vision.md ← Strategic intent
docs/product/design-principles.md ← Trade-off resolutions
docs/product/personas/ ← Who uses it
docs/discovery/opportunities/ ← What problems to solve
docs/discovery/hypotheses/ ← How to solve them
↓
docs/product/design/ ← Blueprint (structural design)
↓
docs/discovery/prototypes/ ← Tangible validation artifacts
↓
docs/prd/ ← Implementation specification
Blueprint Scope
Blueprint defines: Structure, navigation, data relationships, visual direction, interaction patterns Blueprint defers: Pixel-level specifications, component APIs, responsive breakpoint details, design token values → these belong to UI Spec (implementation phase)
Key Principles
- Opportunity-grounded: Every page in the IA traces to a validated Opportunity or a supporting function
- Persona-informed: Flows are written from the perspective of specific personas
- Consistent across prototypes: Applicable brand and IA decisions provide shared context for prototypes that depend on them
- Updatable through reflection: Blueprint artifacts evolve as new learnings surface in
docs/product/learnings.md - Minimal viable structure: Define enough to make prototypes coherent, defer details that require implementation-phase decisions