blueprint-standards

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

Blueprint artifacts provide the structural context that makes prototypes coherent across multiple hypotheses. Create them before generating prototypes.

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: Brand direction and IA provide shared context that all prototypes reference
• 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