BluePrint - Guidelines

We use ​BluePrints to capture ideas, features, requirements and design options for Sahana Eden components. These can either be a simple collection of rough ideas about features you need or formal documentation following our BluePrint Template. You can review our existing BluePrints to contribute to one of these or create a new BluePrint at http://eden.sahanafoundation.org/wiki/BluePrint/<Name of your Idea / Feature / Requirement>.

This can start with a simple ​User Story (or a full ​Use Case). These can be simple stories which describe how Sahana Eden could be used in different scenarios.

A good User Story should answer the following questions:

• Who the user is
• What they want the application to do for them?
• Why they want it to do that? (Purpose)

A <type of user> wants the system to <do something for them> so that <can achieve a goal>.

More information:

• ​User-Oriented Design
• ​Activity-Centered Design

It can then be mocked-up using ​Wireframes or other diagrams (a picture tells a thousand words), using tools like:

• ​Evolus Pencil (FOSS, also as Add-on for Firefox 3.5+, GPL2)
  • Install Pencil as Firefox Add-on directly from ​here
• ​Dia (FOSS, GPL)
• ​Balsamiq (non-OSS, US$79)
• ​GoogleDoc's new Drawing functionality

BluePrints can be used by yourself or other contributors to:

• develop and evaluate solutions
• develop Projects for others to work on
• develop test cases
• write documentation
• write documentation