The founder of Hey, Blue! did not state specific non-functional requirements for the Hey, Blue! system. However, in the Q&A sessions he gave some hints about characteristics the systems should have for Hey, Blue! to be successful. Besides some obvious requirements that all Apps should fulfill (Reliability, Security, etc.) we identified the following as important enough to be stated here.
For the adaption of Hey, Blue! by Officers, Civilians, Charities and Businesses, and with that the success of the App, the User experience, especially Ease of Use is crucial.
The Vision of Hey, Blue! is that each Police Officer in the United States actively engages in the system. This would result in 1.2 billion connections in a year. Though those are not the numbers the App will start with, it is important to design the architecture in a scalable manner. This way we can ensure, that critical components can be horizontally scaled according to increasing load.
Hey, Blue! is a non-profit organization so naturally they are financially limited. Nevertheless the system needs a modern and scalable architecture as a solid foundation to be build on. Therefore architecture decisions must take feasability into account without cutting corners.
As Hey, Blue! is all about community and bringing people together, the participation of local businesses is crucial to its success. Therefore it must be as easy as possible to participate in the system. Even very small businesses without online shops need to be able to offer their goods or services in exchange for Points.
As user bases grow, social networks tend to see new unanticipated patterns of use emerge. That is why it is essential for social networks to respond to the needs of users in an agile manner. For the system architecture, this means that changes can be easily incorporated and tested. Since Hey, Blue! is in fact a kind of social network we identify Evolvability an important characteristic for its architecture.