The design requirements are a comprehensive and detailed listing of what is expected of a new product. The expectations come from various groups, or stakeholders, that have an interest in the product. The groups we will consider are the client, the users, and the community. In other sections of this coursepack, we talk about how to gather the information that goes into the design requirements.
Different stakeholders tend to have different requirements for products.
The users' requirements have more to do with how well the product performs and what price they have to pay to achieve that performance. An automobile is a good example of how the various groups have different requirements for a product. The community wants no pollution, no use of fossil fuels, and no accidents. Similarly, for a website, a client might require low development and maintenance costs, while users may want easy access to lots of information. The community might want to protect their children from pornography and offensive language.