Current research in the engineering design requirement

\The design requirement is a description of the desired solution to a problem. In engineering design, as in all other, a clear expression of a well-formulated design goal is vital for successful and efficient completion of the design task. The nature of the design requirement and the processes by which it is achieved have been the subject of a wide variety of research. The purpose of the paper is twofold. Firstly, it sets out to collate and discuss representative research in this area in order to give an overview of the current scope of the work. Secondly, it seeks to draw a comparison with the task of developing the design requirement for software and information systems and to initiate a discussion that considers to what extent the substantial body of research in software requirements engineering might help to give an understanding of the design requirement for the engineering design domain. A tentative characterization of the differences between the tasks in the two domains is presented, and representative papers from requirements engineering are used to suggest areas of overlap as a starting point for further investigation.