This document provides a framework and consistent terminology for specifying user requirements. It specifies the common industry format (CIF) for a user requirement specification including the content elements and the format for stating those requirements.

NOTE 1 A user requirements specification is the formal documentation of a set of user requirements, which aids in the development and evaluation of usable interactive systems.

In this document, user requirements refers to:

a) user-system interaction requirements for achieving intended outcomes (including requirements for system outputs and their attributes);

b) use-related quality requirements that specify the quality criteria associated with the outcomes of users interacting with the interactive system and can be used as criteria for system acceptance.

NOTE 2 ISO/IEC 25030 introduces the concept of quality requirements. The use-related quality requirements in this document are a particular type of quality requirement.

The content elements of a user requirements specification are intended to be used as part of documentation resulting from the activities specified in ISO 9241-210, and from human centred design processes, such as those in ISO 9241-220.

This document is intended to be used by requirements engineers, business analysts, product managers, product owners, and people acquiring systems from third parties.

The CIF series of standards addresses usability-related information (as described in ISO 9241-11 and ISO/IEC TR 25060).

NOTE 3 In addition to usability, user requirements can include other perspectives, such as human-centred quality introduced in ISO 9241-220, and other quality perspectives presented in ISO/IEC 25010, ISO/IEC TS 25011, and ISO/IEC 25030.

NOTE 4 While this document was developed for interactive systems, the guidance can also be applied in other domains.

This document does not prescribe any kind of method, lifecycle or process. The content elements of a user requirements specification can be used in iterative development which includes the elaboration and evolution of requirements (e.g. as in agile development).