needsfrom

Needsfrom is a term used in user-centered design and requirements engineering to denote the subset of a project’s requirements that originate from user needs, goals, and context. It is employed to distinguish user-derived needs from requirements that arise from system capabilities, business objectives, or regulatory constraints. The central idea is provenance: knowing that a given requirement reflects a real user need rather than an imposed constraint helps teams prioritize and validate designs against actual user problems.

Origin and usage: The term appears in practitioner literature and template documents as a shorthand for capturing source information during elicitation. It is not part of formal standards, but it is used in agile backlogs, design journals, and research reports to annotate entries with the source of the need. Common practice is to attach a needsfrom tag or field (for example, needsfrom: user interview; needsfrom: field observation) so that teams can trace back to the original research.

Relationship to other concepts: Needsfrom is distinct from business needs, market needs, or technical requirements, though those sources can be linked alongside. It complements stakeholder analysis by making it easier to demonstrate how user context informs requirements.

Examples and limitations: A design team may record, "needsfrom: older adult users with limited mobility" to guide accessibility features. Critics argue that the term can be awkward or redundant; some prefer alternatives such as "user-need provenance" or simply a source field.

See also: user need, requirement, stakeholder analysis, design thinking.