Intent specifications: an approach to building human-centered specifications

Software is a human product and specification languages are used to help humans perform the various problem solving activities involved in software development and evolution. This paper proposes an approach, called intent specifications, to designing system and software specifications based on research in systems theory, cognitive psychology, and human-machine interaction. The goal is to provide specifications that support software engineering activities by grounding specification design on psychological principles of how humans use specifications to solve problems as well as on basic system engineering principles.