New Media Lexicon: Engaging

Engaging is an adjective that is often used as a non-functional requirement. New systems should be "engaging". m-w.com defines engage to mean:

5a : to hold the attention of : ENGROSS <her work engages her completely>
5b : to induce to participate <engaged the shy boy in conversation>

While I suspect people originally used engage as 5b, these days it seems to be applied as 5a. So, as a non-functional requirement, engaging means the product should be "of note", or "interesting". I should hope that if one is to undertake a project, it should be assumed that it will be "of note", and hopefully make it to the high standard of "interesting". Otherwise, junk it and start looking at more fruitful prospects.

To summerize, non-functional requirements of "engaging" receive a 5 out of 5 on my bullshitometer.