The requirements to identify the cause of an incident, following the trail of events preceding the incident, as well as proving the consistency of the potential evidence recovered from the alleged incident, ultimately demand a proactive approach towards the design of digital forensics (DF) applications. Success in the use of digital evidence for analysis or validation in digital forensic investigations depends on established processes, scientific methods, guidelines and standards that are used in the DF application designs and developments.Adding legal and scientific processes capable of absorbing the constant upgrades and updates in the design of DF applications is a boost to the already existing DF processes and standards. However, there is need for such processes to be clearly defined, so that non-technical audience involved in crime investigations and decisions, can easily comprehend the DF application designs and development processes.To proactively overcome this challenge, this paper proposes the digital forensic application requirements specifications (DFARS) process. The proposed DFARS process outlines an easy-to-apply design process for designing any DF application. It further demonstrates in a case scenario, how to apply the DFARS process using the online neighbourhood watch (ONW) system. The ONW system is a DF application that crowd-source potential digital evidence (PDE). One of the objectives of the ONW system is to increase the volume of available PDE to enhance success in prosecution of neighbourhood crime.Therefore using the DFARS process with the ONW system as a case scenario, the result shows that the DFARS process ensures an easy application of modifiability, pluggability and reliability features at any point in the life-cycle of a DF application. This thereby accommodates the constant upgrades and changes associated with electronic devices, operating systems, hardware and other requirements. It further shows an easy-to-follow process that is understandable to both technical and non-technical audiences in the field of digital forensics.