A design is under intellectual control if it has been created and documented in a manner that enables its creators and maintainers to fully understand it.
An essential attribute of such a design is that it is constructed hierarchically and with multiple views. Hierarchies enable readers to comprehend the entire system abstractly, and then comprehend finer and finer levels of details as they move down the hierarchy. At each level the component should be described from an external point of view only. Furthermore, any single component (at any level in the hierarchy) should exhibit simplicity and elegance.
