Shopping malls may be considered as controversial structures since they sometimes fail to comply with the expectations of the project stakeholders throughout the project life cycle. New mall projects often attract the attention of people since such a structure has a potential to reshape the neighborhood it is located in. On the other hand, the parties involved in mall projects may be subject to criticism from both the public and the industry during the project's design, construction, and operation. In this study we conducted semi-structured interviews with five managers of an international company that provides real estate services worldwide and mainly focuses on managing shopping centers within the context of Turkiye. During the interviews, we collected insights on shopping mall design and criteria that have an impact on the operational success and/or failure of mall projects. We analyzed the interview data to understand the shopping mall design requirements from the experts’ perspectives. The analyzed data indicate that the requirements and uses of shopping malls evolve and change over time. This change is driven by factors such as the changing habits and expectations of the users and new marketing approaches. Understanding such changes is essential for designers and investors to propose new design approaches and space compositions in order to be able to adapt to the changes. Through our analysis of the collected data, we identified and categorized the design requirements of shopping malls and provided experts’ insight on new trends that affect mall designs. We formalized design characteristics of shopping malls and concluded with a proposed design, construction, and operations methodology for new shopping mall designs which encourages improved collaboration and communication between all the project stakeholders. The design criteria provided in this study may be useful for evaluating future mall designs.