You can a match and capture part of the string with brackets(). The captured part is stored in the variable $1. For example ;

#!perl
use strict;
while (<DATA>){
  # capture word with ()
  # [- ] character is space or dash
  if (m/(design|otherword)[- ]controlled/i){
    # captured word is in $1
    print "Word < $1 >found in $_";
  } else {
    print "No word found in $_";
  }
}
__DATA__
This is a design controlled string
This is a design-controlled string
This is a controlled design string
This is an otherword-controlled string
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