Practice Assignment 2: Bug Lists

Due Date: 1/19/2016

This practice assignment is to be submitted to the Blackboard site by 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday,
1/19/2015. This is an individual (not a group) assignment. Your submission for this
assignment must be typed. Handwritten or emailed assignments will not be awarded
credit.
Many of the projects that you do in this curriculum involve identifying a need and developing a
solution that satisfies that need. An important tool in identifying needs is a bug list, in which
either personally or through interviews you identify a list of items that annoy users or customers.
The wind energy project we are currently working on does not involve the development of a
specific product to address an annoyance, but we can still develop a corresponding bug list when
we consider how the development of wind energy will affect other stakeholders. A well-known
example is the organized opposition to the development of offshore wind energy in
Massachusetts. Consequently, in this assignment you are to try to take the point of view of the
following individuals:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

A coal miner
A landowner
The governor of a state
The director of a public utility company
A customer of the public utility company
An Eagle

Your task is to generate a list of things that might annoy each of these stakeholders if wind
energy is developed within their proximity. Identify at least three items for each individual.
Remember that we are looking for a list of bugs (e.g., the wind turbine is ruining my view)
rather than a list of solutions (e.g., camouflaging the turbine tower). In other words, do NOT
invent solutions to the problems you see yet just state the problem.
You can record your bugs in your laptop/engineering notebook as you think of them. Then, by
11:59 p.m. on 1/19/2015, submit a typed list that briefly describes each of the bugs you
identified (a couple of words is okay).