Our research team attempted to recreate the essential functions of the current prime welcome gift in Heuristic Documentation. These would be considered typical functions of a water bottle of similar construction to the one we evaluated. We evaluated the water bottle against ten heuristics outlined by Jakob Nielsen via the Nielsen Norman Group. These ten characteristics are:

• Visibility of System Status

• Recognition over recall

• User control & freedom

• Flexibility & efficiency of use

• Match between system & real world

• Error prevention

• Aesthetic & minimalist design

• Error recognition, diagnosis, & recovery

• Consistency & standards

• Help & Documentation

Once functions were categorized to fall within one or multiple heuristics, the design team established a severity scale to ascertain how much a heuristic was violated. This system determined if the design team could look past specific issues and which issues need to be addressed immediately. 

• 0 = Not considered a problem

• 1 = Minor problem: does not interfere with general usability of the system

• 2 = Minor usability problem: Affects usability but not in a severe enough way to begin high priority

• 3 = Major usability problem: High priority problem that affects usability

• 4 = Catastrophic usability problem: Fundamentally affects the function of the system. The system cannot move forward without fixing.