To gather a baseline I looked at a water bottle by Contigo1 and created an affinity diagram2 in order to figure out the specific needs/desires of a water bottle user. The most critical functions are that a water bottle hold water and that it doesn't spill unintentionally. Though the Contigo has great features like one handed opening and a fold away carry loop3 (which allowed us to carry bananas in the same hand.) However it failed the spill test, It opened when dropped4 and when placed inside a bag5. A heuristic analysis on the bottle found other areas it could improve: permanent warnings about leak potential and difficulty opening.6
Fly-on-the-wall observation was conducted to learn more about the full-stack development students7,8. Because the location was a large and busy lunch room the observation wouldn't unduly influence the results. Observations were recorded on a worksheet focusing on observed activities, environment, interactions, objects, and users9. The main takeaways were that organic conversations were important, there is a modern clean look to the kitchen area, and 84% of water bottles observed had a small mouth. We would learn later during user interviews that this was because they feared spilling water on other people's computer.
The Modern Romantic10 embraced the clean, sleek, white and aluminum look of the lunch room with an all white metal wine bottle.
The Full Stack Jokester11 is a pun on "full-stack developer" and is a bottle shaped like a stack of pancakes with a lump of butter for a cap.
The Happy Gamer12 was inspired by all the board games and video games being played. It would be shaped like a warp tunnel from Mario video games, with a flower for a stopper.
- If the bottle unscrewed in the center it would be easy to clean, would create two "half stacks" furthering the pun, and could be used as a bowl for the free cereal available at Prime Academy.
- Change the name from The Full Stack Jokester to The Full Stack.
There is more work to be done before this water bottle can be put into production. Here are my recommendations: