> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.percio.app/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Issues

> Severity, Nielsen heuristic mapping, and the four-part issue card

Issues are the core of every report. Each issue is a specific, actionable usability problem a persona found, with enough context for you to decide what to do about it.

## The issue card

Every issue has the same structure:

**Severity.** One of:

* **Critical** — the persona couldn't complete the scenario, or the issue causes data loss, trust damage, or abandonment.
* **High** — significant friction. The persona could finish, but with visible effort or frustration.
* **Medium** — real usability problem, but not blocking. Worth fixing.
* **Low** — polish. Wouldn't stop the persona, but detracts from the experience.

**Heuristic.** The Nielsen heuristic the issue violates. One of the [10 heuristics](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/):

* Visibility of system status
* Match between system and real world
* User control and freedom
* Consistency and standards
* Error prevention
* Recognition rather than recall
* Flexibility and efficiency of use
* Aesthetic and minimalist design
* Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors
* Help and documentation

**What's happening.** The observed behavior. What the persona saw and what they did. Concrete, not abstract.

**Why it matters.** The user impact. Why this specific behavior is a problem for this persona.

**Who it affects most.** Sometimes the issue hits some users harder than others — a confusing label may be fine for a power user but crippling for a first-timer. This section names the audience most at risk.

**Recommendation.** A concrete suggestion for how to fix it. Not always the *right* fix for your product — but a starting point that makes the conversation easier.

## How to use severity

Severity is Percio's best judgment. It's calibrated for the persona running the test — a critical issue for a first-timer might be a medium for a power user. Use it as a starting point, not a tribunal.

A good first pass on a report:

1. Read every **critical** and **high** issue. Decide which are confirmed, false positives, or dismissed.
2. Look for patterns across the **medium** issues — several mediums pointing at the same area often signal a larger problem.
3. Skim the **lows**. They're usually polish work that can wait.

## How to use the heuristic tag

The heuristic tells you *why* the issue is a problem — which is what you need if you're explaining the issue to a teammate who wasn't in the room.

Seeing the same heuristic flagged repeatedly across different parts of your product is a strong signal. Recurring **Consistency and standards** violations suggest a design system gap. Recurring **Error prevention** violations suggest your forms and state transitions need attention. Recurring **Match between system and real world** violations suggest your copy is speaking a different language from your users.

## Comparing reports across personas

To get another angle on the same flow, run a second test with a different persona. A first-timer and a power user rarely raise the same issues — the contrast is where a lot of the signal lives. Comparison is done by reading both reports side by side in your test history; Percio doesn't fold multiple persona reports into a single view.

## What's next

* [Validating issues](/results/validation)