Testing with family and friends is very risky. If your grandmother thinks you’re the cutest person in the family and that you’re getting cuter every time (that’s the case in my case), explore testing tools and techniques with people who aren’t your family. Look for the skeptics.

I believe the key is in figuring out and understanding what we are trying to learn. Testing is learning. It’s not developing, creating, launching. It is learning. Again, it’s learning.

Why are you making those questions?

Generally, it is best to recruit people who match your customer segment as closely as possible.

To discover research questions about your customer segment’s needs, motivations, habits, etc., you should study your own users (or potential users).

For basic usage questions (Do people understand my product? Can they complete tasks? Is this the right customer experience?) you can always get useful data by testing family and friends, provided they have characteristics in common with your target users. If you expect your target users to have specific knowledge or experience with Linux or smartphones or AirBnB or speak Malay, or whatever, then your sample of test persons should have it too. Otherwise, you risk fooling yourself.

Testing with the same people repeatedly is never a good idea.

Again, it all depends on what you are trying to learn.

If we go to usability, the idea behind testing is to figure out how likely users are to encounter certain problems. If representative users have a problem, there’s a good chance that others will too. Usability is improved by identifying problems, doing research, improving the UX/UI, and testing again. Again, everything will be called into question if you test on the same people over and over again – especially if they are not representative.

Ok.

I don’t know or have people close to me who can help me with this feedback. In these cases, I recommend exploring remote testing tool and techniques. It’s fairly easy to recruit testing folks and conduct live interviews via Skype, Slack or Hangouts. If you’re testing mobile products or mvp’s, you can ask participants to point their laptop webcams at their mobile screens. Or have them try tools like usertesting.com for mobile or desktop testing.

Finding real potential customers is a lot more work than showing the latest news to family and friends (they’ll think it’s great!!). But in the end, your research will be much more useful.

Again, I believe with all my might that the key is to discover and understand what we are trying to learn. Testing is learning. It’s not developing, creating, or launching. It’s learning. Again, it’s learning ?.