A Guide on User Closeness
When you select users to test with, is it okay to pick your friends?
So you’re ready to do user testing. It’s tempting to ask your friends to test what you’re working on — but when is that valuable and when is it too imprecise for your project?
On one hand, people who are close might offer false positives simply because they know you. Often, your network may not even accurately represent your target user.
On the other hand, some types of experiments actively work better when run on users who are putting in extra effort to make it work.
So how do you tell the difference?
Tiers of User Closeness
Let’s break down the types of users you can get like this:
Tier 1 (Close Friends): Users who are directly friends with you, good friends, mutual trust, etc.
Tier 2 (Friends): Users who are friendly but not directly close to you, such as low-key friends, good friends of your spouse, etc.
Tier 3 (Acquaintances): Positive acquaintances such as a casual fb friend, parents at your kids' school, members of your community group, etc.
Tier 4 (Strangers): Complete strangers or neutral acquaintances who know your name but not much else
Now let’s talk about the 2 types of users we need in the way we approach testing.
Type A: Objective Users
This is the majority of testing and should be Tier 3 (Acquaintances) and Tier 4 (Strangers).
Objective Users are the ones who can answer the most common questions like, "Do people want it?" "What does it look like?" "Will people adopt the necessary behaviors?" "Which features do people want?" etc.
It's important to have them in early testing and for key value proposition questions, because they don’t translate their point of view into your language — simply because they don't know you well enough to empathize with you. As a result, you get a more objective perspective on their native universe.
Humans are relational, and user tests are a fundamentally relational interaction, so most users WILL try to develop rapport and meet you halfway if they can, which is the opposite of what you want.
In a pinch, you can pull a couple people from Tier 2 (Friends) for this, AFTER you have reached 50% validation. (And usually, the only reason you would do this is if you're testing with a small exclusive user pool that there just aren't enough of otherwise.)
Type B: Friendly Users (“Friendlies”)
Friendly users are Tier 1 (Best Friends) & Tier 2 (Friends), ideally Tier 1.
There is, in fact, a very important role for friendly users, which is to test the question, "Will this solution successfully work on a basic level, even under the most favorable of circumstances?"
Specifically, you ask them for a favor of giving it an honest go to see what happens (but not overextending themselves to make it work). You use social capital to skip past basic buyin to jump to testing viability.
Some common examples of where to use friendly users to test viability are:
You are testing a solution that requires regular daily engagement over time and want to see if people actually adopt it
You are testing a coaching/training/transformation program and want to see if it will actually work
There is a complex, multi-way interaction (eg, imagine you were building Airbnb for the first time) and you want to see if 2 people will behave as desired. In this case, you want the participants to be Friendlies to YOU, but strangers to EACH OTHER
Optimal Use of Each Friendliness Tier User
Tier 1 (Close Friends): Best used for sanity checking if adoption will even occur under ideal circumstances
Tier 2 (Friends): Best for quick testing something you are more than 50% Confident about, when you're in a rush or not using a formal structure. Eg, outside of a formal sprint, if you're just doing followup testing on something you are confident about the basic structure of, Tier 2 are the ideal balance of easy to get ahold of and objective ENOUGH for a sanity check / mindset grounding.
Tier 3 (Acquaintances): These are the absolute best place to start user recruiting! User recruiting is often a lift, so your Tier 3 qualified users are the low-hanging fruit for recruitment. Once you get them, ask each of them to give you contact info for other people they know who would be good to test with to fill out your recruitment roster. Qualified users always know other qualified users.
Tier 4 (Strangers): The bread and butter of long term testing. Once you have your users-sending-other-users pipeline down, you'll have plenty of Tier 4s to learn from.
Important: If you are a team / org with privilege creating a solution for low-income / underserved / underprivileged users, it is absolutely essential to have at least 3/4 of your recruited users be Tier 4 (Strangers). Tier 3 (Acquaintances) is still a good place to start, but you must test with Tier 4. (Note that since Tier 4 users also drop the most, that means your final ratio doesn't have to be 3/4, only the ones you set calls with. Your final ratio just needs to be more than about 60%.)