The first time I watched my mother try to use an app I designed, I wanted to disappear.
She couldn't find the button. She read a label three times and still wasn't sure what it did. She tapped something she wasn't supposed to tap. In about four minutes, she exposed more real problems than a week of internal review had.
We talk about usability testing like it requires a lab, a recruitment budget, and a research team. And proper research does. But most teams — especially early-stage ones — don't have that. What they do have is people around them who are not themselves.
That's enough to start.
Your cousin who's not tech-savvy. Your colleague from a different department. Your friend who uses their phone for WhatsApp and not much else. None of them share your assumptions about how the product works. That's exactly what makes them valuable.
You don't need a formal script. Give them a task. Watch what they do. Don't help them. Don't explain anything. Just watch where they hesitate, where they get confused, where they give up.
You'll see things you never would have caught on your own, because you're too close to the product. You built it. You know where everything is. You've forgotten what it's like not to know.
I've run sessions like this at a coffee shop, in a car, at a family dinner. They're messy and informal and nothing like real research. They've also saved me from shipping things that didn't work more times than I can count.
Perfect usability testing done eventually helps nobody. Imperfect testing done now helps everyone.