So this approach takes two people. And it generally works better in big cities.

First, buy a number of Starbucks $20 gift cards. Then you want to buy a poster board and a Sharpie. And write on the poster board, “Test my app for five minutes and get a free Starbucks $20 gift card”.

Then just walk out on the street and hold up the sign. You’re going to have plenty of people who will walk right past you. That’s okay! Sure enough, some people will stop and they will be interested.

When someone stops, just give them a quick 20 second recap of what you’re trying to do. Say you have some sketches or a prototype on your phone and what you’d like for them to do is to walk through it with you. And you’re going to record them over their shoulder with somebody else’s phone. It should take about five minutes and when they’re done, they get a free $20 gift card.

Now I’ve seen this work with sketches on paper. I’ve seen it work with a laptop. I’ve seen it work on an iPhone or an iPad. You can use whatever you want. The next step would be for them to hold the prototype and begin to click through. If it’s paper, you’ll just change the page as they click. If it’s a prototype, then they will just click through the prototype.

But before they start, you’re going to want to have your friend just hold their phone, in video mode, over their shoulder so that you can record it all and record all of their observations.

And once they’re done with the eight tasks or whatever it is that you wanted them to walk through. You give them their gift card and they’re on their way.

Then you just go back to holding up the sign until somebody else comes along. It can just be a fun way to get out of the office, go talk to people on the street, and get a diverse set of feedback.