How to obtain trustworthy beta operators?
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i am a small solo developer, more of a hobbyist per se. i am at the point with a few of my builds where i am in need of fielding the beta v1s. my problem is that no one i know knows anything about coding, and probably could care less. my question is this: how to get beta testers/ operators that are trustworthy, who won't siderail or steal your intellectual property? how to etablish trust with them, and literally avoid bad operators? please, any insight is absolutely appreciated.
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Two things that took the worry out of this for me. First, a beta tester never gets the code, they get a build, and a build is something anyone could download from the store in a month anyway. On iOS I register the tester's device id and hand them an ad hoc build through a link. On Android they join the internal testing track in Play through an email list I control. When the pass is over I remove them from the list and the build stops updating. There is nothing to steal in that setup, so trust stops being the question. Second, the people who "know nothing about coding and couldn't care less" are the testers you want. I paid a person to do a manual pass on real phones this month, and the brief was not "find bugs in the code", it was "tell me where you got confused, where you waited, where you gave up". My own tests already cover what the code does. What no test covers is where a normal person gets lost, and a friend who doesn't code is the perfect instrument for that. Give them test accounts you can switch off afterwards, a list of five things to try, and ask them to talk out loud while they do it. Practical places to find them: the people around you who would actually use the thing, and a paid tester for the device zoo. Don't look for operators, look for users.