User interview protip: if you actually want to know what's wrong with your product, never tell people that it's your product.
At my last startup, we did user tests every week, and my cofounder was very careful never to let on which test items were made by us. We didn't have our name on the door or on the buzzer. Nothing with our logo was visible between the entryway and the user interview room. And when he started showing products, he'd always start with somebody else's.
It was great. We got some incredibly honest feedback (sometimes brutally so) on what we were building. It helped us kill a lot of bad directions early. Most people just don't want to tell you that your baby is ugly, but they'll happily dish if they think it's somebody else's.
Any tips for when the user definitely know it's your product? I can't think of anything besides starting with butchering some aspect of it. Then again that might trigger some empathetic response, and end with even less actionable feedback.
I think people can't un-know something, so I'd try very hard to get test subjects in a way where they don't think the people they are talking to are the ones who make the product.
For example, you could set up a fake market research org, and have them say they are "conducting a study on [your market] and are looking for users of products like [competitor 1], [competitor 2], and [your product]". Then for the user testing sessions you could rent a conference room from somebody like Regus, or even rent a user testing lab. Then during the tests, make sure to start with general questions and test (or show screens from) the other products before you get to testing yours.
I'm not sure if those specifics will work in your environment, but I hope you see what I mean.
At my last startup, we did user tests every week, and my cofounder was very careful never to let on which test items were made by us. We didn't have our name on the door or on the buzzer. Nothing with our logo was visible between the entryway and the user interview room. And when he started showing products, he'd always start with somebody else's.
It was great. We got some incredibly honest feedback (sometimes brutally so) on what we were building. It helped us kill a lot of bad directions early. Most people just don't want to tell you that your baby is ugly, but they'll happily dish if they think it's somebody else's.