You have pointed out something that people (including me) keep forgetting. Don’t take it personal. As the owner / designer of the application, every critic that is not “wow, how did you do that” (or somewhat on that level of enthusiasm) may be a total turn off. I can say from experience that I have stopped projects just because one or two people told me it’s totally useless. And guess what, other people implemented the same ideas months later and are now rich. So you should learn to trust and love your own product before showing it to anybody else. Don’t let anybody convince you otherwise.

Great article, kudos! – gil

Then for this UI (User Interface) testing I’d definitely get in a UI specialist to help you through this – if you have the budget. You may want to involve them during the design stage too – the earlier the better. These days they tend to go under the name Interaction Architect/Designer.

For your other questions I deal with this directly in my other posts which Carleen was linked to above, there’s also some stuff on my blog.

Im also trying to find some CEOs and other executives of companies, to come and blog over at our weblog, http://crenk.com