What do you think about synthetic users for user testing?

2 pointsbornslipppy2 comments

User testing is important, but let’s be honest—it’s often a pain. Recruiting is slow, people flake, and results can be all over the place.

Lately I’ve been thinking: what if we could simulate real users instead? Like, agents that reflect actual roles, behaviors, and decision-making patterns.

Would you trust insights from that kind of setup?

Genuinely curious what others think.

View on HN

I think the ideal place this would add value is pre-launch of a feature or MVP.

With enough randomization and "thought" patterns to test out your features it could be a very novel approach to testing that differs from existing load testing & integration testing.

Randomization is the key though, the synthetic users would need to be capable of rooting out those random edge cases that you can only find by typically using a product "incorrectly".

Cool idea though!

this exists: https://www.syntheticusers.com/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com