I show most of my creations to a friend of mine who is an IT entrepreneur. He is not in my target group, but he knows the subject of usability well and that all

I show most of my creations to a friend of mine who is an IT entrepreneur. He is not in my target group, but he knows the subject of usability well and that allows him to give me good points for improvement. Showing things to HN is similar. Also it's the best possible market research. You show what you did to people and people tell you of similar things that already exist. No kind of passive surfing or googling can beat that.