[Sigia-l] User Groups for Research?

[Jonathan Baker-Bates]

Seeing as nobody replied to my last post about in-page navigation
(apart from Paola off list), maybe this will elicit something:

Does anyone have any experience of setting up and managing a "user
group" for the purposes of conducting trials of new features on web
sites? That is, a group of people of whatever type (domain experts,
laymen, whatever) who can be contacted for field trials, opinions etc.
in order to inform design decisions?

I have the capability and the budget to do traditional market research
(which I tend to take which a bag a salt mostly); can also conduct A/B
testing of designs on live sites (which can tell you a lot about some
aspects of the design), and am able to conduct facilitated user
research in labs (the mileage varies of course). However, I've always
been curious about the effect of mixing "naive" users (eg market and
user research fodder) with interested opinions from people who
regularly use the system. Many of these people are in the organisation
itself of course, but I think they're too close to the issues for my
liking.

Jonathan