Really nice post here on how to ask users about your ideas: Moms, Models and Medicine | Magnus Ross
It focusses on ML for health but I think the ideas are very applicable for a wide range of infectious disease modelling.
I’ve done user interviews and things in the past and I definitely think focussing on past issues and what has been done to get around them is the way to go.
I’ve bought the book it suggests so may circle back with some more thoughts once I have read it!
Some interesting overlap in here about how to use LLMs to get feedback. I find if you just straight up ask is my idea good they say yes but if you come at it a bit more indirectly (as suggested here) you can start getting some more nuanced, and therefore useful, feedback.