This is an absolutely necessary technique. I use it a lot.

What I think is important is to assert assumptions, a way or another. What is important, in an exploratory phase, is to do things in order to learn things. And the technique I love is the famous “Fake it ‘til you make it”, or, as they hypely say those days, “MVF” for Minimum Viable Feature.

Actually, to be more precise, it’s the first version of an “MVF”. But still, I love it.

I remember, on http://chooseyouboss.com, I made an assumption : “I’m sure that candidates will answer faster if they had a responsiveness score associated”, so, on the mail I was sending them, and on their profile, I was just telling them : “your score is perfect, to keep it like that, always answer before 72hours”. That worked perfectly. KPI’s went up, and I didn’t even had to implement the feature. Even if sometimes, users ask me why it’s always 'perfect score’ =)

So never forget, when you want to add something, always ask you this question : “How could I fake this, and still learn something valuable?”.