I’ll out myself immediately: I believe having dedicated user researchers on a product team is preferable to product designers doing their own research. It’s a topic for another time, but suffice it to say that things like hard research skills and increased objectivity that researchers tend to lend themselves to increased reliability.

That being said, we’re amid economically uncertain times, which means many designers don’t have a research team to work with.

Overall, when there isn’t another choice, I’d frame this as a great opportunity for designers to gain or refine another set of skills and new perspectives that contribute to excellent product design. Here are five things you should know before incorporating UX research into your work.

Design thinking is essentially creative and practical problem-solving. As a product designer, you’ve already got the same mindset as a researcher in the sense that you’re an investigator of the user experience. You’re always sniffing out user problems and brainstorming solutions in your day-to-day work, and that’s precisely what user researchers do.

That fact alone should raise your confidence and sense that I can do this, and now you can read on for some tips to ensure you start your research journey off on the right foot.