Why You Shouldn't Do the Research

If it makes sense for the feature that you're working on, try to do some guerrilla research maybe interview friends that might fit in some of your target users. There are people online like Debbie Levitt, Dr. Nick Fine who are really good and you can learn quite a bit from them. Apply your heuristic principles before you even start. And lastly, try to keep track of what your hypothesis is and see if you can track metrics later to prove your point after the fact.