Lastly, I can assume by this point that you already care, otherwise you wouldn't be reading this, nor would you be taking your knowledge of HCI out into the world. The reality is that, as a good team member, you also need to make sure the ethos of caring about building great software is contagious. Software design is a job and because of this, it is prone to the ailments of clock in, clock out thinking. Software development at some companies is treated very much this way, with a good example in Peter Gibbons at Initech in the movie Office Space.
Look out for software management, team members, or project managers that discourage you from caring about your user. They might say things like, "That's not important; why should we listen to every user?", "I did the minimum and then went home," or "It's fine, I did most...