It is worth repeating: software design is hard! There is no quick and easy way to jump into the end state where everything just works and your users are blissfully happy. To do it well, you have to get your hands dirty. The reality is that HCI designers get their hands dirty by gathering data from beginning to end. We establish user research and data as essential to the process. The research we do is fed back. Along the process, different qualitative and quantitative research methods are deployed to help us learn and address whether our user's needs are being met.
Not to over-complicate the process, but qualitative methods are more valuable toward the beginning of solving software problems and quantitive methods are more useful as solutions get created. HCI designers should understand where in the software process life cycle they are creating value through user research and data collection – for example, using qualitative methods of...