No, I'm not talking about an analysis phase in a waterfall development. I'm talking about the blindness you can get when you're incrementally developing at the level of features, when you can no longer see the bigger goals.
That data is used to make a decision, and it's important that developers seek to understand exactly what that decision needs. Your users will often walk their way into a bad solution to their real problem because they will use their (incomplete) understanding of what is available.