To me, this is a weird argument to make. I'm a product manager, and I use design thinking as part of my approach all the time. Does that mean I'm reducing all p

To me, this is a weird argument to make. I'm a product manager, and I use design thinking as part of my approach all the time. Does that mean I'm reducing all product innovation to a linear five-step approach? Hell no! I think the best way to use design thinking outside of a pure design agency context is eclectically, not as a religion. The point of methodology is not to take the humans out of the process - it's to give humans tools that they can then consciously use to define and adjust the process according to their own needs. If you go pay $12k for a design thinking bootcamp and expect that that's somehow going to make you design radically different or better things, that's off-base. What you're getting for your time and money are a few new tools/approaches you can whip out when appropriate. This is similar to a lot of the complaints I see about Agile/Scrum from teams who've had it forced on them in a very rigid way by PMs, scrum masters, or corporate policy. If the process is causing more pain than it's preventing, we should change it or remove it. If we can't do that, the process is a prison, not a helper. IMO that's what "people over process" means. Aside: Two quick rebuttals to points the author made: - There's no room for "crit" in design thinking. That's just wrong - what do you think the "converge" step is about? - The Post-it notes. My workplace is 100% remote. When we do in-person gatherings, we sometimes use post-it notes for ideation. Otherwise, we use Notion, Google Docs, and Figma. Again, I think the problem is the author is working with design thinking zealots who are taking the methodology to an inflexible extreme.