The Importance of Design Thinking in UX Theater

Design thinking has become a substitute for actual user-centered design and that in itself leads to UX theater. Just because you can bring other people in to participate and collaborate doesn't mean they should then be considered designers officially. I've seen where these concepts of design thinking and everyone as a designer have actually reduced the focus on actualuser-centered design, hiring actual practitioners or domain specialists. And it really brings so much bias and so much assumptions about their users that it really colors the solutions that they were proposing even in early days.