Great article, Carissa. Appreciate you taking the risk to post before the thinking is 100% polished and pristine, before you have all the examples. The cooking analogy is really helpful. I have a friend/mentor who wrote a piece (can’t find it now) about assessment and standards vs. standardization. The Michelin guide has standards, but all of the restaurants in it are achieve quality in unique ways. Standardization is Applebee’s or PF Chang’s, which constrain quality by abolishing experimentation at the local level.

In any case, it’s not the same thing as what you’re saying, but I think related, in that, when we think not only about how to teach design thinking but how to assess learners in a meaningful way, it’s also really helpful to poke at the notion of there being “a” process.