Talk:Richard Buchanan (academic)

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Notability

I noticed the notability flag at the top of this article on Richard Buchanan and took the initiative to remove it. For about 30 years, Prof. Buchanan has been among the five or at most ten best-known figures in design, both to academics and professional practitioners. Some of his key publications have been cited tens of thousands of times. He is not a household name to the public like Donald Norman, Jakob Nielsen, Bruce Tognazzini, Jony Ive, or one or two others. That is probably because his publications are generally in academia and not mainstream. Prof. Buchanan is credited with a number of widely taught theoretical concepts in design, for example being almost singlehandedly responsible for bringing the idea of "wicked problems" into the mainstream; to redefine design as a liberal art; and a number of other intriguing ideas. He is probably the closest colleague to the late Victor Margolin and carries his intellectual legacy. His position at the head of Design Issues, probably the most respected academic journal in the field, also lends to easy recognition among peers.

To a great degree, notability is a function of self-promotion. The more tireless ones get the most attention in any field, particularly design today. Prof. Buchanan promotes himself -- and, to his credit, more often is boosted by others -- within academia, not generally in the public realm.

(Disclamer: Prof. Buchanan and I travel in the same circles, most recently contemporaneously on the faculty of Tongji University in Shanghai. However, we've never met or corresponded that I can recall, and I'm not even sure if he knows exactly who I am, though he may well have seen my name. I have no specific personal interest in promoting him, nor do I tend to try to curry favor with colleagues. All I can say is that he easily meets Wikipedia's notability guidelines.) Zelchenko (talk) 23:08, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]