Director of Glasgow School of Art - Tom Inns

This week we had a lecture by the new director of the School of Art, Professor Tom Inns. He spoke about his own history, first as an engineer and then a designer, and we discussed the subject of product development and strategies.

One of the most interesting things he brought up was the rate of product success - apparently only 56% of all products released by companies are successful. So realistically, I could expect half of everything I design to be a waste of time!

Some companies, of course, have much higher rates of success. Apple, for example, are successful in virtually everything they do these days. But even they make a mess of it sometimes. 

This is the Apple Newton. Apple invested around $100 million in the development of the Newton, but missed its goal to attempt to reinvent personal computing. The project fell victim to project slippage, scope creep and a growing fear that it would interfere with the new Macintosh, and was cancelled in 1998.

This just goes to show how careful we must be as designers, putting a huge amount of money and effort in to something that ultimately may not be successful as a product.