Casa Blu (Olivetti Study and Experience Centre), the very center of the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, of which Bill was a Steering Committee member. Without Bill, it would not have had the monumental impact on the discipline and profession of interaction design.

Playfulness, integrity, honesty, and compassion. Bill treated everyone as if they were a friend. I feel blessed to have been able to work closely with him on a few occasions and will forever remember his spirit, his warmth, and his love of a good joke.

When we were picking out the color palette for Designing Media, I was settled on a full cyan wash (blue) as the accent color and the color for the interior.

Bill however wouldn’t rest until he was certain it was perfect. He surveyed every IDEOer he could find (at their desk, in person — it was quite hilarious to watch) by creating a prototype of the colors we’d been discussing/mocking up (shades of green, blue and red — all with specific meanings + intentions). 65+ IDEOers and random Palo Altans later we had a debriefing around every opinion and story and settled on blue. “Well it turns out, you were right!” said Bill laughing. I, in turn, laughed for hours.

That was Bill. It was always about the people and that made every design better — and so special — because every opinion mattered and everyone was a stakeholder.

Kit Hinrichs of Pentagram with Bill

Lunch in the van with Bill.

I got to know Bill through an early d.school foundation session he hosted at his home in Woodside. He invited us over for two days to design the future of the Joint Program in Design — the program many of us went through and regarded as inspiration for the d.school. It was a touchy subject, though you wouldn’t know it from the photos. That’s what Bill could do – take the tension out of the room and focus on what we were going to do to make things better for people. He was the trusted, humble authority and unifying spirit everyone rallied around. It’s that part of him I recognize within IDEO.

(That’s a shot Bill took of us by his trailer.)

With the camera I’m holding in the d.school session photo of us by the trailer, I snapped this shot of Bill.

Bill at the DESIS Philosophy Talk, Parsons, the New School for Design, March 2nd 2012, in New York.

Photo credit: Ting Hei Lo

The early days!