Rick’s primary goal on projects is to clearly articulate what your user’s life is like, and how your design is going to fit into that life.
He brings a depth of knowledge in research methods and technology, and has an inherent fascination with who people are and why they do what they do.
He has helped clients as diverse as Thermo Fisher Scientific, Carnegie Mellon University, Vocollect, Comcast, Bayer Healthcare, the University of Pittsburgh, General Dynamics, and American Eagle Outfitters understand and empathize with their users—turning that understanding into design insight.
Before coming to MAYA, Rick worked as the user testing lead and project manager on an interdisciplinary team that designed and developed a handheld problem-reporting system for NASA. The device is slated for deployment alongside Project Constellation, the next iteration of the shuttle.
He graduated with honors from Carnegie-Mellon University with a BS in cognitive science and human-computer interaction, and stayed on to complete a Master’s in human-computer interaction. As an undergraduate, Rick co-authored a paper about cooperation between human users and intelligent systems that was published in an artificial intelligence journal, and was a captain and conference all-star on the lacrosse team.