Rick Spencer

Current

• Engineering Manager, Desktop at Canonical Ltd
• Engineering Manager, Desktop at Canonical, USA
• Owner/Operator at CalorieLookup.com (Sole Proprietorship)

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Past

• Director, Product Management at Windermere Services
• Lead Program Manager at Microsoft
• User Experience Manager at Microsoft

• Usability Engineer, Usability Manager at Microsoft

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1 more...

Education

• George Mason University
• Earlham College

Recommended

7 people have recommended Rick

Connections

220 connections

Industry

Computer Software

Rick Spencer’s Summary

I am passionate about user-centered design and leading multi-disciplinary software teams.

Rick Spencer’s Specialties:

User centered design, design for developers, managing software projects

Rick Spencer’s Experience

• Engineering Manager, Desktop

  Canonical Ltd

  (Computer Software industry)

  December 2008 — Present (1 year )

• Engineering Manager, Desktop

  Canonical, USA

  (Computer Software industry)

  2008 — Present (1 year )

• Owner/Operator

  CalorieLookup.com (Sole Proprietorship)

  (Sole Proprietorship; Myself Only; Computer Software industry)

  September 2007 — Present (2 years 3 months)

  CalorieLookup is the web based calorie diary designed to help you maintain a healthy weight and lifestyle.
  
  CalorieLookup is a side/hobby project that I work on in my spare time.

• Director, Product Management

  Windermere Services

  (Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Real Estate industry)

  November 2007 — November 2008 (1 year 1 month)

  Our goal is to make http://windermere.com the #1 public real estate web site. We are going to accomplish this through true user-centered design, the efforts of our top notch development team, and tight project management. Stay tuned!

• Lead Program Manager

  Microsoft

  (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; MSFT; Computer Software industry)

  May 2006 — September 2007 (1 year 5 months)

  Lead program management team for tablet developer platform until March 2007, and then a new team creating innovative, but still semi-secret, platforms.

• User Experience Manager

  Microsoft

  (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; MSFT; Computer Software industry)

  May 2005 — May 2006 (1 year 1 month)

  Lead design, usability, documentation, and localization for Microsoft Virtual Earth and MapPoint family of products.

• Usability Engineer, Usability Manager

  Microsoft

  (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; MSFT; Computer Software industry)

  March 1998 — May 2005 (7 years 3 months)

  Usability engineer, and later usability manager, for Microsoft's Visual Studio family of products. Lead user centered design efforts across the suite of of developer tools.

Rick Spencer’s Education

• George Mason University

  M.A. , Human Factors Engineering , 1995 — 1999

  Human Factors Engineering is a field of cognitive psychology with a focus on designing artifacts and software that are easy and effective to use from the point of view of the human mind.

  Activities and Societies:

  Practicum at the University of Maryland's Shock Trauma Center doing research on anesthesiologists and patient resuscitation.
  
  Focused on human performance in real time safety critical task domains, as well the psychology of programming.

• Earlham College

  BA , Philosophy , 1986 — 1990

Rick Spencer’s Contact Settings

Interested In:

• consulting offers
• job inquiries
• expertise requests
• reference requests
• getting back in touch