How to load a field from a user that is being viewed
Try creating a user-profile.tpl.php file in your theme and messing around with that.

Default contents are:

&lt;div class="profile"&gt;
  &lt;?php print $user_profile; ?&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;


And I suggest using a variable name other than $user as $user is a global variable referring to the logged in user.