UX Pathways – Season 2 Episode 2: Elizabeth Rosenzweig

Discover the unique user experience path that Elizabeth Rosenzweig, Principal Product Designer at Omnicell, Founder & Director at World Usability Day, followed in this second episode of Season 2. https://worldusabilityday.org/

This episode of UX Pathways features Elizabeth Rosen, an influential figure in user experience (UX) design, who shares insights about her multifaceted career, the evolution of usability and UX, and her role as founder and director of World Usability Day. Elizabeth currently balances three roles: Principal Product Designer at Omnicell, Adjunct Professor at Brandeis University, and leading World Usability Day, a global event promoting usability and accessibility.

Elizabeth’s career journey began in photography and graphic design, later transitioning unexpectedly into UX through graduate studies at MIT’s Media Lab. She was part of the first graduating class that blended art and technology, working on pioneering imaging technology before UX terminology was formalized. She spent over a decade at Kodak, contributing to innovations that influenced Apple’s products, including four patents. After Kodak, she became a consultant for 17 years, engaging with various organizations and teaching, before joining Omnicell full-time to work on autonomous pharmacy solutions aimed at reducing healthcare costs.

World Usability Day, founded by Elizabeth in 2005, was inspired by Earth Day and aims to raise awareness about usability’s impact on global challenges aligned with the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals, especially health. The event has grown to encompass tens of thousands of activities worldwide, emphasizing collaboration across diverse UX-related fields. During the pandemic, World Usability Day expanded its digital presence with initiatives like the Design Challenge and a speaker series focused on marginalized communities, reflecting inclusivity and social impact.

Elizabeth stresses the importance of usability as the foundational principle of UX. She argues that the field has become fragmented with subdomains like UI, CX, and service design, which can dilute focus. She advocates for a unified approach centered on usability, broadening its meaning to include sustainability and ethical considerations, such as designing modular, environmentally responsible products. Collaboration among various UX organizations and disciplines is crucial to harnessing the field’s potential for social good rather than mere economic growth.

On the future of UX careers, Elizabeth notes the field’s accessibility to entrants from diverse backgrounds—design, psychology, computing, marketing—but emphasizes the need for substantial training and education. She highlights that UX is a complex, evolving discipline requiring a solid foundation in methodologies and user research. The profession offers an engaging blend of creativity, technology, and social impact, making it attractive and meaningful.

Key Highlights

Elizabeth Rosen’s current roles: Founder/Director of World Usability Day, Principal Product Designer at Omnicell, Adjunct Professor at Brandeis University.
Career path: Started in photography and graphic design → MIT Media Lab (early UX-related work) → Kodak (20+ years, 4 patents) → 17 years consulting → Omnicell.
World Usability Day origins: Modeled after Earth Day (1970), focuses on usability to support UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Growth and initiatives: Tens of thousands of global events since 2005; added digital Design Challenge, speaker series focusing on marginalized voices, and aims for UN calendar inclusion by 2023.
Usability as foundation: Usability is the core principle that should unify UX disciplines; broadening usability to include sustainability and ethical design.
Field fragmentation: UX has splintered into subfields (UI, CX, service design), which complicates collaboration and clarity.
Future of UX: Accessible to many backgrounds but requires formal education and training; offers an evolving, interdisciplinary, and socially impactful career.

Transcript

[Music]

Marc: Welcome to another episode of UX Pathways. I’m excited to have Elizabeth Rosenzweig here today. Did I get it right?

Elizabeth: Yes, you did.

Marc: Great! It’s a pleasure to have you. I’ve been a fan of your work, and I’d love for everyone to get to know you. Could you tell us your current roles?

Elizabeth: I actually have three roles. The one I’m most proud of is Founder and Director of World Usability Day. I’m also a Principal Product Designer at Omnicell, and an Adjunct Professor at Brandeis University.

Marc: That’s impressive.

Elizabeth: It’s funny—my intern at Domino’s recently asked how I do all of this. Early in my career, I couldn’t have managed it. But as I gained experience, I realized these roles represent different parts of who I am.

World Usability Day is my service work. I was raised to believe in leaving the world better than you found it. Teaching is another passion of mine. I teach in Brandeis’s User-Centered Design graduate program. It’s an asynchronous online program, which allows me the flexibility to teach while working full-time and managing World Usability Day. And of course, I maintain a busy personal life beyond work.

Getting Into UX

Marc: Very inspiring. You mentioned World Usability Day—did that lead you into user experience?

Elizabeth: Not exactly. My undergraduate degree was in photography and graphic design. I even studied at several art schools, including the San Francisco Art Institute.

Back then, UX didn’t exist. Usability barely existed. My plan was to stay in visual design.

But fate had other ideas. I applied to graduate school and dreamed of attending RISD. My parents encouraged me to apply to one more program, and they found this quirky lab at MIT. Honestly, I didn’t expect MIT to be right for me. I didn’t get into RISD—which was upsetting—but I did get into MIT.

I ended up in the first graduating class of the MIT Media Lab. In those early days, they brought artists like me together with programmers. We essentially built early versions of tools like Photoshop before Photoshop existed.

After graduating, no one really knew what to do with us. I worked in QA, marketing, engineering—roles that didn’t yet have names like UX.

I spent about 20 years in imaging companies, eventually landing at Kodak, which tied together my interests in photography, design, and technology. Kodak felt meaningful to me. I joined in 1991 and stayed until 2005. At one point, Kodak had a corporate design and usability group of 150 people. I even earned four patents, which Kodak later sold to Apple. Some of that work is visible today in iPhoto and map-based image browsing interfaces.

After Kodak, I spent 17 years consulting, including time at the Bentley User Experience Center. Consulting was fun and allowed me to deepen my involvement with World Usability Day. I also served as President of UPA.

But after the pandemic, I missed being part of a consistent team. I wanted to iterate on my career, not just maintain it. So I decided to look for a full-time role—on my own terms. I wanted healthcare, an impactful domain, and a strong team environment. That led me to Omnicell, where I work on autonomous pharmacy systems to improve medication distribution and reduce costs. The impact on patient care is meaningful.

This year, World Usability Day’s theme is healthcare again, aligned with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal #3: Good Health and Well-Being.

Origin of World Usability Day

Marc: You mentioned earlier that World Usability Day was modeled after Earth Day. Is that the inspiration?

Elizabeth: Absolutely. Earth Day began in 1970 after Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring exposed the dangers of DDT. It was the first major wake-up call about environmental harm. On April 22, 1970, 200,000 students and members of Congress marched on the United Nations, demanding action on climate issues.

Earth Day became a global movement. Recycling became commonplace worldwide. Even President Nixon—who was dealing with Vietnam and later Watergate—created the Environmental Protection Agency as a direct result of Earth Day activism.

That success inspired the model for World Usability Day, which launched in 2005. Since then, events have been held every year on the second Thursday of November across more than 180 countries. We’ve had tens of thousands of events globally.

Since the pandemic, we’ve expanded beyond a single day. New initiatives include:

A global design challenge, now sponsored by SIGCHI and HCCII
A speaker series supporting marginalized communities, now hosted on our YouTube channel
Topics like Arabic UX, futures from Pakistan, design perspectives from Kenya, and many others

We are also working on an ambitious initiative: getting World Usability Day recognized on the UN calendar, ideally by the 2023 General Assembly. Our goal is to demonstrate how UX and usability can support all 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals.

The Future of UX

Marc: Speaking of the future, where do you think UX is headed?

Elizabeth: Collaboration is the future. Our field is only about 40 years old, and we’ve become too splintered—UX, UI, IA, CX, service design, usability, human factors. That fragmentation was useful at first, but now it’s holding us back.

This is why we’ve kept the name World Usability Day despite requests to change it. Usability is the foundation. If something isn’t usable, nothing else matters—no elegant interface, no clever strategy.

And usability now extends far beyond screens. For example, our so-called “phones” are tiny computers. They generate e-waste, extract precious metals, and require constant replacement. That’s not usable in a sustainable sense. Why aren’t they modular? Why aren’t they repairable?

Usability must encompass long-term impact—sustainability, accessibility, equity, fairness, environmental responsibility.

We’re building a partner network because we believe the only way forward is together. Already we have collaborations with:

World IA Day
SIGCHI
HCCII
UXPA
24 Hours of UX
IFIP (older than SIGCHI!)
Arabic HCI
British Computer Society
Plain Language groups
Human factors and graphic design communities

And many more.

The goal is unified action for good—not just better products, but a better world.

Why UX Is So Popular Today

Marc: Final question: Why do you think UX and usability have become such sought-after careers? So many people want to enter this field.

Elizabeth: A few reasons.

First, it’s a field where you can be creative and technical at the same time. You can come from design, psychology, research, computing, marketing—it’s incredibly interdisciplinary.

Second, it looks easy to enter, especially with boot camps and certificate programs. And while those can be good entry points, I strongly encourage people to pursue real, foundational training—whether academic, hybrid, or professional. Choose a program that matches your learning style.

UX is fun, but it’s also complex. We have deep methods, evolving practices, and broad responsibilities. The more you understand the foundations, the more enjoyable and effective the work becomes.

And finally, the work matters. You talk to users, observe real environments, synthesize insights, create wireframes, evaluate solutions—you shape products and services that genuinely impact people’s lives.

I think that’s why it’s attractive. It’s meaningful work. And we need good people.

Marc: It was a pleasure having you on the podcast. Thank you for your inspiration and everything you’ve done for the industry.

Elizabeth: Thank you. And thank you for the opportunity to speak with you. I love seeing the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. Have a great day.