Glossary
Acronyms
BIPOC
Black, Indigenous, and Other People of Color
DEI
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
ERG
Employee Resource Group
HBCU
Historically Black College or University
HSI
Hispanic Serving Institutions
ITIN
Taxpayer Identification Number
KPI
Key Performance Indicator
OKR
Objectives and Key Results
P2P
Peer to Peer
SSN
Social Security Number
SMART Goals
Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely Goals
UX
User Experience
UXR
User Experience Research
QA
Quality Assurance
WCAG
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
Definitions
Accessibility
An attribute and professional discipline that indicates whether an experience is open to all.
Accessible Language
Accessible language is language that accommodates people of all ages and abilities, including those with cognitive disabilities, people with low literacy skills, and speakers of various languages.
Source: www.boia.org/blog/ditch-the-fancy-vocabulary-for-accessible-language
Accessible Physical Space
The world around us can be built in ways that tend to be more or less accessible to people with disabilities. Accessibility initiatives and rules related to the physical world should serve to strategically enhance access, which is a civil right. Schools, libraries, hotels, markets, theaters, recreation facilities, restrooms, transportation, and any place the public uses or visits should be created in a way that does not hinder independent use by people with disabilities. There may be differences in the rules and expectations between new projects, alterations, and existing spaces.
Source: www.accessibility.com/physical-accessibility
Ad Campaign
An ad campaign is a set of advertisements that revolve around a single message and are intended to achieve a particular goal. For example, a company might create an ad campaign to meet one of the following business objectives: To create brand awareness for a new product. To drive sales of a product or service.
Source: www.wordstream.com/ad-campaigns
Adoption (Product and Design)
Adoption is the process of prospective users becoming actual users of a product.
Source: www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/adoption-and-design-how-to-turn-prospects-into-users
Alternative Credit Scoring
Refers to the use of data from digital platforms and applications on consumer behavior for credit risk assessment. In the past, credit bureaus were the sole source of consumer credit information, which lending institutions use to reduce bad debt and market risk. Alternative credit scoring demonstrates the potential strength of combining data from multiple sources, like airtime usage, mobile money usage, geolocation, bills payment history, and social media usage. It helps lenders gain access to the underbanked sections of the population, by using alternative credit scores to extend credit to this new target group. This brings down risks for alternative lenders as well as lowers the interest rates for borrowers, based on their alternate credit scores.
Source: development.asia/explainer/heres-how-alternative-credit-scoring-can-improve-poors-access-loans
Appropriation
To take or make use of without authority or right.
AI Ethics
A system of moral principles and techniques intended to inform the development and responsible use of Artificial Intelligence
Source: whatis.techtarget.com/definition/AI-code-of-ethics
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) applies advanced analysis and logic-based techniques, including machine learning, to interpret events, support and automate decisions and take actions.
Source: www.gartner.com/en/information-technology/glossary/artificial-intelligence
Audience Research
Audience research compiles important information about groups of people that your organization would like to target. It helps you to understand the differences between each audience group — their pain points, needs, and behaviors, among other things — and allows you to segment them by their common traits.
Source: www.forumone.com/services/audience-research
Banking Deserts
A banking desert is usually defined as an area with no banks or branches, but there is no standard definition of how big such an area should be. Following previous research, we define a banking desert as a census tract—a relatively homogeneous area or neighborhood containing about 4,000 people—with no branches within ten miles of the center of the tract.
Source: libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2016/03/banking-deserts-branch-closings-and-soft-information
Bias
A bias is a tendency, inclination, or prejudice toward or against something or someone. Biases are often based on stereotypes, rather than actual knowledge of an individual or circumstance. Whether positive or negative, such cognitive shortcuts can result in prejudgments that lead to rash decisions or discriminatory practices.
Bias is a natural inclination for or against an idea, object, group, or individual. It is often learned and is highly dependent on variables like a person’s socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, educational background, etc. At the individual level, bias can negatively impact someone’s personal and professional relationships.
Source: www.psychologytoday.com/gb/basics/bias
Blockchain
Blockchain is a a digital database containing information (such as records of financial transactions) that can be simultaneously used and shared within a large decentralized, publicly accessible network
Source: www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/blockchain
Community Centered Design (CCD)
Community Centered Design is an approach that scales up the consolidated methods and tools of User Centered Design to community size. This consists of the designer understanding values and behaviours, and collaborating with the most active social communities in conceiving and developing solutions.
Source: ep.liu.se/ecp/067/007/ecp1267007.pdf
Culture Groups
A cultural group is defined simply as a collection of individuals who share a core set of beliefs, patterns of behavior, and values. The groups may be large or small, but they are identified by their ways of thinking and behaving.
Source: nccc.georgetown.edu/curricula/awareness/D17.html
Cultural Norms
Cultural norms are the standards we live by. They are the shared expectations and rules that guide behavior of people within social groups. Cultural norms are learned and reinforced from parents, friends, teachers and others while growing up in a society.
Source: www.globalcognition.org/cultural-norms
Digital Health Literacy
Learning how to use digital tools in health technology.
Diversity
Diversity includes knowing how to relate to qualities and conditions that are different from our own and outside the groups to which we belong, yet are present in other individuals and groups. These include but are not limited to age, ethnicity, class, gender, physical abilities/qualities, race, sexual orientation, as well as religious status, gender expression, educational background, geographical location, income, marital status, parental status, and work experiences. We acknowledge that categories of difference are not always fixed but also can be fluid, we respect individual rights to self-identification, and we recognize that no one culture is intrinsically superior to another.
Diversity tenets include:
Understanding and appreciating interdependence of humanity, cultures, and the natural environment.
Practicing mutual respect for qualities and experiences that are different from our own.
Understanding that diversity includes not only ways of being but also ways of knowing;
Recognizing that personal, cultural and institutionalized discrimination creates and sustains privileges for some while creating and sustaining disadvantages for others;
Building alliances across differences enables us to work together to eradicate all forms of discrimination.
Example Dimensions of Diversity:
Race
Gender
Socioeconomic status
Physical Ability/Qualities
Upbringing
Education/Skills
Neurodiversity
Language/Linguistics
Ethnicity
Life Experiences/Privilege
Spiritual/Religious Beliefs
Cultural
Physical attributes (hair texture, nose and eye shape, etc)
Political
Sexual Orientation
Income
Mental ability
Geographic location
Sources: www.qcc.cuny.edu/diversity/definition.html ; www.kornferry.com/content/dam/kornferry/docs/fact-sheets/ManagingInclusion_Fact-Sheet.pdf
Digital Fluency
Digital fluency is the ability to understand, select, and use the technologies and technological systems.
Source: www.digitallearningcollab.com/blog/what-is-digital-fluency
Emerging Markets
An emerging market economy is the economy of a developing nation that is becoming more engaged with global markets as it grows. Countries classified as emerging market economies are those with some, but not all, of the characteristics of a developed market.
Source: www.investopedia.com/terms/e/emergingmarketeconomy.asp
End User
This refers to the consumer of a good or service, often who has some innate know-how that is unique to consumers.
In a literal sense, the term end user is used to distinguish the person who purchases and uses the good or service from individuals who are involved in the stages of its design, development, and production.
Source: www.investopedia.com/terms/e/end-user.asp
Stereotype
A widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing.
Source: Oxford Languages
Extreme Personas
Personas are fictional characters, which you create based upon your research in order to represent the different user types that might use your service, product, site, or brand in a similar way.
Source: www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/personas
Equitable Design
Equitable design is about human centered design that takes into account historical and systemic inequities.
Equity
Equity is a solution for addressing imbalanced social systems. Justice can take equity one step further by fixing the systems in a way that leads to long-term, sustainable, equitable access for generations to come. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), equity is defined as, “the absence of avoidable or remediable differences among groups of people, whether those groups are defined socially, economically, demographically or geographically.” Therefore, as the WHO notes, health inequities involve more than lack of equal access to needed resources to maintain or improve health outcomes. They also refer to difficulty when it comes to “inequalities that infringe on fairness and human rights norms.”
Sources: onlinepublichealth.gwu.edu/resources/equity-vs-equality; www.who.int/health-topics/health-equity
FICO Score
A FICO score is a credit score created by the Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO). Lenders use these scores along with other details on borrowers’ credit reports to assess credit risk and determine whether to extend credit. FICO scores take into account data in five areas to determine creditworthiness: payment history, current level of indebtedness, types of credit used, length of credit history, and new credit accounts.
Source: www.investopedia.com/terms/f/ficoscore.asp
Financial Inclusion
The act of lowering financial barriers by providing intentional support and full access to all financial products, knowledge, and services—to everyone.
Financial Institution
A company engaged in the business of dealing with financial and monetary transactions such as deposits, loans, investments, and currency exchange.
Source: www.investopedia.com/terms/f/financialinstitution.asp
Financial Literacy
The ability to use knowledge and skills to manage financial resources effectively for a lifetime of financial well-being.
Source: www.pbs.org/your-life-your-money/more/what_is_financial_literacy.php
Financial Practices
Set of standard methods for carrying out financial activities
Financial Product
The term “financial product or service” means extending credit and servicing loans, including acquiring, purchasing, selling, brokering, or other extensions of credit (other than solely extending commercial credit to a person who originates consumer credit transactions).
Source: www.law.cornell.edu/definitions/uscode.php
Financial System
A financial system is a set of institutions, such as banks, insurance companies, and stock exchanges, that permit the exchange of funds. Financial systems exist on firm, regional, and global levels. Borrowers, lenders, and investors exchange current funds to finance projects, either for consumption or productive investments, and to pursue a return on their financial assets. The financial system also includes sets of rules and practices that borrowers and lenders use to decide which projects get financed, who finances projects, and terms of financial deals.
Source: www.investopedia.com/terms/f/financial-system.asp
FinTech (Financial Technology)
Financial technology (Fintech) is used to describe new tech that seeks to improve and automate the delivery and use of financial services. At its core, fintech is utilized to help companies, business owners and consumers better manage their financial operations, processes, and lives by utilizing specialized software and algorithms that are used on computers and, increasingly, smartphones.
Source: www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fintech.asp
Inclusion
The term inclusion is used to describe the active, intentional, and ongoing engagement with diversity -- in people, in the curriculum, in the co-curriculum, and in communities (e.g. intellectual, social, cultural, geographic) with which individuals might connect.
Source: diversity.gwu.edu/diversity-and-inclusion-defined
Inclusive Design
Inclusive Design is a methodology, born out of digital environments, that enables and draws on the full range of human diversity. Most importantly, this means including and learning from people with a range of perspectives. Inclusive design doesn’t mean you’re designing one thing for all people. You’re designing a diversity of ways to participate so that everyone has a sense of belonging.
Source: www.microsoft.com/design/inclusive
Inclusive Sizing
Creating clothing in a wide range of sizes and not having certain sizes separated into their own classification (e.g plus size).
Inclusive Language
Inclusive language seeks to treat all people with respect, dignity, and impartiality. It is constructed to bring everyone into the group and exclude no one. Inclusive language avoids biases, slang, or expressions that discriminate against diverse groups of people.
Sources: buffer.com; blog.hubspot.com/marketing/inclusive-language
Informal Economy
Is the diversified set of economic activities, enterprises, jobs, and workers that are not regulated or protected by the state. The concept originally applied to self-employment in small unregistered enterprises. It has been expanded to include wage employment in unprotected jobs.
Source: www.wiego.org/informal-economy
Implicit Bias
A prejudice that is present but not consciously held or recognized
Intersectionality
The interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.
Source: Oxford Dictionary
Lived Experience
Personal knowledge about the world gained through direct, first-hand involvement in everyday events rather than through representations constructed by other people.
Source: sprc.org
Marginalized (Historically Marginalized, Systematically Marginalized, Marginalized Groups, Economically Marginalized Groups, Historically Underserved Populations)
Marginalized communities are those excluded from mainstream social, economic, educational, and/or cultural life.
Mortgage Discrimination
Mortgage discrimination or mortgage lending discrimination is the practice of banks, governments or other lending institutions denying loans to one or more groups of people primarily on the basis of race, ethnic origin, sex or religion.
Neurodivergent
Neurodiversity includes a variety of differences in individual brain functionality and human traits, which can include conditions like ADHD, dyslexia, social anxiety disorders, autism and more.
Non-Negotiable Variables
Tradeoffs that can’t be compromised and should be prioritized.
Predatory Lending
Predatory lending typically refers to lending practices that impose unfair, deceptive, or abusive loan terms on borrowers.
Source: www.investopedia.com/terms/p/predatory_lending.asp
Product Development Lifecycle
A sequence of all the required activities that a company must perform to develop, manufacture and sell a product. These activities can include marketing, research, engineering, design, quality assurance, manufacturing, and a whole chain of suppliers and vendors.
Product Inclusion
Product Inclusion is the practice of bringing an inclusive lens throughout the entire development and design process to build better products and grow business. It looks at 13 dimensions of diversity and the intersection of those dimensions.
Psychometric Evaluation
Psychometric evaluation is a scientific test that organizations administer to assess a person’s personality attributes and cognitive capabilities. Psychometric evaluation test helps recruiters determine if an individual is suitable for a job opportunity based on two parameters, i.e., ability and personality. It determines whether the candidate possesses the skills, attitude and behavioral tendencies needed to perform efficiently and effectively on the job.
Source: mettl.com/glossary/p/psychometric-evaluation
Redlining
Redlining is the systematic denial of various services to residents of specific, often racially associated, neighborhoods or communities, either explicitly or through the selective raising of prices. While the best known examples of redlining have involved denial of financial services such as banking or insurance, other services such as health care or even supermarkets have been denied to residents.
The term redlining comes from a set of “residential security maps" commissioned by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board in 1935, created to indicate the level of security for real estate investments in each city. "Type D" neighborhoods were outlined in red and were considered the most risky for mortgage support; these included most of the African-American urban households.
Source: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining
Funding Rounds (Seed, Series A, Series B, Series C)
There are many types of funding rounds available to startups, depending upon the industry and the level of interest among potential investors. It's not uncommon for startups to engage in what is known as "seed" funding or angel investor funding at the outset. Next, these funding rounds can be followed by Series A, B and C funding rounds, as well as additional efforts to earn capital as well, if appropriate. Series A, B and C are necessary ingredients for a business that decides bootstrapping, or merely surviving off of the generosity of friends, family and the depth of their own pockets, will not suffice or is not feasible.
Seed: The first official equity funding stage. It typically represents the first official money that a business venture or enterprise raises.
Series A: An investment in a privately-held, start-up company after it has shown progress in building its business model and demonstrates the potential to grow and generate revenue.
Series B: The second round of funding for a business through investment, including private equity investors and venture capitalists that takes place when the company has accomplished certain milestones in developing its business and is past the initial startup stage.
Series C: Businesses that make it to Series C funding sessions are already quite successful. These companies look for additional funding in order to help them develop new products, expand into new markets, or even to acquire other companies. In Series C rounds, investors inject capital into the meat of successful businesses, in an effort to receive more than double that amount back. Series C funding is focused on scaling the company, growing as quickly and as successfully as possible.
Stakeholders
A person with an interest in the outcome of something.
Systematic Barriers
Policies and practices that limit the participation of a group of people in something.
Sustainability
Sustainability means meeting our own needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. In addition to natural resources, we also need social and economic resources. Sustainability is not just environmentalism. Embedded in most definitions of sustainability we also find concerns for social equity and economic development.
Source: www.mcgill.ca/sustainability/files/sustainability/what-is-sustainability.pdf
Target Market
A particular group of consumers that a product is targeted towards.
Tokenism
The policy or practice of making only a symbolic effort (as to desegregate); the practice of doing something (such as hiring a person who belongs to a minority group) only to prevent criticism and give the appearance that people are being treated fairly
Trope
A word or expression used in a figurative sense, a cliché.
Source: Oxford dictionary
Universal Design
Universal design is the process of creating products that are accessible to people with a wide range of abilities, disabilities, and other characteristics. Universally designed products accommodate individual preferences and abilities; communicate necessary information effectively (regardless of ambient conditions or the user's sensory abilities); and can be approached, reached, manipulated, and used regardless of the individual's body size, posture, or mobility. Application of universal design principles minimizes the need for assistive technology, results in products compatible with assistive technology, and makes products more usable by everyone, not just people with disabilities. Typically, products are designed to be most suitable for the average user. In contrast, products that are designed according to principles of universal design are designed to be usable by everyone, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design (Connell et al., The Principles of Universal Design).
Sources: www.washington.edu/doit/what-universal-design-0; www.fastcompany.com/90243282/the-no-1-thing-youre-getting-wrong-about-inclusive-design
Underbanked
The term underbanked refers to individuals or families who have a bank account but often rely on alternative financial services such as money orders, check-cashing services, and payday loans rather than on traditional loans and credit cards to manage their finances and fund purchase. This may be because they lack access to convenient, affordable banking services or because they need or prefer to use alternatives to traditional financial services.
Source: www.investopedia.com/terms/u/underbanked.asp
Unbanked
"Unbanked" is an informal term for adults who do not use banks or banking institutions in any capacity. Unbanked persons generally pay for things in cash or else purchase money orders or prepaid debit cards. Unbanked persons also typically do not have insurance, pensions, or any other type of professional money-related services. They may take advantage of alternative financial services, such as check-cashing and payday lending, if such services are available to them.
Source: www.investopedia.com/terms/u/unbanked.asp
User Segmentation
User segmentation is the process of separating users into distinct groups, or segments, based on shared characteristics.
Source: www.pendo.io/glossary/user-segmentation
Venture Capital
Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity and a type of financing that investors provide to startup companies and small businesses that are believed to have long-term growth potential. Venture capital generally comes from well-off investors, investment banks, and any other financial institutions. However, it does not always take a monetary form; it can also be provided in the form of technical or managerial expertise. Venture capital is typically allocated to small companies with exceptional growth potential, or to companies that have grown quickly and appear poised to continue to expand.