Recent content on Takuya Kitazawa
This is a now page . I will update the page roughly once a month to share where I am, what I'm focusing on, and what I don't do . --> Summer in Ottawa is so pleasant. Moderately energetic, several local events, not too busy, not too hot, with a usual sense of community. 4 days catching up with friends in the states I visited my friends in Austin, TX, last week. First international trip in 10…
Data and statistical insights are key drivers for international development. They allow decision-makers to: objectively understand the reality and complexity of the world, logically coordinate various development activities between conflicting priorities, and effectively distribute finite resources, such as money and people. From the United Nations and World Bank to governments to non-profits,…
Knowledge and skills are the power. One can be self-reliant and seize a brighter future with the right capacity, even without status and wealth. Yet, its foundation — education — is extremely fragile and a prime example of today's global inequality. Too many students over teachers. Low relevance of the content to learners' reality. Limited choices due to financial and geographical…
Our world is beautifully complex, but it doesn't necessarily have to be as complicated as it is today. Complex vs. Complicated Being complex and complicated are fundamentally different . The former is always unpredictable, dynamic, interdependent, and self-organizing by nature. Numerous factors influence one another, and the output for a given input is probabilistic, if not completely random.…
By and large, digital systems consist of two different parts: data and information . This website, takuti.me , for example, is composed of a combination of numbers, text, images, and links. They exist in the digital world as data, which can be represented by the binary digits 0 and 1. Think of them as raw ingredients of a meal; each of them can be something yet unsophisticated to us as-is. On the…
There are many educational practices out there. Recognizing the complexity, communities proposed a methodology called Design-Based Research (DBR). In contrast to traditional studies conducted in controlled laboratory settings, DBR contextualizes academic research by placing researchers alongside students and teachers as collaborators. Through an iterative design and feedback process in the field,…
Technology is contextual, and hence neither oversimplification nor overcomplication is helpful; it'd be advisable to understand realistic constraints in a very environment and take a tailored approach point by point. But how can we "see" real challenges and opportunities a person, organization, community, country, or region faces in the information age? Where are you currently at, in terms of…
As a technical product builder based in Ottawa, Canada, I have provided the following services to individuals and organizations worldwide since 2022. See my portfolio to learn more about my work, and feel free to contact me for a casual inquiry. Terms differ depending on a client's needs, location, and currency. What to expect : My work is informed by the principles of the ITIL framework and…
People worldwide exhibit varying levels of excitement or concern about AI, from the rich to the poor, ordinary citizens to global leaders to politicians, regardless of their occupation and industry. One cannot avoid the wave, even if "I'm not an expert" or "I don't use computers." Therefore, before further investing in the technology, it is essential for each one of us to face reality, understand…
Short answer: There are two extremes in our world—hyper-connected world of rich countries, and a disconnected world of underserved communities like rural Africa. I've seen both, and I conclude that being in a low-resource and low-connectivity environment was neither a disadvantage nor a limitation if they could receive localized, tailored services. Being online is a privilege First of all,…
Digital literacy and skills are essential anywhere across the globe, but especially in developing countries where socioeconomic opportunities are limited. In the constrained environment, ICT can be a game-changing tool that eliminates physical boundaries and unlocks numerous possibilities in and beyond communities of the oppressed. Thus, governments and organizations actively invest in technology…
The more senior I am, the bigger my work is. And the larger the problem is, the more I feel powerless. I cannot change the complex systems. But, we can. That's one of my greatest realizations while pursuing my career in tech and philanthropy. Power of Collective Actions It's all about scalability. Yes, I can work directly with some individuals on a certain topic, like I do for mentorship . The…
Scope Served as the sole product partner to Uchembere Wabwino Maternity Clinic for designing and implementing a digital health learning application. Defined UX/UI and technical requirements for low-literacy and offline environments in Sub-Saharan Africa, enabling onboarding of 30+ non-technical users for concept validation. Key Features Optimized for Low-Literacy Users : Provide a step-by-step,…
For an inquiry, I can be reached at hello@takuti.me . Alternatively, you can go ahead scheduling time with me at Calendly :
"How's Africa?" —my friends outside of the continent frequently ask. Where should I start...? Malawi—the 10th poorest country in the world 1 , with a life expectancy of around 60 years 2 , less than 30% internet penetration, a median age under 18, and more than 80% of the population living in rural areas 3 . It's a country far from discussions about race and ethnic diversity and predominantly uses…
Start your digital transformation from the field, by understanding people. Please —your people are not here, in this big conference hall in the big city. That's how I concluded my guest presentation at a conference organized by the ICT Association of Malawi (ICTAM) in the capital city earlier this month, reflecting on my engagements with Malawi's youth- and rural-centered population 1 . ICT…
"China!" A random stranger yells at me. Welcome to Malawi —the Warm Heart of Africa— though I don't consider it "friendly" and it is simply racial discrimination 1 . Over the last nine months living in the country, I've also received countless judgemental comments on my character, socio-economic status, and thought and behavioral patterns based on the stereotypes they might have…
Muli bwanji? ("How are you?" in a polite way, in Malawi's local language called Chichewa) A police, immigration, or military personnel asks. If you respond Ndili bwino. Kaya inu? ("I'm fine. And you?"), they smile. If you reply in English with confusion, like Ah...hello? there is a higher chance that the personnel will ask you to show your passport and explain what you are doing here. Language is…
Over the last few articles, I kept introducing Malawi as one of the poorest countries in the world. The statement is based on the World Population Review's "Poorest Countries in the World" report , and Malawi is ranked the 10th poorest country in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP), according to the World Bank-sourced data. But, what does the 10th poorest life look like? Imbalance between…
During the holiday season, I traveled to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, Dubai in UAE, and Cairo, Luxor, and Aswan in Egypt. It was an awakening experience visiting these big cities after staying almost half a year in Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world 1 . At first, I was excited to relativize the situations I observed in Malawi compared to more developed environments in North Africa and…
In short, the year 2023 has brought deepness to my life. It is exactly what I stated in the 2022 reflection as something I wanted to try next year, and I have committed to exploring the problems I have been concerned about for the last decade— skewed power dynamics and loss of humanity in the use of information technology. From January to December, by surveying academic papers, traveling to…
Children are the hope, and they represent the future. That's what I immediately understood after becoming an international volunteer in Malawi, a small African country with more than 50% of the less-than-18 population. Thus, although it won't be the same, I was able to deeply relate my experience to Little Princes: One Man's Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal , which illustrates…
In September 2023, I was reading Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow for the month's book club I have been organizing with my friends back in Canada for the last 12 months. It's a story that uses digital games as an interface between human beings; throughout the book, the nerdy characters communicate through the games, grow with the games, and are helped by the games. Takeaway?…
Here in southeastern Africa, I see Malawi's digital transformation is still immature and yet to be caught up in many aspects. As a software developer volunteering in the country, one of the immediate questions I came up with was about data privacy. Unfortunately, while the use of digital technologies is slowly but certainly progressing in various sectors, data governance is rarely spoken as far as…
It's International Literacy Day . As an ICT Advisor at a Malawian local organization, I'd like to review the state of digital literacy in Malawi. An important context here is that, as the Digital 2023: Malawi reported, the country's internet penetration, and digital literacy inherently, stays very low, and the urgency let the Government of Malawi implement the Digital Malawi Program to accelerate…
On July 28, 2023, I moved to Malawi, a beautiful landlocked country in southeastern Africa, for a Canadian international volunteering program at World University Service of Canada (WUSC). The program is funded by the Canadian government, and the organization sends Canadians, including permanent residents, to developing countries to advance Canada's Feminist International Assistance Policy . As of…
Scope Led digital product and infrastructure strategy at a Malawian non-profit, from in-field user research and capacity assessment to mobile app delivery and web performance optimization. Managed a team of 10 communication and IT professionals as an Acting Director while representing the organization nationwide through conference presentations, workshop facilitation, and stakeholder engagements.…
Let's talk about running. I've been a consistent runner for over five years now. To me, running is a way to have a sense of solitude. The quiet, focused moments naturally allow me to connect with my inner self and organize cluttered thoughts. The process of internalizing what I'm feeling/experiencing at that moment always helped me to maintain and strengthen my mental health however circumstances…
It's easy to build an analogy between information and food: both of them are substances we consume daily, and unbalanced, too much consumption will result in serious physical, mental, and societal problems. Make sense, right? Even so, the capitalist society is filled with a bulk of cheap, mass-produced, and processed products, which are very "tasty" thanks to corporations' engineering efforts. And…
Autonomy is important. Nobody wants to be enslaved or manipulated by other people 1 . In the context of AI ethics, ensuring one's autonomy by proper algorithm/interface design (e.g., transparency, fairness) is one of the biggest challenges researchers and practitioners are tackling these days. But let's be honest: how much of our value, identity, and behaviors are truly determined by myself?…
As an engineer working on machine learning and data science for several years, now is indeed an interesting moment to see the impact of large language models (LLMs) such as OpenAI's GPT. Overall, I'm personally optimistic about the current situation and the near future, where a lot of simple work can be supported by the machines 1 (say ChatGPT, for example), and we can alternatively invest in the…
***** : If you leave me free, I naturally flow Point A to Point B, but it is not always unidirectional; under a certain condition, I could go in the reverse direction or circulate in a surrounding environment. Ultimately, the movement depends very much on the other's behavior. We are mutually connected as part of larger systems, and our mission is to carry out something important for everyone to…
When a particular product is presented in an extremely simplistic form, it has become harder for ordinary people to recognize the complexity behind it, making us unconscious about what's going on outside of our sight and triggering an over-simplified reaction. From the end of 2022 to the beginning of 2023, I traveled from the US to Mexico to Japan. One thing that kept sticking to my mind…
A single word describing my 2022 is connection . To overcome day-to-day struggles and establish fresh life as self-employed , as well as permanent resident of Canada , I was continuously supported a lot by new and old human connections I, fortunately, have had across the globe. Through physical experiences like traveling, hiking, and kayaking , I deeply realized the interconnection between myself…
After being independent , several people encouraged me to share my experiences with others as a mentor, since some of the backgrounds are unique yet relevant enough to those who are working inside/outside of the industry: Took multiple roles between engineering, science, and business; Served different scales of business at start-up, Big Tech, and as an independent; Worked globally (both physically…
That is, information in human society is localized, and there is always the existence of real humans throughout the data lifecycle from their generation to collection to aggregation. Even though a specific dataset you are analyzing looks simple, you cannot (and must not) reach a conclusion without understanding its context—how the data are generated, collected, and used by whom, and to whom your…
"Let $\mathcal{U}$ be a set of users ..." User modeling research often begins by stating a set of individuals to formulate. But, since our world is highly contextualized as economics and complexity science have revealed , representing a user as an element of a logical set may be an oversimplification. Here, the fluidity of user behavior explains the importance and potential risks of recent trends…
Information, technology, and inherently everyone's life are highly contextualized and localized. Understanding the simple fact would bring a dramatic shift in how we see the world. In particular, reality tells us the importance of characterizing our world without suppressing the identity of its elements. The driving force behind the world Most importantly, there is nothing like a "united" world,…
With the specialization on Coursera , I've been on a not-too-fancy yet meaningful learning curve over the last few months in the context of machine learning on Google Cloud. One obvious challenge in cloud data management and machine learning is the need for integrating multiple data sources and processing massive records in multi-phases without loss of visibility, scalability, and maintainability.…
At a certain point in my university days in Japan, I was so into reading Complexity: A Guided Tour written by Dr. Melanie Mitchell , Davis Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. I even took their online course (putting the other textbooks needed for the university's exam prep aside). Why? I wanted to find out how society on the internet evolves. As information technology becomes the norm among…
I am concerned about climate change, and what's clear to me after studying several resources is that we cannot discuss the planet's future without thinking about how quickly and safely human society can adapt to using nuclear power at scale. That is, the speed of climate change is just too urgent to rely fully on the other actions we can think of, such as improving consciousness of CO2 emissions ,…
Assume you are a business owner already providing some solutions to the users. Should I consider making significant growth from now on? If I should, what is the best path forward for growth? In that situation, productization can be an essential idea to dive deep into. Importantly, "product" is not a one-size-fits-all concept, and there are multiple, gradual paths to productize an existing solution…
RecSys 2022 , the 2022 edition of a top academic conference in the field of recommender systems, happened last month in Seattle. Even though I didn't attend the event like the last couple of years , it's still fun to check out the papers and see how the research trends, as well as the industry's focuses, are shifting. At a glance, while many studies continuously try to fulfill the gap between…
It's been a month since I officially became self-employed in Canada . So far, things are going quite well, especially in terms of quality of life. Time flows slower, and a day is surprisingly longer than I used to feel. Even though my monthly income in Sep 2022 was roughly 50% of the amount I earned until the previous month, I feel the "cost" for a better life is pretty cheap. And thankfully, the…
September 30 is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation (hashtag: #NDTR) in Canada, a day that we look back on the dark history of the residential school system European settlers had implemented, raise awareness of its impacts, and take an action to rebuild the relationship with Indigenous Peoples. As a foreign national living in Canada, I see understanding the local history, especially the…
As I previously wrote in Why Your Job Title Matters , Quality Habit-Formation , and Ethical Product Developer , I've been intentionally calling myself as Product Developer rather than obvious titles such as Software Engineer, Data Scientist, or Machine Learning Engineer. Now, since I've become a freelancer , I have greater flexibility in choosing how I advertise myself on the internet, and I want…
I have recently got a chance to review machine learning (ML) basics through Machine Learning on Google Cloud Specialization on Coursera . Although none of the contents was really new to me, it was a well-developed series of courses that gives us a high-level overview of the field both in theory and practice, accompanied by hands-on assignments on Google Cloud so we can familiarize ourselves with…
My recent reading of the novel " Klara and the Sun " written by the Novel Prize-winning writer was lovely. Beyond the simple joy of reading the story, the book enabled me to rethink the concept of artificial intelligence "AI" from an ethical standpoint. In my opinion, what's unique about Klara and the Sun was how the author illustrated an AI, Klara, as a character. What I mean by that is how…
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I quit my software engineering job at Amazon on August 31, 2022. One week before my resignation, I was in the ocean for a week-long kayaking trip with my friends on the west coast of Vancouver Island, which turned out to be my longest adventure ever in such a remote environment without any utilities. The vacation was unbelievably fantastic not only because of the unreal scenery & contact with…