How Middlesex helped me build a project for autistic people

During my MSc at Middlesex, I joined the Bentley iTwin4Good challenge, an online programme run through Enactus UK & Ireland. My exams were happening, and I was sharing ideas with my teammate Boudica and talking things through with my brother. Somewhere in that process, MindHaven was born, an idea to help autistic people find sensory-friendly spaces around them.

The first test

The challenge was harder than expected. Boudica attended most sessions while I was preparing for exams and shared her notes and our discussions afterwards.

On deadline day, I got stuck on the technical side. There was a point where I genuinely thought I might have to skip the submission. That same day, Middlesex hosted an AI workshop with Google. I met Emma Omingo there, whom I had previously met at a MediaCity AI workshop. She had also taken part in the iTwin4Good challenge. I told her I was stuck and might not submit but she listened and spent around thirty minutes helping me work through the problem. Those thirty minutes may have felt small for her, but that kindness mattered greatly to me.

We submitted MindHaven and it was highly commended in the iTwin4Good challenge. The recognition itself was welcome, but what it truly gave me mattered more… for the first time, I let myself believe the idea might be real, that it might be worth following as far as it wanted to go.

The evolution of the question

I am not neurodivergent myself so I could not rely on my own experience to understand the problem. I had to listen.

Some conversations stayed with me. I heard about someone who would rather take an hour-long alternative route than face a three-minute tube journey that could leave them overwhelmed for days afterwards.

I had started by thinking about autism and sensory-friendly spaces and realised that the question was broader. Different people can experience the same environment very differently, and the need for more predictable and understandable surroundings is not limited to one group.

My background in Physics helped me approach this differently because science often begins with imagining something we cannot yet see, then testing that idea against reality. I tried to do the same by imagining the experience, but then kept checking that imagination against research and, most importantly, against the people who actually lived it. I was not trying to speak for them. I was trying to listen well enough to build something useful.

Learning to see the world

By the time I reached my MSc dissertation, I had already spoken to several people and understood that the problem went deeper than simply finding activities.

Then my original dissertation plan fell apart because of circumstances outside my control. I had to set aside months of preparation and start again with a new proposal and literature review, with barely fifty days left before the deadline. It was one of the hardest stretches of the journey but by then MindHaven had become the question I could not leave behind.

I chose MindHaven as my dissertation and began developing the ComfortScore engine, using open environmental data such as noise, crowd density, greenery and accessibility, to explore whether information about a place could be combined to give people a better understanding of its surroundings before they visited. The research gave MindHaven its first real structure.

For the first time, MindHaven could use evidence to estimate the environmental conditions associated with comfort, rather than simply listing venues based on assumptions about sensory comfort. But seeing was not enough and there were still questions the data could not answer.

When people help you see what you cannot

This is where the people around me became especially important. Dr Chris Moon helped me understand what mattered, how to judge an idea, and how to think about MindHaven not only as research but as something that could become a real solution. He introduced me to Harold Singer, who helped me look more deeply at the business side of the problem. Harold saw potential in MindHaven that I had not fully recognised myself and pushed me to think beyond what I had already built.

Then Rebecca Narh and Maria Olariu asked questions that exposed something important. The ComfortScore research provided a useful foundation, but it relied largely on environmental data that could not capture how conditions might change throughout the day.

Taking time to get it right

The research gave me a starting point, but it also showed me that building something useful takes more than completing a dissertation. The next stage is to test MindHaven with a small group of people, learning what works and what does not.

I do not want MindHaven to carry someone else's wellbeing before I am confident it is ready – patience is very important as I learned at Middlesex.

What Middlesex gave me

I left Middlesex with purpose as well as my MSc in Data Science. My first few months introduced me to Enactus MDX, WYBI, MediaCity AI, a British Airways visit and many other experiences. I made connections then without imagining how deeply some of them would later shape my work.

Enactus MDX became particularly important. Working with Francisca, Alex, Raveena and many other students gave me the energy to keep trying. Later, students and volunteers including Shalini, Lei, Yuhela, David, Yurim and Bony David contributed ideas and effort that helped MindHaven develop further.

Through Enactus UK & Ireland, MindHaven reached the Top 20 at the national competition, and was later selected into the Top 10 projects for Santander X Explorer's crowdfunding, where I went on to run a crowdfunding campaign.

I am proud of those milestones, but what I valued the most was meeting people along the way, who listened, questioned and helped.  People who sometimes gave me the next step when I could not see it myself.

That is what Middlesex gave me. Not simply a degree, but an environment where an unusual question could be taken seriously, and where an unfinished idea could be given the time and support to grow.

Still learning to fly

Looking back, MindHaven has taught me that an idea does not become useful simply because you believe in it. It needs evidence, people who challenge it, patience, and the humility to admit when something is not good enough yet.

Perhaps that is also the lesson I would give to anyone at Middlesex who has an idea of their own. Not every idea needs to fly immediately. Some ideas need a place to begin, people around them and time to grow. They need to be tested, challenged and rebuilt before they are ready to leave the nest.

Find out more about the Data Science MSc at Middlesex.