post by Victor Ngo (2022 cohort)
My placement with Makers of Imaginary Worlds (MOIW) gave me the opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of how my PhD research connects with creative industry practice. As MOIW is my industry partner, the placement felt less like a separate requirement and more like a chance to engage more closely with the practical, artistic, and organisational realities that surround the kind of work I am researching. It allowed me to see more clearly how interactive technologies, public engagement, and creative production come together in real settings, and how these differ from the more structured environment of academic research.
The placement included work across several contexts, including Ashfield Creates, Oakfield School, and Level Centre. These experiences gave me insight into how MOIW works across different venues, audiences, and forms of engagement. They also gave me the opportunity to contribute to research and public-facing activity in settings that were more varied than a single deployment or study. This helped me understand not only the practical side of the placement, but also its broader relevance to my PhD and to the Horizon CDT’s emphasis on interdisciplinary and socially engaged research.
At the start of the placement, I expected to gain a better understanding of how a creative organisation works in practice, particularly one that designs immersive experiences for children and families. I hoped to learn more about how artistic goals, audience needs, accessibility, and venue constraints shape the development and delivery of an installation. I also wanted to better understand how my own research skills could contribute within that context. While these expectations were met, the placement also pushed me to reflect more critically on how research methods and ways of working need to adapt when they are applied in live, public, and community-facing settings.
Across the three venues, one of the clearest lessons was that research and engagement methods cannot be treated as fixed or universal. While designing my study with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) children, it became clear that many standard practices in data collection were not well suited to the context. Approaches often taken for granted in research, such as structured interviews or direct verbal reflection, do not always align with the needs of participants, the environment, or the nature of the interaction itself. This required me to think more carefully about alternative approaches that were more appropriate, respectful, and sensitive to the people involved. More broadly, working across all three settings reinforced the importance of shaping methods around the setting rather than expecting the setting to accommodate the method. It meant paying closer attention to observation, embodied interaction, behaviour in the moment, and the wider circumstances surrounding participation.
These experiences were also rewarding on a more personal level. I am grateful for the opportunity to spend time with participants, staff, and audiences across these settings, and to have conversations that often went beyond the installation itself. At Oakfield in particular, I valued the chance to speak with children about wider questions around robots, AI, the future of the world, and their own goals and aspirations. At Level, conversations with visitors often moved into broader issues around the impact of AI on art and ownership, the blurred lines between human and artificial creation, and how that space might be navigated ethically. Together, these interactions reminded me that this work is not only about evaluating systems or collecting data, but also about creating space for dialogue, curiosity, and reflection. In that sense, the social impact of the placement felt high. Across all three contexts, there were genuine opportunities for public engagement and for connecting my research to wider questions of ethics, creativity, access, and the future role of intelligent systems in society.
Throughout the four years of my PhD, and especially through spending time in these venues and interacting with the people involved, I gradually arrived at a broader reflection on what it means to work in a space where research, creative practice, and public engagement are all happening at once. With MOIW, the work is not only about understanding interaction, but also about making something meaningful for the people encountering it. That means thinking carefully about how artistic intention, accessibility, audience experience, and practical delivery shape the way a project develops. For me, the placement was valuable because it gave me the opportunity to work within that balance directly, rather than only thinking about it in theory. It showed me more clearly how research decisions are shaped when they form part of a live creative process.
In terms of skills development, the placement strengthened both my professional and research capabilities. Professionally, I developed my ability to communicate across disciplines and to work with collaborators whose expertise lies in arts practice, facilitation, and audience experience rather than robotics or human–robot interaction. I also developed a stronger habit of reflective practice, particularly in thinking about what worked, what was challenged, and how I would approach similar situations in future. From a research perspective, the placement deepened my understanding of context-sensitive and inclusive methods, especially in relation to study design, observation, interpretation, and working with children in varied public settings. These are skills that are highly relevant to both academia and industry, as they support not only rigorous research but also effective collaboration and responsible practice.
Overall, the placement has helped me situate my PhD more clearly within the wider aims of the Horizon CDT. It has shown me how questions around data, interaction, interpretation, and lived experience play out in real environments, and how research can contribute to public-facing creative work in meaningful ways. Most importantly, it has helped me develop a more grounded understanding of what it means to work across academia and industry: not simply applying existing skills in a new setting but learning how to adapt those skills in response to different people, priorities, and forms of practice.