Research & Development

Research & Development

Scientific expertise, the foundation of our activity

Research and innovation is something we grew up with, and love. Nearly half of the team decided to extend the pleasure of their studies up to the PhD level. So we launched our own R&D activity: Flowtide.

What for ? To test new methods, discover new tools or open new markets... To offer you the best solution to your needs, using our research capacity, our knowledge in neurosciences, neuroergonomics, and more generally in scientific experimentation.

CII certification

Our certification as "innovation organization" also enables us to help our clients improve the ergonomic design of their products and services, which qualifies for Innovation Tax Credit (CII).

Our area of expertise is to evaluate cognition through a psychophysiological approach: neuroergonomics. For instance, we measure cardiac activity by electrocardiogram, perspiration by electrodermal activity, or visual attention by eye tracking (oculometry), to have a better understanding of human cognition.

Right now, we are working on taking our user tests further, improving the performances of professional athletes, or carrying out a more advanced analysis of our user feedbacks (not necessarily in that order).

The Ministry of Industry also recognizes our capacity to lead research and innovation actions, by granting us the status of innovation private organization and therefore enabling our clients to benefit from the tax credit for innovation expenditure (when applicable).

We are published in major international conferences and journals.

Our research work is only valuable if presented to the greatest researchers of the field. Here are a few examples of our publications.

Christophe Bey, Sylvain Hourlier, Jean-Marc André. 2019.
International Symposium on Aviation Psychology
Cognitive resource management is key in the pilots’ decision process. We are carrying out a study involving Airbus 400M pilots to understand these mechanisms, and make recommendations to design a tool to help manage cognitive resources. We observe that, in the most critical cases, and under great time pressure, maintaining control of the situation corresponds to a survival behavior which is the only way to go back to metarules (back to fundamentals). Our proposal for the display management enables the pilot to maintain control of the situation, regardless of his/her capacities. It allows a stabilization phase through the reduction of constraint, and then a “gentle” recovery phase of control and mission management over larger space-time dimensions.

Yannick Daviaux, Christophe Bey, Laurent Arsac, Olivier Morellec & Sami Lini. 2019, Dayton, Ohio, USA.
International Symposium on Aviation Psychology
Modeling individuals’ cognitive control levels in operational situations is a major challenge for safety in aeronautical industry. Standardized experimental tasks - as the Multi-Attribute Task Battery II (MATB-II) - are dedicated to such a challenge that can be faced using psycho-physiological biosignals. These biosignals are known to be sensitive to cognitive worload, performance, and expertise that are intricate features of MATB-II subtasks. Thus, it remained necessary to investigate whether these features could be set to ensure controlled experimental conditions.
Two groups (15 experts in time-pressured decision making and 13 novices) completed 3 MATB-II sub-tasks (tracking, monitoring, and resource management tasks). Biosignals accounting for autonomic nervous system activity were measured continuously, as objective markers of cognition.
Confrontation between performance data and (objective and subjective) cognitive markers reported contrasting perspectives regarding the exploitation of MATB-II as a pertinent tool to insure controlled experimental conditions in the context of cognitive control characterization.

Yannick Daviaux, Marc Lepagnot, Romain Lalanne, Julie Dumont, Sami Lini. 2018.
23rd Annual Congres of the European College of Sport Science, 4th - 7th July, Dublin, Ireland
Team sport players have to divide cognitive resources when in multi-task situations: for example, when motor (driving a ball) and perceptual (gathering visual information on opponents) tasks are performed in the same time. We were interested in investigating if such improvement was also verified in rugby, where ball manipulation is not as much demanding (ball holding but not dribbling). We hypothesized cognitive training to improve on field performances in rugby players. Cognitive training should benefit to global performance also because of others global processes involves in motor command (decision making).

Yannick Daviaux, Sami Lini, Jean-Christophe Paris, Christophe Bey, Axel Johnston. 2018.
In Bordeaux STAPS Students Scientific Congress
The study of human performance is at the center of Akiani’s approach: we will highlight the added value of the knowledge, methods and tools used in sports science (STAPS) to create a synergy with engineering sciences which is favorable to the agency’s innovation approach.

Céline Durupt, Charlotte Delcourt, Simone Morgagni, Sami Lini. 2018.
In Proceeding of the 7th International Conference on Spatial Cognition.
Literature has already well studied and proven the improvements of adding landmarks within pedestrian itineraries on both navigation performance and user confidence. In this ecological study, we evaluate the impact of landmarks in visual and verbal communicated route instructions to evaluate the efficiency of different information supports in two Parisian train stations and their complex urban surroundings using eye tracking technology.

Science Breakfasts

We are organizing what we call "Science Breakfasts" on a regular basis, to discuss research topics with the whole team, and see how they could help us improve our service.

jul. 2022

"Liminal Thinking" by Dave Gray

apr. 2021

Let's talk about Dark mode : theoretical knowledge and practical application

jan. 2021

Best practice for video capture during user interviews

may. 2020

Stress management strategy: a few tips to handle public speaking

apr. 2020

Design Fiction : back to the future

mar. 2020

Our project of developing an UX-o-meter: progress report

jul. 2019

Measurement of the users' perception and expectations in the field: application to pedestrian planning

jan. 2019

Treejack and Optimalsort : AI evaluation tools (to tidy your room, and more)

dec. 2018

Data-driven personas : factor analysis approach and debate on the benefits and drawbacks

dec. 2018

Focus group applied to storybranding

nov. 2018

Book presentation on "Building a storybrand": what is it about and how to use it?

jun. 2018

VR training and strengthening of heart-brain interactions in professional female rugby players

jun. 2018

UX stats for dummies (don't run away screaming!)

oct. 2018

Electrodermal activity: How to cheat a lie detector? (and other more serious uses)

sep. 2018

Eyetracking: How does it work, what is it for?

may. 2018

Developing autonomous vehicles through a user-centered approach

jan. 2018

Flowtide R&D: Humans at the heart of innovation

nov. 2017

Ethics in neurosciences, for a UX design respectful of users

oct. 2017

Let's defuse beliefs of emotional measurements in UX Research

sep. 2017

Data collection : just as simple as that.