Associate Professor
Maître de conférences
My research focuses on human-centred design. It rests on one principle: human activity is a constitutive design criterion, not a constraint checked after the fact. I use immersive environments, motion capture and physiological measurements to observe, simulate and assess this activity from the earliest stages of design, including its perceptual and cognitive dimensions, such as communication, decision-making, mental workload and stress.
My current work is centred on collaborative design in virtual reality: how designers interact in shared virtual environments, and how they can work with AI agents embodied as virtual avatars. It builds on my previous projects on inclusive design, on communication with virtual avatars in speech-language rehabilitation, and on the ergonomic assessment of workstations. All these projects share the same question: how can we take human activity into account early in design, first for an individual user, and now for several people, or people and AI agents, working together?
This cross-disciplinary approach combines engineering design, ergonomics, human-computer interaction and cognitive sciences. It links the development of immersive tools with experimental studies involving end users.
This exploratory work investigates how an AI agent embodied by a realistic virtual avatar (MetaHuman, Unreal Engine) can act as a partner in a collaborative design task in virtual reality, with low-latency interaction as a central constraint. A first prototype will be developed within a Master’s internship (M1 MOSIG, from January 2027).
We investigate how emerging Industry 4.0/5.0 technologies, such as virtual reality, collaborative robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), can be used to design and simulate circular processes (disassembly, remanufacturing, refurbishment) and to test different scenarios virtually before real-world deployment, while integrating operator safety and well-being.
Design of virtual reality tools to facilitate communication and reduce anxiety in young people facing communication challenges, such as stuttering. The immersive system allows users to interact in real time with a high-quality virtual avatar in a highly realistic environment. The interaction context (virtual environment, sound, atmosphere) and the avatar’s appearance (gender, age, voice) can be modified, and physiological measurements are recorded to objectively assess users’ responses to the different stimuli.
In collaboration with Lucie Ménard (UQAM; Marie Enfant Pediatric Rehabilitation Centre, CHU Sainte-Justine), Anne Moïse-Richard (CHU Sainte-Justine; Université de Montréal), Anne-Lise Leclercq (University of Liège), David Labbé (École de technologie supérieure) and Stéphane Bouchard (Université du Québec en Outaouais).
Design of an immersive environment combining digital human models and virtual reality to model users’ morphological and functional characteristics, including specific limitations. Development of a Unity-based tool to simulate different abilities, analyse their impact on activity and support ergonomic co-design, in order to anticipate user needs and design more inclusive environments and workstations from the earliest stages of development.
11 documents deposited in the open archive HAL, sorted by type and year.
Journal of Fluency Disorders, 87, 1061942026
International Journal on Interactive Design and Manufacturing, 11 (3), 515-5242017
Colloque INTER RV 2023, Montréal, Canada2023
ICED "Design for Life", Milan, Italy2015
Colloque National AIP-Priméca, La plagne, France2015
Design conference, Cavtat, Croatia2014
Proceedings of Digital Human Modeling 2013, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States2013
CFM 2013 - 21ème Congrès Français de Mécanique, Bordeaux, France2013
Congrès Français de mécanique, Bordeaux, France2013
14th Oxford Stuttering and Cluttering Research Conference, Oxford, United Kingdom2025
PhD thesis, Ecole Centrale de Nantes (ECN)2016