Apparati was originally founded in 2021 in Florida, USA by H. Thien Nguyen to develop software that can help scientific researchers reduce experimental errors. During the earliest conception of Apparati, the founder was an interdisciplinary scientist desperately seeking an integrated software system to help her do cancer research seamlessly using visual-based diagramming. After developing several conceptual models with existing visual cognitive tools (e.g. static concept maps, Kanban dashboards), the founder decided to develop an entirely data-driven modeling platform that would produce quantitative and predictive results for critical decision-making. After all, scientists constantly need to make decisions when interpreting data and iteratively designing experiments. As a result, the SOLVER platform concept was developed to provide a visual navigation system of logical decisions while users performed standardized activities following the scientific method. The idea was to help scientists follow a consistently improving process that would yield consistently improving results.

After considerable research in the tech R&D sector, Thien made several conclusions that motivated her to branch into consulting services:

First, she concluded that in the early phases of discovery and development, the quality of the results from scientific efforts is generally insufficient to meet the commercial demands of technological progress. Essentially, the pace of scientific progress was not meeting real-world economic needs. Either the method doesn’t work or scientists are not applying effectively the method to meet their customers’ needs.

Second, she concluded that a major root cause of insufficient scientific quality is that most scientists starting out in the industrial sector are not aware of updated modalities of the scientific method, such as Lean Six Sigma (LSS). Even so, according to the continuous improvement principles of LSS, the scientific method should always be improving. As such, why is the scientific method lacking in innovation? This question drove Thien to re-innovate the landscape of science.

Third, she observed that everyone often makes mistakes on the first attempt when thinking logically through hypothesis development. As such, a solution to improve science would be to address logical fallacies. Either technological innovations or some form of educational remediation would be necessary to stop the generation and proliferation of fallacies. Even though logical fallacy analysis falls into the domain of philosophy and law, Thien still believed this type of cognitive activity must be necessary and incorporated into empiricism and the existing practices of the scientific method.

Since logical fallacies were determined to be the root cause of poor hypothesis development, Apparati’s focus split two-fold into 1.) consulting services to help clients work through logical fallacies in scientific arguments and 2.) digital products to help clients visualize and evaluate their decision-making process at different phases of the scientific method. In addition to identifying logical fallacies, Apparati’s suite of consulting services and digital products expanded to include Lean Six Sigma process improvement projects and a members-only database of real-world test cases for the immediate commercialization of Apparati’s strategy.

The initial ideas behind Apparati evolved into a mission to expand the available resources to scientists and technologists so that discovery and development would not have to be such an individualistic exploration; scientific excellence, according to Apparati’s founder, could become systematic. With the addition of real-world test case data, customers will now be able to learn from Apparati’s internal R&D experimental results while contributing in their own way to the advancement of science and technology.