Digital SPA

Digital SPA is a support app for adolescents with chronic pain, developed as part of the Digital SPA research project led by the University of Málaga. It helps them better understand their pain, develop coping skills, and improve their wellbeing and daily functioning, through a safe, private, and personalized space that brings together structured self-monitoring of their emotional wellbeing and physical condition, guided educational resources to support their progress, and a direct connection with their caregivers.

It pairs with Digital SPA+, a companion app for caregivers, allowing users to share their progress with the people who support them while keeping their most personal data private.

The app brings together daily tracking, educational content, and caregiver support in a single, motivating experience. Its main features include:

Daily Records

Users complete a daily record across six wellbeing dimensions, presence in what they do, calm, thoughts, realism, plan, and goals, giving them a structured way to reflect on their day and visualize how they progress over time.

Pain Register

Beyond the daily record, users can log how they feel physically whenever they need to, capturing their pain level at any moment. When a user reports the maximum pain level, the system automatically sends a push notification to their assigned caregivers so they can act in time.

Centralized Calendar

Everything lives in one place. From the Calendar, users can review their records, appointments, treatments, and activity at a glance. This information is shared automatically with their caregivers, with the exception of private notes and challenge results, which remain private.

Learning Modules

The app includes eleven modules of educational content and guided exercises delivered through audio, text, and video, which users can explore at their own pace. Each module includes challenges (quizzes) that let users test what they have learned.

Flexy Coins and Store

Completing resources rewards users with Flexy Coins, the app's in-app currency. Coins can be redeemed in the Store for new characters and avatars, adding a motivating, gamified layer to the wellbeing journey.

Treatment Records and Reminders

Users can register their treatments and configure reminders so the app alerts them at the right moment, helping them stay on track. These reminders sync with Digital SPA+ and trigger on both the user's and their assigned caregivers' devices, keeping everyone aligned.

Appointment Records and Alerts

Users can organize their appointments and configure alerts so they always arrive prepared. As with treatments, these alerts sync with Digital SPA+ and trigger on both the user's and their assigned caregivers' devices.

Private Notes

Users have a fully private space to write whatever they need. Their notes and challenge results belong only to them and are never shared with anyone, including caregivers.

Caregiver Connection

Through Digital SPA+, users can share their progress with the people who care for them. Caregivers can follow the user's activity and support them throughout the process, while the user's privacy over their notes and challenge results is always respected.

Personalization

Users can make the app their own by choosing from eight color themes and by unlocking characters and avatars with the Flexy Coins they earn from completing resources.

Digital SPA is part of the Digital SPA research project and is grounded in the available scientific evidence on the psychological treatment of pediatric chronic pain and current digital health approaches. It was developed from an interdisciplinary, user-centered perspective, through a co-design process with adolescents, families, and healthcare professionals.

The project is led by the University of Málaga and is currently undergoing scientific evaluation in Spain through a multicenter trial. It was created by a multidisciplinary team with expertise in pediatric pain, clinical and health psychology, digital health, implementation, pediatrics, physiotherapy, computer engineering, and design, led by Dr. Rocío de la Vega, a researcher at the University of Málaga specializing in digital interventions for adolescents with chronic pain.

As this was a freelance project carried out within the Digital SPA research project led by the University of Málaga, I managed the entire product lifecycle. A defining characteristic of this project is that the client's own users, real adolescents and families, were central to how the product took shape, and their feedback drove its direction across multiple iterations.

Requirements Gathering and Definition

Working closely with the client and their end users, I led eight iterations of product definition involving real adolescents and families. Each iteration followed the same loop: gathering requirements directly from users, translating them into UX and then UI, and bringing the results back to the users for validation through interactive prototypes. This continuous feedback shaped the scope and direction of the product significantly, grounded in my experience in user experience and product definition (a discipline rooted in my MSc from the Open University of Catalonia).

Collaboration with UI Designers

In all my freelance projects, collaborating with a designer is a key step in ensuring the app looks polished. I worked alongside the designer throughout the iterative process, validating each design round with real users via interactive prototypes and safeguarding the best possible UX, making sure the design was led by user experience rather than visual appeal alone, never beauty over functionality.

Development

Once the designs were consolidated, I moved on to development, applying clean architecture and clean-code practices regardless of platform, language, or framework. As with the design phase, development was validated iteratively: users tested the product across different phases, ensuring the final result matched their real needs. This project was built in Flutter; you can find more detail in the technical stack below.

Store Release

After development and testing with the client, using internal testing in Google Play for Android and TestFlight for iOS, I managed the full release process on both Google Play and the App Store, including compliance, privacy, assets, and all other requirements.