“We built the app we were looking for so we don’t always have to think about your diabetes” (and they started from scratch)

Asier found out he was diabetic at fourteen. As if this wasn’t enough, it happened two days before Christmas. “The fact that you’re diagnosed, no matter what time of year, is traumatic because of one simple fact: And that’s you starting to run a marathon you’re not prepared for.”.

Controlling diabetes is essential to maintain a good quality of life and avoid long-term complications. Diabetes is a chronic disease that affects the body’s ability to regulate blood sugar. Too high blood sugar levels can damage organs and tissues. The big problem, Asier says, is that unlike other chronic diseases its treatment is non-linear. And the usual apps or devices “They seem to be made for toilets”as he told me. Something had to be done. And they did.

Exploitation of the curfew

He lockdown It was a moment none of us will forget. Aside from worrying about the moment we live in, some like restless minds Asier and Patricia took advantage of it in a different way: They learned to create apps without having any prior knowledge. Patricia is an interior designer and Asier studied journalism and communication, but they didn’t care. Happily.

“The pandemic was certainly neither pleasant nor good. But for me, the fondest memory I have is that I had the opportunity to start over. Get it into your head to spend a few months learning to code… and that’s where the crazy idea of ​​horseback riding is born Chubby apps. And the truth is, it didn’t go bad” – Asier can’t hide it grin while you tell me this

For Patricia, co-founder and responsible for the design part and sometimes also programs, it was quite a challenge – especially in the beginning: “The impostor syndrome was there all day. We are surrounded by inspiration. I had learned from the beginning of my studies how to conceptualize and solve a problem and in the end solving a problem in a room is very similar to solving it in an application. , is to follow a few steps and follow the user along the path you want them to go..

I really liked the comparison between the spaces of the real world and how to distribute the aspect an application. Patricia is one of those people who speaks passionately about what she does and is proud of what she has achieved: “I was involved in the technological world from a young age, I was the typical person who tinkered with computers – I’ve always had that interest.”. However, creating Chubby Apps was a team effort: “We benefited from each other, learned from each other and in the end there are hundreds of thousands of applications on the iPhone for you to learn from.”. Today his team was expanded by two more people.

Apps for self-help, for self-help: diabetes control

Their first project while we were still locked up was almost an exploration project of what they could and could do. Thus was born SafeTimer, an app for Control the time of using maskswhat was so important back then. “We came up with something super simple, then we went a bit overboard with the Apple Watch version – but we found it very useful”.

Learning with SafeTimer gave them the confidence they needed to solve a problem they had seen in other apps for the diabetes management: This is kind to anyone who uses it, as this disease requires it to be present at all times. This is how Cory was born. Asier experienced it firsthand as a patient: “Every time you exercise, every time you make a decision that can affect glucose, you have to think about glucose because if you don’t, you can get hypoglycemia. This creates a very, very great mental burden and still often the part of the doctors don’t understand why you can’t spend 100% of the time thinking about your diabetes..

with kory, to understand that data and its aggregation are important so the user has full context and control. It wasn’t easy as it was a challenge to present this information clearly to everyone. “Anyone can know when their glucose is at Cori in a very, very simple and very quick way. We focused on representing that more immediate perception and then we simplified all the data so we could have a database of all the numbers correlating them to things that are easier to understand: from charts that were very, very intuitive – based on everything the Apple Health app has, which ultimately makes all this data that makes our Apple Watch and iPhone very easy to see. “

Cori was featured by Apple in the App Store as one of the easiest and most visually convenient applications for anyone wanting to control their diabetes. Listen to this week’s episode of the Las Charlas de Applesfera podcast the most interesting full interview with Asier and Patricia: an example of how to start from scratch and create something beautiful and useful for everyone.

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