A one-stop shop for device-based research

Mission

Digital Trails is a research-engineering partner for teams running experiments with modern wearables, smartwatches, smartphones, and IoT devices. Our mission is to make it faster, easier, and more affordable to use modern consumer devices in research — for any team at UVA that needs us.

Whether you're just getting started with devices and apps in your research, or have a long track record, we can meet you where you're at and provide the services you need. We work as a paid service: per-project pricing covers new development, and a monthly fee covers shared infrastructure.

The hosted-app advantage

Building an app from scratch is traditionally time-consuming and expensive. We offer a model we call “hosted” apps, which can be built faster and more cheaply than traditional apps.

A hosted app is in between building an app from scratch and using someone else's app. If your goal is to run a research study, a hosted app will do everything you want. If your goal is to eventually have your own stand-alone app, think of a hosted app as an affordable prototype.

What you get with the hosted approach

• Lower maintenance costs — shared infrastructure means you don't pay to keep the lights on alone.
• New features for free — when one team adds something, every team benefits.
• No app-store delays — the review and approval process is avoided.
• Updates in minutes — you can release changes to your app as fast as you can write them.
• iOS and Android together — both platforms with no extra work on your end.

Devices we support

Smartphones are the workhorse of most of our studies — iOS and Android together cover almost any participant. On top of that, most modern wearables and IoT devices support integration via web APIs, so we can plug them in. If you're unsure about a particular device, just ask.

Your data, your IRB

All data we collect on your behalf lands in our research cloud. To access it, you create an account with us and download your data at any time.

The data we collect for you is owned by you, and is governed by your IRB.

Cost

Cost is determined on a per-project basis. In general, costs come from two sources:

• Adding new functionality — charged as hours of developer time.
• Using existing functionality — a monthly fee that defers maintenance costs.