María Jesús Garrido Sánchez, Founder and CEO of Minifunkids

In this interview, we talk with María Jesús Garrido Sánchez, founder and CEO of Minifunkids, about how her direct experience in early childhood stimulation has led to the development of a tool based on virtual reality applied to educational and therapeutic environments. Throughout the conversation, she explains how they work on sensory, motor, cognitive, and educational areas from an approach tailored to each individual.

She also shares the lessons learned from implementing her solution in educational and healthcare centres, as well as the challenges associated with incorporating new technologies in these contexts. As she points out, "technology has to adapt to the person, not the other way around", an idea that sums up the approach with which they design and apply each of their experiences.

How was Minifunkids born and what specific need in early childhood stimulation were you looking to address with virtual reality?

I am a social integrator, an early childhood educator, and I also have training in physical and sports activities. I started working with a girl using traditional stimulation and spent almost ten years accompanying her, while also collaborating with a neurologist. It was very day-to-day, very creative work: if we had to do crawling exercises, I would paint myself as a crocodile and her as a snake; if we had to crawl on all fours, we would build tunnels with cardboard boxes I picked up from the bakery.

Everything was done through play, but it was also very intense, because it was constant. That's where the seed of Minifunkids began. I realised that these children would need therapy throughout their lives and I thought that we had to find a way to make that process more motivating, not something repetitive or tedious.

At that point I started to look at virtual reality as a possible ally. We were in the middle of the pandemic, in 2020, and this technology was not yet being talked about in the educational field, but I was clear that we lived in a digital era and that it could contribute a lot as an immersive experience.

There was also a key case that confirmed it for me: a boy with selective mutism who only spoke to his father and mother. We put a virtual reality headset on him with content related to something he liked, basketball, and he started to talk to me completely normally. That's when I saw that it wasn't just a tool, it was a different way to connect with each person.

How is virtual reality integrated into sensory, motor, and cognitive stimulation processes?

We integrate virtual reality by working mainly on four areas of development: motor, cognitive, sensory, and educational. For us it was important not to focus on diagnoses, because many families told us they were tired of their child being "the autistic one" or "the ADHD one". And it's true that these are areas of development that all people have, with or without difficulties, and that's why we decided to work this way.

From there, what we do is create immersive experiences in which different skills are worked on. For example, they can move, interact with objects, respond to stimuli, or work on attention in a more natural way than in traditional therapy, within an environment that is more motivating to them than traditional therapy. In addition, these experiences allow us to work from different dimensions at the same time. 

For example, we have the case of Juan Ángel, a boy with cerebral palsy who uses a wheelchair, but cognitively he is perfectly fine. He always said that his dream was to be a footballer. So, we were thinking about how we could let him live that experience and we managed it by putting him in the role of a goalkeeper. Despite his spasticity and stiffness, within virtual reality he could stop balls with his hands. And for him that was very important, because he himself told us that football was an excuse to be happy.

Another example that really stuck with me is in hospitals. I remember the case of a boy who was on a stretcher, in a lot of pain, unable to move. We put on the virtual reality and, suddenly, he was playing, he was standing up, fishing with his hands in an aquatic environment. 

In those moments you are working on a lot of things at the same time: sensory stimulation, psychomotor skills, attention, but also the emotional aspect, because you give them a moment of escape in a very difficult situation. Our experiences go a bit along those lines, integrating everything into a single activity. 

We focus a lot on educational centres, because that is where children spend most of the day and where the professional profiles who can apply the tool are. What we do is train special education teachers (therapeutic pedagogy professionals), who are the ones who use it in specific or support classrooms.

And here we encountered something important, which is that virtual reality is great, but if the professional puts on the goggles, they lose control of what's happening in the classroom. There may be a student who gets up, who hurts themselves, or who leaves the classroom. So, we saw there was a problem there and we developed an external platform from which the professional, with their username and password, can launch content to the virtual reality goggles without having to put them on, thus maintaining control of the environment at all times.

What evidence or indicators do you use to measure improvements in balance, coordination, attention, or motivation in the people who use your platform?

Right now we are at a point where we know things are happening, but we need to measure them better. We use questionnaires filled out by the professionals at the centres, which allow us to gather their assessment of aspects such as attention, participation, or progress in certain skills. In addition, the platform records data such as time of use or activities carried out.

Even so, we are aware that this is just a first step. That is why we are working with universities on R&D&I projects to develop more objective indicators within the platform itself, which will allow us to measure more precisely what happens during the experience and translate it into more concrete and traceable data.

How do you incorporate principles of neurodiversity into the design of experiences (personalisation, accessibility, levels of stimulation)?

The key is personalisation, because no two people are alike. It is something we constantly see day to day and it directly conditions how we design each experience.

For example, a person on the autism spectrum, depending on their support needs, who may require more controlled environments or those with a lower stimulus load, is not the same as a person with cerebral palsy, where the focus may be more on mobility or interaction. Each case requires a different approach.

From there, we adapt aspects such as the intensity of the stimuli, the difficulty of the tasks, or the way to interact within the experience. We make sure that each person can participate according to their abilities and at their own pace, avoiding both overstimulation and frustration.

The key is for technology to accompany. It should not be a barrier or something imposed, but a tool that adjusts to each person and each context.

With which professionals and centres have you piloted the solution and what practical lessons emerged from those pilots?

We have worked with centres such as Autismo Sevilla, San Juan de Dios, and NeuroL, among others. For us it has been key to collaborate with professionals who are in the day-to-day, because they are the ones who use the tool and give us very direct feedback.

One of the main lessons learned has been that the experience has to be very simple. At first, the platform was more complex and sessions became longer, which meant the professionals lost time. Thanks to their feedback, we have been adjusting the tool to make it more agile and easier to integrate into daily work.

We have also learned a lot about how it is actually used. Designing something in a controlled environment is not the same as seeing it day-to-day in a classroom or centre. All that real-world use has allowed us to improve both the experience and the way each session is launched and managed.

What are the main obstacles to implementing virtual reality in educational and healthcare environments and how have you addressed them?

The main obstacle has been the speed at which a technology of this type is incorporated, especially at an institutional level. Often the same thing happens that happened with other innovations in their time: at first, doubts, fear, or some resistance to change appear, and the same is true with virtual reality.

What we have seen is that this resistance is not usually so much among professionals in the educational or healthcare field, because when they try the tool they very quickly understand its potential. Where the process is slower is in more institutional structures, where the adoption of new technologies requires more time.

The way to address it has been very practical: showing the tool, facilitating its use, and demonstrating that it can be integrated without complicating daily work. We have also been surprised by the response of many families, who increasingly see the value of this technology more clearly and are starting to incorporate it at home, which also helps to normalise its use.

How does Minifunkids combine social impact with economic sustainability and which channels or partners are you prioritising to scale?

At Minifunkids we talk about social technology, because we are very clear that the most important thing is people. Everything we develop must have meaning and generate a real impact, and that is what guides our decisions.

From there, the challenge is to grow without losing that focus. We currently work a lot through word of mouth and collaboration with centres and professionals, but we are also taking steps to reach more people.

For example, we are developing a model that allows access to the experiences from home, in a more accessible way. Along these lines, we are also starting to work with platforms such as Meta, where we have already passed the quality controls.

The goal is to reach as far as possible without losing sight of what is important, which is improving people's quality of life. Technology is the means, but impact is always the end.

How can the ONE Platform help projects like Minifunkids connect with funding, technology partners, educational centres, and knowledge across different territories?

For projects like ours, visibility is essential. In the end, if people don't know about you, it's very difficult to access opportunities, no matter how good the project is. In that sense, initiatives such as the ONE Platform act as a loudspeaker that allows us to reach people, entities, and institutions we wouldn't reach otherwise.
They also play an important role in the connection with funding, both public and private. There are many projects doing very valuable things, but they have difficulties accessing those resources, and having this type of platform facilitates that link with investors and support programmes.

In addition, they help to connect the ecosystem: educational centres, technology partners, professionals, and other projects in similar situations. All this generates key collaboration opportunities to keep growing.