The last two decades of creating digital vis-à-vis analogue resources for learning mathematics have led to a hyper-production that is not sufficiently verified as being fully effective yet. Therefore, further design of novel resources along to sustainability and dissemination of existing ones through re-design appear as crucial issues that need to be tackled further. In particularly, this relates applications for touch devices in primary school mathematics. The scientific significance of this paper is to deepen the understanding of the quality of the tablet apps and design criteria for analysis of their potentials, e.g., related to contents about space and shape, through a design-based research approach as a convenient methodology for their dissemination along to their design. This is principally relevant for pre- and in- service teachers’ informed decisions about implementation of apps in own teaching practices, aspects that we empirically investigate and qualitatively analyse through a DBR cycle.