Making use of over 200 lush illustrations by the terrifically talented artist and designer Kelli Anderson, a new app by Tinybop lets kids explore their bones, organs, and bodily systems through all manner of pokes and prods. Image: Tinybop As Raul Gutierrez, Tinybop's founder puts it, “non-repeatable interactions are really important in terms of keeping kids engaged.” Image: Tinybop In other words, tapping an on-screen button to summon a fart is fun the first few times; hearing your swipes transformed into toots of all different pitches and timbres is endlessly enjoyable. In other words, tapping an on-screen button to summon a fart is fun the first few times; hearing your swipes transformed into toots of all different pitches and timbres is endlessly enjoyable. Image: Tinybop The interactions are dynamic and varied. You can make your on-screen avatar run, which leads to a pumping heart. Image: Tinybop A close-up of a tooth lets kids see how various foods affect it. Image: Tinybop The app, inspired by the exploratory play of beloved games like Myst, was thoroughly user tested on kids of all ages and backgrounds. Image: Tinybop While the app is filled with puzzles, it's devoid of written facts. Part of Tinybop's model is to encourage kids to ask their parents about what they're seeing on screen. Image: Tinybop And if that makes parents a little nervous, Tinybop's got 'em covered: it provides a 22-page guidebook for answering kids' queries and directing their play through the app. Image: Tinybop

If you're looking for proof of how deeply the designers at Tinybop, the Brooklyn-based studio responsible for the gorgeous new kids anatomy app The Human Body, are in tune with the wants and needs of their users, all you have to do is listen to the on-screen avatar cut the cheese. "We don't just have one fart sound," founder Raul Gutierrez explains. "We have a whole library of farts in there!"

That is, in part, a response to a simple, universal truth gleaned through extensive user testing: Kids can't get enough of bodily sounds. But it's also evidence of the studio's shrewd understanding of what keeps kids interested in the apps they play with. As Gutierrez puts it, "non-repeatable interactions are really important in terms of keeping kids engaged." In other words, tapping an on-screen button to summon a fart is fun the first few times; hearing your swipes transformed into toots of all different pitches and timbres is endlessly enjoyable. And, hopefully, a little educational, too.

>That blend of learning and play is the animating force behind the app.

That blend of learning and play is the animating force behind the app, which costs $3 and was released for iPhones and iPads earlier this month. Making use of over 200 lush illustrations by the terrifically talented artist and designer Kelli Anderson, it lets kids explore their organs, bones, and bodily systems through all manner of pokes and prods. There is almost zero text to be found anywhere in the app–all the education comes through interacting with the body on-screen. Make it run, and watch the lungs pump with air. Pull bones out of arms, and see them fall limp. Force the illustrated subject to binge on ice cream and, well...you guessed it. These are just a few of the dozens upon dozens of interactions baked into the app, many of which respond dynamically to the your swipes and sticks–precisely the "non-repeatable interactions" Gutierrez deems so crucial. To kids, he says, it's the difference between a computer program and a toy.

In addition to these sorts of dynamic interactions, the app takes full advantage of our sophisticated mobile devices to offer some singular interactive experiences. A section on the ear, for example, uses the microphone to rebroadcast ambient sound. One dedicated to the brain incorporates pictures from the Photo Roll to illustrate the concept of memory, with pics drawn from different time periods to reflect short- and long-term varieties.

What it all amounts to is a circuitous, engrossing tour through the human body–one that's completely self-guided and unique to every user. "The foundation of the company is that we're building games that are not didactic," Gutierrez says. "They're interactive, exploratory experiences that don't necessarily have rewards or levels." Think less Mario, more Myst.

In fact, Gutierrez cites the seminal puzzler an influence on the experience he was trying to create with new app. "Suddenly you had this game that was sort of mysterious, that didn't tell you what to do," he says. "It was just this little series of puzzles. It forced you to slow down and really think, and that was a real inspiration for me." With The Human Body, he says, "I wanted to capture some of the weirdness, frankly, of entering that world."

Indeed, like Myst, the app can be confounding. There are no instructions for figuring out how to make the on-screen body burp, or fart, or do anything else, really–you have to discover it all for yourself. Some of these discoveries can be illuminating. During development, Gutierrez enlisted youngsters of all ages as beta testers. At the beginning of the sessions, he'd give the kids an outline of a human body and have them draw what they knew.

"A lot of kids know they have a heart and a brain and a stomach," he says, but "it's amazing how little they know in between that." After an hour of play, however, kids were regularly able to give a more sophisticated picture. "Suddenly you had digestive systems that were tubes that went end to end, you had lungs that were connected to the mouth that were breathing, you had circulatory systems that were going all over the body."

>"I wanted to capture some of the weirdness, frankly, of entering that world."

Still, no matter how responsive or handsomely rendered, connecting the stuff happening on screen to your flesh-and-blood self can be a challenge. Instead of coming away with a perfect understanding of their circulatory system, the most common response Tinybop has seen from young users is, simply, that they have a bunch of questions. But in this case, in the designers' view, a bit of confusion is a sign of a job well done.

"That's the ultimate social engineering thing that we're trying to do," Gutierrez says. "We want to inspire conversations between kids and their parents." For adults who might be a bit hazy on the finer points of their musculature, Tinybop created a 22-page guidebook which covers the basics and can help parents walk their kids through the app.

That whole approach, it's worth pointing out, is a fairly radical one for an education app to take. "A lot of parents are looking to hand their kid an app and hoping that they'll learn something," Gutierrez says. "I firmly believe you can learn a little something [from an app], but the only way you really learn something is sitting down with your kid and talking." Instead of presuming to know the best way to teach kids about anatomy, Tinybop is content to pique their curiosity, building interactions that sketch out the big picture while leaving it up to parents and teachers to fill out the rest.

So far, it seems, the philosophy is working, at least in terms of sales. The app's success has "exceeded our wildest expectations by a factor of 10," Gutierrez says, and the studio's already deep into development on the second and third apps in a series the company's calling the "Explorer's Library," both of which will include visuals from different artists. Beyond that, Gutierrez teased a different series of apps he says will be "equally educational, but look education through an entirely different lens." That's something worth getting excited about, for parents and kids alike.