Youngna Park wrote:

Building any Tinybop app involves solving lots of puzzles—some technical, some visual, and many that involve turns of logic.

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We gathered over a dozen kids at the Tinybop office one Saturday and had them play our app, The Robot Factory. In the app, kids can build thousands of robots from an assortment of parts, from exoskeletons to spider legs.

After they played with the app, we asked them to tell us about the robots they created. We expected to hear about their robots’ parts, their colors, and if they were kind or mean, but we ended up hearing stories far more detailed, colorful, and imaginative than that.

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One of the things we love about Kelli Anderson is her enthusiasm for taking on seemingly impossible projects. After surprising us by creating this paper stop-motion video for The Human Body, we asked her to create another paper world–this one for Plants.

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When we first started talking about The Human Body, one of the first big discussions we had was: who is going to illustrate the app? The scope of the project was massive, scientific, and required an illustrator with an approach to design that would consider complex systems – of the body, that would apply to the UI, and that would make sense for a children's app. Kelli Anderson was always the first name on our list, so we approached her both as old friends and as great admirers. We knew her approach to design was often very tactile, considered the importance of simplifying when possible, and that she would always be rigorously thoughtful about her decisions. We presented her with a very long list of illustrations, from the heart to the stomach, blood vessels, to the eyeball (and yes, vomit and poop, too!). She plowed through that list with great aplomb, delivering incredibly complex files to us that perpetually elevated the quality of the app. She also stepped in with UI notes, animations, and, as a side project, whipped up this incredible 3D paper stop-motion of the human body, cut to mirror the silhouettes she'd created for the app.

The Human Body (stop-motion!) from kellianderson on Vimeo.

As the illustrator and artist for our first app, we knew Kelli's work would set an important precedent. She was with us, every step of the way, keenly aware of our values as a company, in addition to bringing the mission of the app alive. She writes, in a fantastic blog post outlining her experience working with us,

…the reason I really wanted to work on this app (aside from friendship) is because of the somewhat radical stance that Tinybop takes in promoting intrinsic curiosity and creative play. The app is intentionally non-linear—eschewing a goal-oriented rewards system (familiar to anyone who has racked-up points a video game) for freeform exploration. In the app there is no next-level, no chiming sounds-of-affirmations, no-counter-of-victory. It steers clear of “the peril of gold stars” (as I recently heard Jack Hitt describe it) —the way in which external approval seems to interfere with the development of natural creativity and curiosity. (It is a classic psychological experiment: in lab settings, intrinsic interest in an activity has been shown to decline when the same activity is framed as a means to some extrinsic goal—either a tangible reward or adult approval…otherwise recognized in the adult world as the phenomenon of “once it’s a job, it’s no longer fun.”) In its very structure, it imparts this idea that learning is fun—a reward unto itself. Kids are encouraged to ask questions about everything, and act on their own agency in choosing a route through the app. There is no “right way” to move through this app.

Kelli, it was a pleasure to collaborate on this app and we look forward to lots more magic-making in the future.

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We’re thrilled to introduce our first app, The Human Body, for the iPhone®, iPad®, and iPod touch®;.

Get it on the App Store® today. It’s only $.99 for a limited time (regularly $2.99).

Children ages 4+ can dive deep and interact with six of the body’s major systems: skeletal, muscular, nervous, circulatory, respiratory, and digestive. Play alongside your kids by leaving questions and answers with our one-tap recording device, or use our free, downloadable Human Body Handbook.

We’re a brand new company and know we need your help to make our apps the best they can be. If you have suggestions, comments, or if something doesn’t work quite the way you expect, email us at hi@tinybop.com. We’ll be listening closely. If you like what you see, please help us get the word out by sharing with your friends and family on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or email. Or, leave feedback on the App Store. It really helps.

Thanks so much for your early support. We have lots of great things planned.

– Raul + the Tinybop team

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Reason #957 we love working with Kelli Anderson? Sometimes she just shows up with a 3D paper model of the Tinybop logo.

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As we set out to build The Human Body, we knew kids would be an integral part of the design process. With each decision we made, we'd ask ourselves: What does this teach? Does it intrigue children? Would a kid find this fun?

We brought early prototypes of our apps to schools, Raul's kids' friends played the app at sleepovers, and we repeatedly invited kids to visit Tinybop's office to give the app a spin. We learned an enormous amount from watching kids play—about what we were doing right, and more importantly—about what we were doing wrong.

Our play sessions led us to conversations about the meaning of play and chidren's feedback led to revisions of navigation, gameplay and sound design. We realized some interactions were far too hard to discover, or tricky to navigate with small fingers. One little girl was terrified by our first drawings of the muscular system. Other kids wouldn't stop feeding the body until the stomach was bursting. Over and over again we saw that kids love making the app burp, so we added more burp variability. We heard gasps and guffaws, groans and giggles—and all throughout: Lots of great questions from kids who were curious to know more about the body.

We love play-testing our apps with kids because they always offer us honest, instinctual responses. There is no hiding real pleasure or skepticism, and when we start to get big eyes and big grins from kids, we know we are heading in the right direction.

If you and your child have also discovered The Human Body we'd love to hear what you think. Let us know (hi@tinybop.com) if we're on the right track—or where we could improve.

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