The Human Body is an interactive model that lets kids dive into the skeletal, muscular, nervous, circulatory, respiratory, digestive, urogenital, and immune systems. The heart beats, guts gurgle, lungs breathe, and eyes see. We collaborated with Kelli Anderson, who created more than 200 illustrations for this title.

The app is designed to encourage quiet, open play, without rules or levels. Kids can jump right in and explore without having to read and follow directions, discovering something new every time they play. The app takes advantage of the device’s inherent capabilities: the camera shows how images are processed in the brain; the microphone sends sound waves through the ear. Interactive labels in more than 50 languages support learning for kids around the world. A companion guidebook for parents, packed with the research that informs the app’s content, helps to answer probing questions, promoting conversations between parents and children.

We measure the impact of this project primarily through the number of app downloads, which is now more than 5 million. We also value the diversity of ways the app is used: in homes around the world, to teach autistic children, to supplement learning in museum exhibitions, and to teach and comfort patients in children’s hospitals.

Read the full case study with juror comments here: [http://www.aiga.org/cased-2015-winner-human-body-tinybop]

“I am a sucker for great craft and attention to detail. And The Human Body involving Kelli Anderson, a project that almost didn’t happen this way, pulls me in like a magnet. In a digitized world where everything seems to be either flat vectors or photoshop gradients is is very refreshing to find something that has been made by hand, by an actual human being full of patience, determination, and perseverance.” —Bryony Gomez-Palacio