The Expand2Web Blog

One of my friends in my church small group is a pediatrician at Stanford School of Medicine. Last week we were talking about techie sorts of things, as I often like to do

She was telling me about this project she’s working on; trying to make an interactive image of a newborn baby’s chest, where you could click on it to hear what the heart should sound like through a stethoscope at that area. She had an image, and the sounds, but wasn’t sure how to make it interactive.

Based on a game I had worked on for my kids, a solution immediately popped into mind - I could do this in Flash in about 10 minutes…

A Trip to the Aquarium

A few years ago I was visiting the Monterey Bay Aquarium with my family, and my daughters were fascinated with the Otter exhibit. When we got back I got inspired to make a little video game about Otters for them.

I really got into Adobe Flash as a creative tool. I learned a lot from Justin’s videos over at CartoonSmart (these are very well done - if you are interested in Flash at all you should check Justin out.) The game I made was called “What Do Otters Eat?” And it’s not really that much fun to play, but my kids really liked it and I had a lot of fun making it. Click the image below to try it.

A Special Project

Anyway, back to our story. I learned a lot about Flash on that little project, and made an interactive image for my friend for her newborn project.

I’m not sure what a Ventricular Septal Defect is, but in this interactive image you can hover over different areas on this baby’s chest, and click to hear the sound you would hear through a stethoscope.

This was a fun little diversion for me, and my friend was happy with the result too!

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