How My Body Works Review

Our Review by Jennifer Allen on September 12th, 2012

Rating:

:: INTERESTING BUT FLAWED

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How My Body Works does exactly what the name suggests and in an interesting manner but its pricing structure and slow loading is off-putting.

Developer: De Agostini Publishing
Price: Free ($1.99-$9.99 in-app purchases required to unlock full content)
Version Reviewed: 1.4
Device Reviewed On: iPad 2

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Technically, How My Body Works is an app aimed at children as they learn all about the human body and the various systems within it. In reality though, most of us could do with learning more about what goes on inside us, plus it makes for some fascinating facts. How My Body Works does a great job of combining child friendly information with stuff that will also intrigue adults. It's just a shame it's rather slow to use, as well as expensive.

How My Body Works is free to download but to benefit from it, users have to spend $9.99 to unlock all the systems of the body such as Reproductive, Digestive, Respiratory, Circulatory and Nervous systems. It's also possible to purchase individual systems for $1.99 each. Because of the way this is conducted, users download the app before downloading each individual system. In all, that means around 1.2gb of files to download which makes quite a dent for those with 16gb iPads or iPhones.

Persevere through these flaws and How My Body Works is a pretty good educational app. Each system is divided up into a number of sections that explain all the finer nuances of the system, such as the five senses or what skin is made up of. Attractive 3d imagery brings it all to life, along with written articles, interactive videos and cartoons. These cartoons are a little basic but they get the key concepts across well. Games are also available although these require an additional free registration.

With so much information to process, How My Body Works isn't particularly fast to load with each system taking a short while to load up before users can get involved. It's worth the wait but I suspect kids will begin to get frustrated, no matter how charming the rest of How My Body Works may be.

It's a clever way to teach people about the human body and as a biology newbie, I felt I'd learnt a lot and enjoyed it. It's just unfortunate that How My Body Works's execution lets it down.