This is a bit of back-story and a bit of an announcement that we’re beginning development on Deep Brain Stimulation surgery in about two weeks. What exactly is Deep Brain Stimulation you ask? Let me tell you a story!

It began on a pleasant Monday morning, around 6:45 am in Columbus, Ohio. I was at my business partner’s house getting ready to drive over to the Ohio State Medical Center to watch firsthand a DBS surgery, basically a bunch of surgeons sticking electrodes into someone’s brain to help cure the disease at hand. After some waiting around for the surgery to begin, we entered a large OR, with around 10+ surgeons, medical Reps, nurses, and technicians crammed in. Sitting in the center was a man who looked semi-conscious (moving or moaning something every now and then) waiting for a surgeon to drill some holes in his head. Before I knew what was happening, out came the staple gun, and they began to attach some sterile drapes to the guy’s head.

Watching someone who is conscious (not in pain, but conscious) get over 30+ staples shot into his head as he moaned apparently set something off in my subconscious, that this was the time and place to feel extremely nauseous. Slowly darkness crept in from the corners, my speech slurred and I remember feeling a nice cold sweat and reaching out towards someone in the room saying “I think I’m going to pass out”, which in reality probably sounded like “Mrrrmmm, unghh paaaasss” as I dropped to the floor.

Everyone around me was apparently prepared for this sort of situation, as i found that around 3 people had caught my cold clammy body and sat me down on a stool. It was quite an experience! I got walked out of the room and handed a coke to get some sugar in me, and after about 10 minutes of feeling like I was about to throw up I headed back into the OR to get some surgery on. 

Just a side note to reinforce what happened: men don’t faint; they pass out… it sounds cooler. 

Now, all refreshed and invigorated, I watched as a team of surgeons began to help a man with severe Parkinson’s disease by drilling into his skull. The patient was at the point where he had to take his medicine once every two hours just to function (things like walk, talk, eat, etc.). This surgery is generally reserved for very drastic cases with no other option as it’s fairly new, but nonetheless amazing.

Using an array of technology like 3d head scans, gps systems targeting little metal balls which were screwed into the patient’s head so they knew where they were probing, and some little radio dials and temporary pacemakers to help adjust and find the right settings to in effect turn off the advanced Parkinson’s disease.

I have to say, the realistically, this was a boring surgery to watch. It was around 4.5 hours long, and mostly consisted of turning dials, inserting thin metal rods into a brain, tweaking this, listening for the right sound to come out of the machine, and talking to the patient (who has to be awake during the surgery to make sure everything was going as planned). The amazing part was watching the before and after.

The surgeons would turn off the stimulation and have the patient draw circles or write his name on a piece of paper, which would look something like a jumbled scribble (think of a hand waving back and forth randomly trying to draw a straight line). Once the probes were in place, they’d have him test and re-test his writing and drawing abilities until they found the best setting (sort of like getting a new prescription for glasses, only with metal rods in your brain!). On the final test the man could write his name and draw a nice round circle, as if he had never had Parkinson’s. It was the biggest and most impressive change I’ve ever seen, and I can’t imagine how much it was going to change this guy’s life for the better.

Overall it was a pretty cool experience. How many eLearning developers get to stand 3 feet away from live surgeries, sometimes have a chunk of cartilage or piece of bone fly by your face and get to recreate it for the rest of the world to experience? Now the challenge is to take what we’ve seen, convert it into a script and begin illustrating, animating and programming the process into the next Edheads.org virtual surgery.

If you have the urge for other surgeries in the mean time check out www.edheads.org. 

I had an interesting discussion with a client yesterday about project direction and process, and there was some open debate on how to develop an interaction to not only meet a tight budget, but fulfill some broad goals. Is there a best method, or does every project deserve to flex and adjust into multiple styles of interaction and teaching methods? Also discussed were the pros and cons of linear vs. nonlinear activities, and we went over the possibilities of having a little of both mixed in.

Getting to the point, I’ve written up a fairly detailed overview on Living Children’s initial project process. It covers our first four steps when brainstorming a new project, and covers each topic up to actual production (a page on production process will come another day).

The overall process includes:

• 1. Defining The Goal(s)
• 2. Rough Project Outline
• 3. Refining Goals and Listing Objectives
• 4. Creation of Flow Diagrams

Click here for the full page on project process, including samples of each step. This page will become a permanent addition under “About” in due time.