In this interactive ecard, an owl visits a magic tea tree to collect healing tea for his friend owl. The magic tea tree is interactive, and little surprises pop out of the teacups when they are clicked. Clicking either the purple teapot or the cup with a heart on it will make the owl collect the cup that has just been filled with rainbow tea, and take it back to his owl friend. The message at the end of this get well ecard reads, “Hope you feel owl better soon.”

Click on the picture to view this interactive ecard.

One aspect of interactive ecards that I am still pondering, is how to make it obvious when the viewer needs to click on something. On one hand, I don’t want to spoil the scene by having ‘click here’ text popping up constantly. But I don’t want the viewer to be completely unaware that they need to interact with the ecard, either. In this owl interactive ecard, I put a small blinking arrow in the first scene to indicate that the viewer should click on the owl. In the next scene, however, there is no indication to click until you rollover the teacups. And unfortunately, if you happen to click on the purple teapot or the heart cup first, you will miss the other little surprises of the tea tree. Ah well, guess some viewers will have to play it again to find all the surprises! But I will definitely be experimenting with this in future interactive ecards.