ISU students create assistive sports devices for Courage League

Students at Iowa State University spent this semester making a difference to athletes with disabilities while getting first-hand experience learning about empathy.

A class of 29 industrial design students created assistive sports equipment for participants at Courage League Sports, a non-profit adaptive sports and recreational facility in Urbandale.

'Really what this project can mean is to make a difference in the lives of our participants here, and just open more doors for them to be more successful while playing,” said Melissa Clarke-Wharff, the founder and president of Courage League Sports.

This is the second year the ISU class has collaborated with the organization, and a total of 22 designs was presented recently, some created by teams and some by individual students.

The designs include bowling pins, which make a noise when hit so a player with a visual impairment can know which way to roll the ball. Another student creation is the Courage Mitt, an extended baseball glove a user can catch and throw with.

'It looks and feels like a baseball mitt, and that's kind of the idea,” Clarke-Wharff said. 'As long as we can make it as close to what it needs to be, it just makes them feel like they're more involved with it and more enthused about participating.”

Over the course of the semester, students in the class have visited with both the Courage League coordinators, as well as participants in the organization.

Mirna Garza-Gonzalez, a lecturer in industrial design at ISU, said Courage League came to the class with product ideas, and students visited the facility to take notes and photos. The groups designed their products and presented their ideas before spring break and over the next several weeks, each item was adjusted based on feedback from Courage League Sports.

Garza-Gonzalez said the feedback opportunities gave students the ability to experience working with a real client.

'Sometimes in the school environment, we think we're doing the best decisions. But in the industry, you have to collaborate with so many people, and maybe our decisions might not be the best ones for users or customers or clients,” she said. 'So some of them might have made decisions or taken risks, and maybe that wasn't the best approach. But they still had time to go back and take the other direction.”

As the semester came to a close, Garza-Gonzalez said the students finished high-functioning prototypes, complete with working mechanisms or final materials. Six of the students in the class, she said, even volunteered at Courage League Sports to get insight from the users.

Clarke-Wharff said the prototypes are being used at the facility. She said the plan is to continue the collaboration with ISU.

Garza-Gonzalez said she hopes the experience working with Courage Sports and its clients has been a valuable lesson for the students.

'The students that went there got insight from the kids that actually play there and understand the opportunities they were having in designing this kind of product,” she said. 'They have to really understand their clients and users, and there's no better way to do that than to empathize. The best way to empathize with them is to engage with them in activities.”