Designing the Rib-It-Ball
In
2000, my long time friend and sailing partner Bill, asked if I would be
interested in starting a toy company with him. At that time I was a satellite
launch manager for a company working in Russia and I was getting very weary of
the travel and time away from my wife, so the offer sounded pretty good. I’m
also a design engineer and I thought designing toys would be fun and a way to
get back to my "roots", in designing, only in a new and interesting area. Bill
and I started our toy company, Bill & Bud, Inc., by building prototypes of some
toys that we thought were unusual and might be fun for children. Bill and I
have had a wonderful time designing toys that are unique such as the Zorp Rocket
and Rib-It-Ball.
One day
while surfing the “web” I came across a site with a picture of a toddler named
“Jacob” who was born blind. I was extremely impressed with the effort that his
mother had gone to provide him with stimuli to help him develop motor skills and
balance. To be honest, although I had participated in a bicycling program for
“blind riders” years earlier I had never considered the challenges that a child
might face growing up without visual input to develop balance and motor skills.
The picture of this small boy stuck in my mind and I finally emailed his mother
and asked her what, if any, toys were available for special needs children. She
told me that most toys were “adaptive” in that they were toys for
“non-challenged” children that could be adapted for use by special needs
children. I asked her what articles or toys Jacob liked best and she said that
balls were his favorites. She also said that balls rolled away or bounced out
of reach and that she had sewn beads and such to them in order to stimulate his
tactile senses and that a ball should address these issues. She said if I could
design a ball like that, it would be well- received by that community.
It was
hard to figure out how to design a “ball” that (1) would not bounce away and (2)
would not roll away. I remember looking out over the Oakland estuary from my
office window and thinking, “This is crazy. That’s what balls do. They bounce
and roll by their very design”. I had to think of an idea that could accomplish
these different design criteria and also have tactile and auditory qualities. I
was stumped. How did all of this start and how did I suddenly find myself in
this predicament?
I sat
for days trying to imagine a “ball” that had none of the attributes that most
people thought of as a “ball” having. To address the tactile issues I talked to
Lynn, a sail maker in a loft in the same building as “Bill & Bud”. I recalled
from my sailboat racing days how much noise the sails made and how wrinkly they
were. She and I picked some colorful nylon sail material. This material is
“crinkled” and has a unique texture that makes it interesting to the touch and
causes a rustling sound when handled. It also comes in different “weights” that
make it very tough and it is washable. The ball also had to be lightweight and
I remembered weather balloons from my childhood and how much fun I had playing
with them. I started out covering the weather balloon with the sailcloth and
found that it was so light that I could throw it at someone and they would
simply laugh as it bounced off them and rolled away. How wonderful!
The
next challenge was how to design a ball that doesn’t bounce away or roll away,
so I came up with the idea of designing rib-like shock absorbers that were
filled with air in the first prototypes. These ribs kept the ball from rolling
away and when thrown, they absorbed the shock and dampened the bounce.
Therefore, the ball would stop within several inches of where it landed. Later
we found that closed cell foam worked better than the air chambers and was
cheaper to manufacture, so now the ribs have foam inserts and are sewn closed.
In 2002
Joyce joined the Bill & Bud team. Joyce brought fifteen years of toy
development experience to our company. She made arrangements to get the ball
manufactured offshore, located better sources for the materials and got the ball
“safety tested” for sale in the USA and CE tested for Europe.
For
optimum safety, we enclosed the ball’s air bladder inside the nylon shell with a
strong Velcro closure. Also, if the bladder were punctured it could be easily
replaced or if the sailcloth became dirty it could be machine washed by removing
the bladder. The sailcloth has proven to be extremely strong and durable with
hard play. We decided to change the fabric for the “general” toy market since
the materials, had no value in this area and was twice the cost of denier.
However, the Rib-It-Ball is also manufactured for the “special needs” child with
cellophane in the ribs to get the sound of the original racing sailcloth design,
and high contrast colors for low vision children. I think it’s great that the Rib-It-Ball is manufactured for the
general toy market but I also want to make sure that it gets to the people for
whom it was originally intended, those “special children” whose challenges
actually inspired its unique design. The picture on the web site of Jacob has
continually surfaced in my mind and although he is probably six or seven years
old by now I’ve often thought that he should have had one to play with.
That is why
the Rib-It-Ball for special needs is called “Jacob’s Ball”.
