GoBabyGo at New Trier Looks Ahead:
More Innovation, More Mobility, More Community

New Trier Intro to Engineering students have been modifying and adapting electric toy vehicles for children living with spina bifida and other significant mobility impairments. Matched through an ongoing partnership with the Illinois Spina Bifida Association, Sunrise Medical, and True North Education Cooperative, the vehicles are adjusted and fitted for the young recipients during workshops at both campuses.

Shout-out to our students for participating in this authentic, empathetic project hearts-on, heads-on, and hands-on. The New Trier Applied Arts Department received a Marran Grant—thanks to the Class of 1981—from the New Trier Educational Foundation to support this continuing partnership, now in its third year!

“GoBabyGo at New Trier is an example of what happens when you combine inquisitive minds, generous people and children in need,” says Matt Larsen, Executive Director of the Illinois Spina Bifida Association. “You get empowerment through independent mobility. You get human centered design and innovation that has ripple effects beyond the school into the community.”

Jessica Pedersen, Director of Clinical Education at Sunrise Medical, agrees. “It's been an incredible run, and students have really demonstrated innovation beyond my imagination,” she adds. “If you look around today, they 3D printed a little handle that goes on the steering wheel and actually put the child's name on it. That's new and exciting. They always jump to the challenges when we have children that have greater needs and are able to do that.”

Pedersen’s next goal is to work with the children that would have difficulty using a GoBabyGo car, the way it is, because they don't have the hand skills. She’s finding that the expertise of New Trier faculty is able to work with some of their design ideas, to be able to pull in some joysticks. “If we can have joystick models for therapists to be able to teach a child how to use a joystick, they'll be able to use a power wheelchair in the future,” says Pedersen.

According to Larsen, ISBA is already planning ways to begin the human centered design process so that students have more time to get to know the needs of the children the program serves. This gives students and faculty more time to set up the tools and innovate, and it gives us more time to recruit more participants.

This year, ISBA started recruiting children from La Rabida Hospital on the south side of Chicago. That type of partnership, while just beginning, represents a great way to get the resources to people throughout Chicagoland who need them, and children with a variety of lifelong conditions the tools that they need to be maximally independent through mobility.

“So starting earlier for more design innovation, more interaction, human design thinking, and more community outreach and recruitment, that's where we want to go,” points out Larsen.