The encyclopedia · Engineering & Operations · Product decision · 2024
Mastercard built an open-source ball collector to make a wheelchair ballkid possible.
For the Australian Open, Mastercard co-designed a ball collector and holder so wheelchair users can do the ballkid job at speed, then gave the design away.
Mastercard · TBWA Australia
the move
Being a ballkid at a Grand Slam is a treasured chance for tennis-mad kids, but wheelchair users had always been left out because nobody believed they could do the job.
The real obstacle was concrete: collecting balls from the ground and storing them while moving. Mastercard and its partners designed first-of-its-kind assistive technology that lets a wheelchair user pick up and store tennis balls with the same speed and accuracy as any other ballkid.
The design was tested with a pilot program in which Sonny Rennison, an eleven-year-old wheelchair tennis champion, trained alongside experienced ballkids and then stepped onto the court at the first Grand Slam of the year.
Mastercard then made the ball collector, holder and the training learnings available to anyone, publishing the files so any tournament or person with a 3D printer can reproduce the technology.
why it works
- The brand found the precise physical barrier, not a vague sense of exclusion, and engineered it away.
- Designing with the user and world-ranked players ensured the device fit the real flow of a match.
- Open-sourcing the design, not protecting it, is what lets the solution travel beyond one event.
- It turned a sponsorship into a tangible change in who is allowed on court.
what transfers
Inclusion is an engineering problem, not a message. Find the single physical step that excludes a group, remove it, then publish the design so every venue can adopt it.
what came after
The first wheelchair ballkid took court at the 2024 Australian Open, and the ball collector, holder and pilot learnings were released so anyone with a 3D printer could reproduce them. It drew wide recognition and reinforced Mastercard's inclusive positioning, showing that accessibility can be a product, not a campaign.
references
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