Making It

Nike Just Made a Better Backpack for Every Body

November 07, 2024

When Richard Ramsay was a basketball-obsessed teenager, he remembers how his dad would periodically chase him down the court during games to help him retie his shoelaces. Ramsay was born without his left arm, and while his disability didn't stop him from excelling in sports like basketball and football, the challenge to complete dexterous tasks like retying a shoelace was real, and it motivated him to study the human body's interaction with the physical world. He’d go on to study kinesiology at university, compete on his program's basketball practice squad, and graduate into a footwear creation career at Nike, where he eventually joined the Universal Ease team in creating more accessible performance products. He’s both a practitioner of, and a validator for, the gear that makes daily life more useful for all athletes.

In the spring of 2022, Nike Lead Equipment Designer Brent Radewald met with Ramsay — now a Senior Footwear Developer — to show him a prototype of a new backpack developed for the brand’s Paralympic athletes ahead of Paris 2024.

The goal: take maybe the most purely functional piece of equipment that exists, the backpack, and make it easy for all athletes to use. Easy to open. Easy to close. Easy to stay secure.

Richard Ramsay, Nike Sr. Footwear Developer, wears the Ease Backpack, a Paralympic innovation that is now available for all athletes.

“A comment we were frequently hearing from adaptive athletes was how difficult it was to open and close traditional backpacks without a high-dexterity anchor point, like a hand,” says Radewald. “If they don’t have full use of both hands, small features like zippers and pull tags can be hard to grip.”

Once athletes opened the bag, the contents needed to be accessible from the very top. Someone with low dexterity, like a quadriplegic, can’t easily rummage around the base of their bag and expect to grab what they need. Each component of the bag, down to the circumference of a zipper loop, had to be efficient for athletes of all abilities to use. The product benefits couldn't be particular, but universal.

With that in mind, Radewald and his team got to work.

Rethinking the Backpack

The first step for Radewald's team was to rethink the traditional opening system. Relying completely on a zipper to close the bag requires the zipper to travel a continuous, winding path from start to finish, which can be challenging for athletes with low motor skills. Radewald and his team brainstormed alternative ways to open the bag.

Radewald began the process of testing different sizes, strengths and orientations of magnets and hook and loop. Eventually, the team landed on a patented magnetic closure system that was backed against a TPU-reinforced lining, using the magnetic pull to “swing” the top flap shut and secure it in place.

“Magnets and hook and loops have different strengths based on the direction of the opening force, says Radewald. “Magnets have great vertical power in keeping something tight up and down, but they don’t hold up as well to shearing forces, side to side. Hook and loops have nice shearing strength, but less vertical strength. If there was some combination of those elements that we put together, we might have something special.”

By design, the top flap can be opened using one hand when the user applies light force from on top, requiring much lower dexterity than with a traditional backpack.

For added security, a G-hook on the back of the bag loops through the top flap, keeping it sealed tight.

The team would develop three more prototypes after rolling out the first EasyOn bag for testing, consulting many of Nike's product experts like Ramsay for their observations. The log book describing the bag’s updates over the course of two years is filled with precise, meticulous changes: Move top zipper pocket by 1.5 centimeters. Make bottle pocket finger loop 2 centimeters wide. Of course, these improvements couldn’t just remain concepts on a product diagram; they had to be practically tested in real conditions that were comparable for athletes with low dexterity. In review sessions, Radewald and his team would attempt to open and close the bag using oven mitts and kitchen utensils like salad tongs. They also held lengthy product feedback conversations with a local wheelchair rugby team, the Portland Pounders.

The designs for the EasyOn bag prototypes spanned over two years. Each update needed to make the backpack more intuitive and reliable for daily use.

The beauty of the prototype reviews, says Radewald, was how cosmetic variables like colorways — common to footwear — are secondary to equipment like backpacks. Is this backpack easy for you to use? That’s the simple question they presented to the Pounders. Based on the feedback, all signs were pointing to yes.

At the same time, the adaptive athletes’ feedback revealed new opportunities. One of them, echoed by Ramsey during his feedback sessions, was creating a modular strap system.

“If we can create a better bag for our adaptive athletes, we create a better product for every athlete.”
Brent Radewald, Nike Lead Equipment Designer

“Many of the wheelchair athletes we worked with didn’t have a bag that worked well with their wheelchairs,” says Ramsay. “If you didn’t have wheelchair handles that were a standard width, you were out of luck in securing your bag. You’d have to move around with it on your lap.”

Patented clasps on the backpack’s straps allow the user to widen or narrow the bag’s fit across wheelchair handlebars, not to mention across the athlete’s shoulders — a helpful feature that Ramsey witnessed when showing the prototype to his brother.

“My brother is close to 100 pounds heavier than me, and he adjusted the same EasyOn backpack I have and wear it comfortably,” says Ramsay. “The backpack isn’t just a better bag for disabled athletes. It’s a better bag for everyone.”

The backpack's modular strap system allow the bag to be carried in many different ways.

The straps can be widened or narrowed to fit over wheelchair handlebars.

This universality is what excites Radewald ahead of the bag’s debut on nike.com this season. Beyond Paralympians, any athlete — from pros to weekend warriors to students — can benefit from a more efficient, more intuitive backpack.

“Universal design helps all athletes perform at their best,” says Radewald. “If we can create a better bag for our adaptive athletes, we create a better product for every athlete.”

The Elite EasyOn Backpack is designed to be a more intuitive backpack for all athletes. “The backpack isn’t just a better bag for disabled athletes," says Ramsay. "It’s a better bag for everyone.”