WorkGolfNow Compete

Golf Channel · 2020 · Commerce · Social

Its own app, apart from booking

GolfNow Compete

A standalone GolfNow app for scoring rounds with GPS and competing against friends in real time.

Compete GPS scoring and live leaderboard.
My role
Design Direction, UX Design, Branding
Team
Engineering and marketing
When
2020 · 1 Year
Platforms
iOS, Android, Apple Watch
sign-ups in the first month
9,000
activation
52%
Compete-led bookings in pilot markets
+14%
competition rounds in the first year
100K+

The 30-second version

Problem
GolfNow wanted to support competition on the course without crowding the booking flow.
What I did
Owned the core flows and made the case for a separate app, working with engineering and marketing.
Result
About 9,000 people signed up in the first month. More than 100,000 competition rounds were played in the first year.

Context and constraints

GolfNow Compete is a standalone app that takes GolfNow past booking a tee time and out onto the course. You score with GPS, follow live leaderboards, play matchups against friends, and look at your stats after the round. Golf already had plenty of competition in it, but most of it happened on paper.

My role and the team

I owned design on Compete: the product vision and every core flow, which meant invites, GPS scoring on the course, live leaderboards, and post-round stats. I got Rory McIlroy's team on board. I also worked closely with marketing and engineering, and gave Compete a look of its own that still reads as GolfNow.

The problem

Golfers already compete with each other. They keep side bets and track scores on paper, and GolfNow wanted a piece of that beyond booking tee times.

COVID made the timing strange. In-person play was disrupted, and anything social had to work at a distance. The obvious move was to bolt competition features onto the booking app, but that would have crowded the booking flow and slowed people down on the way to a tee time.

Key decisions

01 / 02

Give competition its own app

Options
The CTO wanted the features inside the booking app; I proposed a separate app.
The call
Build Compete as a separate app.
Why
I showed how the competition features would bloat the existing GolfNow app. That settled the discussion with the CTO.

02 / 02

Keep scoring usable mid-round

The call
Keep joining, inviting and scoring short, and work closely with engineering on reliability.
Why
Golfers are focused on the game. Scoring and leaderboards have to hold up on bad clubhouse Wi-Fi and out on the back nine.

The work

Home. Start a round, join a competition nearby, or set up your own.
Setting up a competition: invite people, set the entry, and fill out the field.
GPS on the course, with distances, wind, and the hole layout while you score.
The live leaderboard, with your favorites at the top and everyone else below.
Round stats: fairways hit, greens in regulation, putts, and strokes by par.
After the round, your stats trend over time.
Your profile, with handicap, rounds played, and personal bests.
The hole-by-hole scorecard, for people who want the full detail.

How it scaled

The core flows cover invitations, GPS scoring, live leaderboards and post-round statistics. Compete has its own identity while using GolfNow’s design language.

Results

About 9,000 people signed up in the first month. Invite-to-join conversion went up 44%, and people played more than 100,000 competition rounds in the first year.

sign-ups in the first month
9,000
activation
52%
Compete-led bookings in pilot markets
+14%
competition rounds in the first year
100K+

Reflection

This was the first project where I had to design around bad connections, with people mid-round and focused on their game. I've treated reliability as part of the design work ever since.