Challenges

The idea for this app was spurred on by a frustration using a fragmented set of solutions to score apps. When I played golf, I appreciated the simplicity of well designed golf apps, but was hamstrung by the necessity to use the club-issued and Australian Golf Handicap approved app. I wanted to create an app simple enough for competition golfers, with a slick interface.

How might we enable golfers to effortlessly track their scores without disrupting play?

Objective

• Design a mobile app that enables golfers to effortlessly track scores
• Create a seamless, on-the-go digital experience that enhances gameplay without disrupting focus

RESEARCHING THE PROBLEM SPACE

According to the Golf Australia, more than 3.8 million people in Australia play golf annually. Golf is synonymous with innovation- players are constantly in pursuit of new ways to enjoy the game they love. In such a fragmented market of different solutions, I wanted to learn about how people felt about the core aspect of golf- scoring.

Research Goals

• Understand who plays golf and their motivations for tracking scores
• Identify frustrations golfers face with traditional scorekeeping methods
• Determine the most valuable features for golfers who want a seamless, on-the-go scoring experience
• Analyze current golf scoring apps and their limitations
• Validate the need for an alternative golf scoring solutions

What are existing scoring resources?

Analyzing some of the most popular golf scoring apps revealed that each tends to focus on specific, niche functionalities, with Arccos offering the most advanced shot-tracking and analytics. Most apps prioritize either GPS yardage, scorekeeping, or performance tracking, but few provide a seamless, hands-free scoring experience.

Interestingly, this gap was later echoed by participants during user interviews, highlighting a need for a more intuitive and integrated digital solution that enhances gameplay without disrupting it.

Comparing features between top scoring apps revealed an fractured feature set

Interviewing users on scoring experiences

“How do you go about scoring?” To understand this question, I followed several golf players around at a local golf course to study Processes and apps that golfers used to score throughout their round.  The following were my learnings:

BUILDING USER EMPATHY

The competitive analysis and user interviews gave me a better understanding of who the users were and how they might use a reinvented app. I focused on expanding those findings into concrete visualisations that would help me empathise with users and define the product.

Persona Development

Based on patterns from my user insights I developed two personas - a young technologically inclined user that loves golf and playing with his mates and an older technophobe. Since the goal of the project was to make disruption free golf scoring more accessible to everyone, it was important for the features to be intuitive for all. As such, the technophobe was the primary persona I focused on for the rest of the project’s development.

Based on our key persona, I developed I looked at the key problems that we could look to solve.

Problem Ideation

There are lots of problems that exist with scoriing - some more worth solving than others

Problem Statement, Ideal State

I am:  a competition golfer at my local course
I am trying to: enter my scores promptly into the competition system
But: It requires too much of me
Because: I have to remember my (and my groups) scores for long periods of time, entering them one by one into a phone or scorecard.
Which makes me feel: tired and distracted

In an ideal world: I just play my natural game; my score is something I don’t need to think about
The greatest benefit to me is: I can play golf uninterruptedly
Which makes me feel: satisfied, focused

Solution Ideation

How might we seamlessly and uninterruptedly score golf?

Translating needs into features

From the touch points and needs gleamed from the empathizing phase, I created a Product Feature Roadmap to outline specific app features and organize upcoming design efforts.

RAPID EXPERIMENTATION

Golfers actually want voice-based scoring
Risk: If golfers don’t want to use voice input, the app is irrelevant.
Test: Create a simple prototype and test with real golfers.
Validation Criteria: If 80%+ of testers say they’d prefer voice scoring over manual entry.

Voice recognition will be accurate in a golf environment
Risk: If the voice recognition struggles with wind noise, accents, or golf course conditions, the app becomes frustrating.
Test: Build a basic MVP to test voice accuracy in different real-world golf environments.
Validation Criteria: Voice accuracy must be above 90% across different accents and environments.

Golfers will trust a digital score confirmation process
Risk: If players don’t trust an app for score validation (vs. traditional scoring), adoption will be low.
Test: Run a small tournament using only the app and interview players about trust & ease of use.
Validation Criteria: 85%+ of users feel comfortable relying on the app for scorekeeping.

Sketching users flows & understanding recognition technology

This part of the process required doing a bit of research into photo and audio technology to understand the basic limitations of what the app would be able to achieve. For example, I later built in a confirmation step in the Voice Recognition flow, based on methods to increase confidence in AI software.

Scoring on the Apple Watch

Validation of the scores happens on the phone

Based on the user insight that technology detracts from the meditative golf experience, the voice feature must be easily accessed with one hand and without much effort.

I decided that a primary button on the Apple Watch, Home Screen and Scoring page would serve as a point of access for all scoring needs. The ease of using voice would allow them to add scores regardless of what hole they were on, or what hold they needed to score.

Being accessible with UI design

VOICECADDY was picked as the app name for its practical and clear relation to assistance to ‘ease of use’. It was the focus of the app to ensure that the app would be accessible to all users. Considerations were made to ensure those that were unable to speak clearly would also experience delight using the app.

‘Magic’ Voice Recognition + AI

VoiceCaddy is designed around the ability to add scores using natural language. Like you would talk to your mates, or your caddy

The app does the process of scoring for you- no need for manually counting, scoring, or remembering. Players can update many holes all at once.

Simple Swipes

The process of validating scores at the end of a round is cumbersome, and prone to mistakes. With a redesigned process, players validate their scores (and their partners’ scores) as the round goes on.

With a simplified swipe to validate flow, users can -

• Validate their scores to update the live leaderboard
• Edit scores that the AI fails to properly recognise

Gameplay  features available

It’s expected that golf apps help players as much as possible, so I added some core GPS functionality to ensure that players could adopt this app readily.

TEST AND ITERATION

The app design included design decisions that fundamentally upended the way that players think about adding scores to a mobile app. I conducted a round of usability testing on a high-fidelity prototype to identify usability issues in using these features.

Insights from the course

In order to observe user micro-interactions, I took the app out onto the course to test it out. I got my friends to have a go of “using” the app too.

We learned quickly that we LOVED the ability to rely on AI to do the hard work for us. It was satisfying to not have to remember scores even for a moment walking back to the cart after the hole had finished.

We learned that it was important that the app be automated, but not to annoy the golfer, especially when the player is making a stroke.

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We also wished for a way to accept more than one card at a time.

Revisions and final wireframes

Usability testing revealed that the main issues were confusion over how to validate my partners’ score, lack of indicators such as showing which score had been validated by my partner, and need for more useful editing options. Based on the feedback, I applied the following revisions to my wireframes:

• Indicators on which player had validated the score
• Added more clear differentiation between holes
• A clearer way to edit the scores