KNOW YOUR NUMBERS

A touchscreen/desktop app that lets golfers conduct their own gap tests.

THE PROBLEM

In golf, a "gap test" measures how far a golfer hits each of their clubs. But, because of time and cost, most players never do it.

Result: most golfers are just guessing how far they hit each club. But this is knowledge that can immediately improve their game!

Knowing Your Gaps is Critical

When you actually "know your numbers", you make better decisions about what club to use on each shot, ultimately resulting in lower golf scores.

But because it typically requires substantial time with an expensive golf coach, most golfers never get gap tested. We sought to make it easy, self-directed and accessible.

HIGH LEVEL TIMELINE

14 weeks, from research to developer handoff.

(June - Sept, 2019)

KEY GOAL

Make gap testing easy and accessible enough for any golfer to do on their own.

What's in a gap test?

The test measures 'carry' - how far a ball is hit in the air, before it hits the ground.

A golfer hits 3-10 shots per club, and finds the average carry for their good shots.

Gap = the yardage distance between carry averages.

MY ROLE

I was charged with all research, user experience, user interface design and testing for the project.

Responsibilities

Stakeholder Interviews
Interaction Design
Wireframing
Prototyping
UI Design
User Testing and Iteration

Team Size: 5

Researcher/UX Designer
PM/Subject Matter Expert
Project Owner
(2) Remote Developers

Client/Owner

An industry leader in golf launch monitor and simulator products.

UNDERSTANDING THE USER

Any avid golfer would see a quick, immediate win by going through a gap test with "Know Your Numbers".

Due to the tight deadline of getting our product to market, and leadership mandates, research would be limited to interviews with in-house subject matter experts.

Additionally, the product had to be designed for the two different use cases:

INDOOR

Individual/golf shop with one of Foresight's launch monitors, paired to a PC.

OUTDOOR

Golfers renting time on a Foresight launch monitor at a driving range, paired to a touch screen.

CONSIDERATIONS & CONSTRAINTS

Along with a limited timeline to go from 0 to initial release, the project had unique ergonomic and psychological considerations...

2 Input Devices

A golfer would be using two input devices:

a golf shot, with its data captured by the launch monitor and fed to the app

the touchscreen (outdoors) or mouse (indoors) - to make decisions

We considered how each device would affect the other, carefully designed screen prompts and limited "gear switching" between golf shots and screen inputs.

Player Fatigue

Golfers can’t swing their clubs consistently and accurately, forever.

To get reliable, succinct information about their typical shots, we baked in two constraints:

limit the number of shots allowed per club
limit the number of clubs allowed per test session

It was paramount they didn't tire during their session, and that we expedite them so they could maintain reasonably good golf form throughout the test.

Player Ego

Golfers want all of their shots to be “good”, but most of them hit some bad shots.

So the challenge is to give them enough time and control to get good shots, while also "nudging" them on to the next club in the test in a timely manner.

We had to ensure that our system wasn't causing any stress... which would frustrate... leading to bad input data.

BREAKING DOWN MAJOR PROCESSES

Interviews ⇀ Task Flow ⇀ Low-Fi Wireframes ⇀ High-Fi Prototypes ⇀ Info Architecture ⇀ The Report ⇀ Usability Testing

Stakeholder Interviews

As just an occasional golfer who'd never heard of a gap test, I had many questions.

Deep dive interviews and impromptu Q&A sessions with my project manager and the project owner (both golf tech industry veterans and avid golfers) helped me to start envisioning information architecture and task flows.

How long should a gap test take?

Do our competitors do this?

Do you get to choose which shots to keep?

How do you keep them progressing?

How many shots should you take with each club?

How can we sim/replace the golf coach?

Which club do you start with?

Do you test all your clubs in one session?

Task Flow

What would a "Know Your Numbers" session look like?

With the interview notes in hand and ideas starting to foment, I created a task flow for a Know Your Numbers session. After collaborative revisions with both my PM and Owner, the main task flow looked like this:

Low-Fi Wireframes

Guided by a detailed task flow, I sketched rough wireframes to conceptualize the structure of a few major screens.

The template/hexagon shape is from the parent app (FSX) and used a guideline for aspect ratio and eventual UI.

I didn't end up creating mid-fi wireframes, for reasons explained in the next section.

High-Fi Prototype

A number of factors influenced my decision to go from low-fi designs, straight into high-fi prototype mock-up screens.

They include:

a tight schedule.

the team decision to infuse the parent software's UI.

the fact that there were only a handful of major screens types... with lots of small variations.

A few of the key screens are shown here:

Setup Screen

Users select which clubs they'll test, in what order, and the type of ball being used.

Setup Screen, with Warning

If a golfer has selected too many clubs to conduct a reliable test, they are guided to choose fewer clubs.

Rehit Shots

After hitting all shots for a given club, a user will see them all lined up, and may choose to rehit some.

Select Shots

Once a user is done hitting a club, they choose their best shots to count in the average, then move on to the next club in their test.

TITLE OF THE CALLOUT BLOCK

Info Architecture

Keeping the golfer moving forward: designing shot selections and user prompts

Withholding Information for Their Own Good

We deliberately decided to NOT show golfers their carry distances after each shot. We wanted them to take shots in batches... for the sake of efficiency.

To discourage fretting over individual shots, we had to mitigate the impulse golfers would have, of stepping back and forth from the tee box to the screen (to accept or delete shots, one at a time).

They would get to choose which shots to keep only after hitting 3-10 with a particular club.

Sample screen prompts below (with notes):

are meant to be seen from where the golfer is taking shots (standing a few feet away).

help the golfer to stay at the tee box... until screen input is needed.

3 Shots Captured

After initial three shots, user is promted to decide if those three were 'good enough'.

If so, the user can select them and move on to the next club.

If not, they can keep hitting shots.

Start New Club

When it's time, the prompt instructs which club is next.

It also shows a progress bar in the lower left corner, indicating which clubs in the test have been completed.

The Report

As this was a test, it needed to end with a report.

Know Your Numbers Report

At the end of the test, users can print out or email a report of their results (below).

Gaps between clubs are shown in blue.

"Ideal Gap Guidelines" might help a golfer make club adjustments/changes...

For instance, the gap between this golfer's 3 Iron (3I) and 4 Iron (4I) is 2 yards. This may indicate that the 3 Iron needs mechanical adjustment in some way so it will hit further.

Usability Testing

Despite expert golf advice all around me at Foresight Sports, we needed to test.

New to Their Product Culture

While usability testing is an obvious necessity to those in UX Design, it was something new in the culture here. Setting the precedent for it (during an earlier project) was met with some palpable skepticism.

Regardless, I sought out both golfers and non-golfers, in-house, to help us out. We performed in-person, guided user testing with 4 subjects.

In the prior section above, you can see the graphic report that is displayed at the end of the session. That is actually the revised version.

Testing on the initial version revealed:

it was hard for subjects to tell what was happening in the bird’s eye graphic in the lower left part of the report.
the gaps weren’t as easily decipherable as I thought they would be.

Accordingly, I re-designed the report to make it simpler to read. The image below is the printout version of the report:

(Above) The shot groupings graphic (lower left/center) is much easier to understand than it was initially, with the help of the golfer icon centered at 0 yds.

The improved printout version of the report also includes a quick reference guide to a golfer's gaps (lower right). It can be easily cut out and will fit nicely in the player's wallet for easy reference on their next round.

RELEASE AND RESPONSE

Handed off to developers in September; released in October.

In September, I handed off design assets to a remote 2-person development team to code the project, via Zeplin and a shared Google Drive folder.

The software was released at the end of October. Because this contractor had programmed the parent software, they were able to implement this child app quickly. Here is how it was implemented:

Used at Driving Ranges Around the World

Know Your Numbers was included in Foresight’s ‘Total Range’ software (used by driving ranges that rent out our launch monitors). At release, driving ranges on 3 continents were using the software.

Included in Foresight FSX

Foresight's FSX software allows players to simulate play on the world's most famous golf courses. One of the options is a practice driving range.

Know Your Numbers is now included as an option in the "Practice" area of FSX.

December 2019 Updates

In December, the project manager and I were given some feedback where we made some minimal changes to instructional prompts and workflow.

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