A golf players’ ultimate open-chat community to
effortlessly send invitations, arrange golf rounds, and
coordinate tee times
Project
Team
Duration
Product Design Project
for startup company,
WG.Inc
Kate Chang (Product Designer)
Sean Bae (Software Developer)
WG.Inc (The Company)
February 2024 - Current
Project Overview
In early 2024, I had the opportunity to participate in a product design project
for a startup company. The company, WG, aims to create an open-chat
community service catering to golf players, facilitating seamless connections
with other players at varying skill levels and enabling them to schedule tee
times for actual rounds.
As a product designer, I had two primary objectives -- to bring the company's
vision to life by creating a website that fulfills the needs and to simultaneously
promote users’ active golfing experiences. Given only the ideas and visions
without previously developed platform meant I needed to go from scratch.
Through active communication and feedback with development team, I
spearheaded designing of core user flows, information architecture, and UI
design elements
The Objective
  • How might we cultivate an engaging
    and accessible golfing experience for
    players of all skill levels while ensuring
    optimal website functionality and
    usability?
The Approach
To better understand the target audience, I started the research process by
analyzing data taken from user surveys. This helped me learn what users need
when looking for a golf community. I also reviewed competitor landscape to
learn what we can differentiate ourselves from them.
Understanding the User
Research Insights
Here are key insights I gathered from my research:
  • Users are envisioning an online planner that displays their tee time
    schedules in a single view.
  • Users want the community to be transparent, meaning they can see some
    information about each other when joining, to prevent no-shows or scams.
Personas
After coming up with a few insights based on user research, I created
personas. This helped in visualizing the target audience. Personas was
constantly used throughout the project to guide design decisions, priorities,
and create empathy amongst the company and our development team.
Sitemap
My next design process was to create a sitemap to visualize and illustrate main user flow and overall structure. I made sure to keep in mind that the focus of the project was to set up a website rather than a mobile application.
Low Fidelity Wireframe
Instead of digitally setting up low fidelity wireframes through Figma, I used Procreate in iPad to begin sketching, brainstorming, and developing ideas. The iPad’s portability and easy integration allowed for more freedom in gathering ideas, therefore enabled me to focus more on the content.
User Testing
At user testing stage, one of the key complaints participants had was ambiguity of the chat vs group icon in the navigation bar on the side. Users were basically confused of the unclear design language. Choosing the right wording was also one of my biggest focus at brainstorming stage, so after receiving the feedback, I bubbled this up to my development team to gather more ideas, reviewed competitors, and finally landed on the best option. As a result, users were satisfied with the update.
Final Design & Takeaways
After performing user testing and undergoing iteration, final design was now complete. This is considered the very first prototype that will need to go through more refining process as we move further, but so far, users and the company agreed that this is a perfect starting point.
One of the most significant insights I gained from this project was the importance of actively communicating and sharing challenges with team members, which consistently yields better, more creative results.
Prototype
Next Steps
  • What would a mobile application look like? This product focuses on a desktop website experience. It would be interesting to see what a dedicated mobile application would look like with the same goals in mind.
  • What can be improved with the design? UX design is an ongoing process. The next steps include continuing usability testing and constant iteration.