Streamlining Scorekeeping for Golfers

About

Overview

Marker Golf is a digital scorecard app for golfers to run games across groups and events. Alongside the technical founder, I supported Marker's product design and strategy in preparation for their MVP launch.

Responsibilities

The founder had developed an app with significant functionality, but wanted an updated design to take it to the next level. As such, this 0.5→1 project started by auditing the existing platform and proposing iterative solutions. After cleaning up the navigation and creating a starter design system, I moved onto designing key user flows. To help guide product strategy for the team moving forward, I also conducted a thorough competitive landscape of digital scorecards.

Selected Work

Helping Users End their Round

I designed a flow to help users close out their round—creating a sense of completion while naturally guiding them into next steps like posting their score. The flow balances speed and clarity, so users can wrap up quickly without breaking momentum.

Functionality

  • Prompt users to end their round once the scorecard appears complete
  • Lock the scorecard upon completion, with the option to unlock for edits
  • Offer the ability to post scores directly to the USGA
  • (Bonus) Reinforce the brand story of golf Markers through interaction details

Goals

  • Speed: users have just finished their round; they (hopefully) want to celebrate, not to spend time on their phone
  • Configurability: surface all settings for posting in one place to streamline the experience
  • Brand building: capture the feeling of the brand's namesake, 'Markers,' who would sign scorecards to officiate their scores

Event Setup Flow

I investigated and proposed solutions for streamlining event setup—a key priority for Marker’s MVP launch, since over 70% of users rely on event functionality. Event setup also serves as a major differentiator in the competitive landscape of digital scorecards.

The Problem

Users organizing large group events found setup to be overly manual and repetitive. Adding players required typing in names while cross-referencing email threads, creating scorecards for multiple tee times meant repeating the same steps, and setting up games from scratch felt tedious when the same formats were often played week after week.

The Solution

Rather than pursuing an all-or-nothing redesign, I identified a series of targeted point solutions to reduce friction at each stage of setup:

  • Self-registration links: organizers can now share a link for players to register themselves, eliminating the need to manually input names
  • Bulk scorecard creation: instead of building each scorecard individually, organizers can generate multiple at once and assign players later
  • Game duplication: explored as a way to speed up recurring setups, though ultimately deprioritized because of variations in user behavior

Together, these refinements transformed a tedious process into a faster, more intuitive flow. Event organizers can now set up large-scale events with minimal effort, letting Marker handle the repetitive work.

Competitive Analysis

Although initial user research had guided a set of product priorities to accomplish prior to Marker's MVP launch, the post-launch roadmap remained unexplored. Furthermore, while research to date had come primarily from users, it was uncertain how Marker would fare in the competitive environment.

Drawing from my background in venture capital, during which I developed many market landscapes, I set out to assess how Marker's current and potential competitive positioning could help guide product direction moving forward.

Key Findings

Based on a comprehensive market analysis, I identified Marker’s event functionality as a key differentiator in the digital scorecard space. Along with other findings, such as USGA posting, I recommended directing product development toward the events sub-sector in order to (1) capitalize on the relatively unsaturated market and (2) create a competitive moat against potential market entrants.

Impact

Building a Scalable Foundation

Within the design system and navigation audit, I utilized systems thinking to map out dead-ends or confusing routes. By introducing component guidelines (like X for this, arrow for that), we were able to significantly increase clarity and trust without a significant investment. This systems approach has ensured that the product foundations are well thought out and able to support new features.

Defining High-Impact Flows

With so many potential directions, we focused on the flows that would have the greatest product and competitive impact. Based on market analysis, posting to the USGA emerged as a key baseline feature, while event setup stood out as a differentiator. Starting with the end-round flow allowed us to close the loop on the core user journey, while tackling event setup next positioned us to stay ahead of the field.

Iterative, Testable Solutions

While it was sometimes tempting to completely overhaul a flow, by prioritizing iterative point solutions we were not only able to ship features faster, but also better isolate variables in user feedback to continue strengthening the MVP.