A golf app I designed, specced and shipped myself
After my grandad passed, his golf clubs sat in the garage for years until I finally picked them up at 32. I was hooked from the first round, and because I can't leave anything alone, I started building an app.
- Role
- Founder: product, UX/UI, brand and build
- Year
- 2025–now
- Worked with
- Claude, and a lot of beta testers
- Where
- Personal
- What I did
- Product designUX/UIBrand identityProduct strategyWeb design
Where it started
It started as a way to find and rank nearby courses. Then shot tracking. Then stats, handicaps, live multiplayer scorecards and a native app. Nearly every feature came from a round where I wanted something that didn't exist yet.
- 1
Find
Search and rank courses nearby, with hole-by-hole detail before you get there.
- 2
Play
Track every shot on the course with GPS, with the club you used if you want it.
- 3
Score
Live multiplayer scorecards that update as each player finishes a hole.
- 4
Improve
Stats, strokes gained and a handicap that builds as you play.
The thinking
Building it myself means every product decision is mine, and so is every consequence. A few of the ones I'm proudest of:
Earn the handicap
New players don't have enough rounds for a proper handicap, but an empty stat on day one feels broken. So you tell Dink'It your handicap when you sign up, and it uses that until you've played three rated rounds. Then the official World Handicap System calculation takes over completely. I chose not to blend the two: a number that's half guess and half maths is harder to trust than either.
Don't let people trip at the start
Location permissions and long sign-up forms are where apps lose people. Dink'It checks what it needs before you need it, rather than throwing an error on the first tee.
Free where it builds the habit
My Bag, where you set up your own clubs, moved from Premium to free. It's what makes the in-game club suggestions possible, so giving it away makes the paid features worth more, not less.
Shot tracking on the course, and the stats it feeds afterwards.
Testing it for real
The beta is a closed loop with family, friends and real testers. New sign-ups wait for approval, and after a couple of rounds a short in-app survey asks what's working and what isn't. Ending the beta is a setting, not a rebuild.
Inside the app
Getting in
Sign up, then a short walkthrough of the two ways to play: GPS shot tracking or a plain scorecard, with clubs logged only if you want them.
1Splash
2Create account
3Scorecard mode
4Logging clubs
Finding a course
Search by town or postcode, see the layout and difficulty before you go, and keep the ones you play most a tap away.
1Find courses
2Results
3Course details
4Favourites
On the course
Pick a nearby course, set the round up, add friends, then play hole by hole. Big targets, few taps, readable in sunlight.
1Tee off
2Round details
3GPS play
4Scorecard mode
5Round summary
Stats
Free for everyone: the dashboard, handicap and every scorecard you've played, so the habit forms before anything is asked of you.
1Dashboard
2Scorecards
Premium stats
Where the paid tier earns its keep: strokes gained, round-by-round analysis and comparisons across the same course.
1Strokes gained
2Analyse a round
3Compare rounds
4Upgrade
Friends and your bag
Golf is better with people. Friends, shared rounds and invites, plus a bag that learns your real distances from tracked shots.
1Friends
2Friend profile
3Invite
4My Bag
Why it matters to me
It's the clearest example of how I work: see something, think "I could do that", then actually do it, end to end. And somewhere along the way I think I finally understood why my grandad loved this game so much.
