PGA Junior League

2020-2021

The PGA family of apps helps youth golfers and parents participate in the PGA Junior (Jr.) League across the country. Parents can manage their children’s schedule, coordinate with coaches and other parents, and sign up for additional coaching opportunities all in one place.

The PGA spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for off the shelf software to help plan, promote, and run its Junior League program. The software was no longer a viable option to continue growing their program, so the organization turned to me for help bring the software in house and save them money over time.

These websites and mobile apps were expressly designed for PGA coaches and their clients. The apps and website brought in a 50% YoY increase in program signups within the first quarter of release, with mobile apps still rated at 4 of 5 stars on the app store today.

Role Lead Product Designer (Freelance)
Deliverables Mobile app design
Reponsive website design
Player / coach mentorship
UX design
UI design
Interaction design
Usability Testing
Prototyping
HTML / CSS
Duration 12 months

Background

The PGA offers a coaching program for kids up to 17 years old as part of their sports development program for the next generation of golfers. The also gives PGA coaches an additional source of revenue beyond private and group coaching adult golfers across the country.

The coaches and parents were using a patchwork set of commercial, off the shelf SaaS products that were able to accommodate the basic needs of PGA coaches and parents, but were never fully designed for their needs. Those products were reaching the limits of what they could do, new functionality requests were accommodated slowly, and prices for licensing were increasing by tens of thousands of dollars annually.

The existing technology behind PGA Jr. League was highly customized by an outside company, which did not fully provide the functionality needed by the PGA. Additionally, parents noted that the technology was difficult to use and lacked the visual polish matching the PGA brand.

Problems

  • The PGA needed to create all mobile app and desktop products before the start of the Junior League season, giving the team a firm 12 month deadline to bring everything to life

  • The organization runs and makes decisions by committee, from the top level down to daily stakeholder meetings, making consensus a challenge

  • There was only one designer on the team and he had just transitioned into product design from within PGA

  • There was more functionality than we had time so prioritizing what to design first was constantly a conversation with the team

Goals

  • Increase national interest in the sport of golf by growing the number of youth players

  • Drive revenue growth through increased program offerings for busy parents

  • Bring PGA coaches world class digital tools to manage their programs

  • Improve existing functionality offered by current technology products and build frequently requested capabilities for coaches at their desk and on the course.

  • Reduce friction for parents looking to quickly and easily register and keep their kids in seasonal golf programs

Process

  • Partnered with product leads and stakeholders to identify primary workflows needed for

    • PGA coaches who needed to promote, attract, and manage multiple groups of young golf players as part of their coaching offerings

    • Parents and young adults who needed to find high quality extracurricular sports programs as part of skill development

  • Created low fidelity concepts based on initial workflows and sitemaps with stakeholders to ensure functionality met PGA coach needs

  • Designed mobile first web application that helped coaches with everything from creating their first program to potentially taking their players and teams to Junior League championships

  • Conducted usability tests to evaluate design concepts with PGA coaches, improving solutions based on qualitative feedback

  • Continuously ensured committees and stakeholders were aligned on the highest value solutions and priorities by co-leading software development efforts with the team program manager

The PGA mobile app universe was broken up into 3 streams of work: 1. for PGA coaches, 2. for players/parents, and 3. for the public site promoting the PGA Jr. League. Mapping this out in miro allowed for tracking complex, interacting functionality and for quick feedback through collaborative and asynchronous comments.

I worked with product and engineering leads to document the overall page architecture for the PGA Jr. League marketing site. I then worked on low fidelity concepts, eventually building out the front of the website using webflow’s CMS tools, HTML, and CSS.

The PGA Jr. League website was designed for parents to learn about the program, look for and sign up for local teams nearby, and allow PGA coaches to promote themselves as resources in the local community.

Designs for the mobile app were generally started with low fidelity wireframes, listing out functionality and information and reviewed with the business stakeholder team to ensure that everything would adequately serve the parents and coaches.

Outcomes

  • Designed a mobile first, responsive web application for coaches to create and manage their junior league programs

    • Increased coaching programs created by 50% YoY in the first quarter, which increases potential revenue for both PGA coaches and the larger PGA through organizational fees

    • Increased the number of coaches using digital payments instead of cash/check by 15% YoY in the first quarter, increasing ease of payments to /from coaches and parents, respectively

  • Designed a native mobile application for parents to register and manage their kids’ participation in PGA Junior League season and championship programs

    • Mobile app is still rated as 4 out of 5 stars in the App Store

  • Created a mobile first marketing site that helps parents find the best PGA Junior League program for their kids

  • Established the design team by acting as hiring manager for new designers to become the first in house digital design team at PGA

The PGA mobile app launched successfully, on time, and represented the first major step for the CTO to bring its digital presence in house. The apps have high praise and ratings in the Apple and Google app stores.