Designing a golf-course platform where the physical environment becomes part of the interface.
HPS Golf is a 0→1 product ecosystem connecting course operations, golfer experiences, QR-enabled physical touchpoints, sponsorship, analytics, and real-world course materials. I owned the product direction and experience across the system — from software architecture and user workflows to the physical surfaces golfers encounter on the course.
Role
Product Systems Lead · Founder
Client
Happy Path Studios
Contribution
The HPS Golf homepage: the club dashboard, sponsor QR scan activity, and a golfer’s handicap card, in one connected system.
A golf course contains places, transitions, decisions, information, staff, golfers, sponsors, physical surfaces, and repeated interactions. Yet many digital golf products treat the course as something represented inside software — a booking calendar, a scorecard, a map on a screen.
HPS Golf began from a different question: could the course itself become part of the digital product, rather than something the product merely describes?
What if the course itself could become part of the digital product?
These are not simply permission levels. They represent different contexts, responsibilities, and information needs — a platform owner overseeing many clubs has almost nothing in common with a golfer standing on a tee.
Super Admin
Platform-level visibility across clubs, courses, users, and operational health — the layer that made a multi-tenant platform possible rather than a one-off course build.
Course Admin
Configuration and management for a single club: courses, holes, sponsors, staff, and the analytics that show how the course is actually performing.
Staff
Operational roles scoped to a specific job on the course, starting with the Starter role that keeps tee-time flow and pace visible before problems spread.
Golfer
A mobile-first experience connecting rounds, scores, handicap, and course discovery to the physical course they are standing on.
One system. Multiple mental models.
A fabricated plaque or sign is not merely collateral. It can become a product surface. The physical design affects discoverability, placement, durability, and usability. The digital interaction affects usefulness, content, sponsor value, and analytics. This loop is one of the strongest differentiators of the project.
Physical Course
A tee, a hole, a clubhouse wall — a real surface a golfer already walks past.
QR Surface
A fabricated plaque or sign carrying a scannable entry point into the platform.
Mobile Interaction
The golfer’s phone becomes the interface, on location, in context.
Product Experience
Hole detail, sponsor content, or course information relevant to that exact spot.
Analytics
The scan becomes a data point: location, time, and engagement that did not exist before.
Course Decision
Operators use that signal to inform sponsor placement, content, and the next physical surface.
Hole & Course Context
A golfer standing at a hole does not need the entire administrative system.
They need par, yardage, and course information relevant to that exact spot — the moment, not the whole platform.
Golfer Context
Rounds, scores, and handicap belong to the golfer, not just the club.
The golfer-facing experience follows the person across courses, connecting their own history to whichever course they are standing on today.
Context is part of the interface.
What the Physical Object Has to Get Right
On site at The Plantation at Leesburg: measuring an existing hole-marker monument to fabricate a QR-enabled sponsor plaque insert that would actually fit it.
Concept visualization exploring the sponsor-plaque design direction, not a photograph of an installed plaque.
The physical object is the first screen.
The golfer-facing experience needed to feel simple. The administrative experience had to expose enough control — courses, holes, sponsors, staff — to make that simplicity possible.
Staff-Specific Operational Views
Starter Control: tee-time flow and player movement, scoped to the Starter role.
Pace & Flow: course movement and bottlenecks, visible before they compound.
The product problem was never “where can we put an ad.” It was how sponsorship could create measurable value without degrading the course experience — balancing course revenue, sponsor visibility, and golfer usefulness against each other.
Active sponsors, total scans, and sponsor clicks are tracked directly in the course admin view, connecting a physical hole assignment to a measurable digital signal.
Physical surface · Hole marker
HPS Golf
Hole 7 · Par 4 · 312 yds
Spring Invitational
Presented by Acme Corp
Scan to learn more
qr.hpsgolf.io/h7-sp24
Digital engagement layer
Scans
12
Outbound
3
Route
Active
Physical surface config flows from sponsor record → QR routing → analytics
Illustrative Example
A sponsor surface, from physical plaque to digital engagement layer
A QR code on a sponsor plaque is not just a link. It is a tracked engagement surface with routing logic and analytics collection.
Illustrative example — scan and outbound counts shown here are representative, not reported figures from a specific event.
Active clubs, active courses, active golfers, platform revenue, total tenants, and weekly platform intelligence, in one operator view.
A physical interaction that previously disappeared can now become observable. That helps a course understand what golfers interact with, where engagement happens, which surfaces perform, and how sponsors are engaging — without additional monitoring hardware.
Spring Invitational 2024
In progress
Player flow
On course
18 / 24
Hole range
6–14
Pace
On track
Sponsor engagement
Hole 3 · TechCo
14
Hole 7 · Acme Corp
11
Hole 12 · Local Bank
9
Total QR activity
48 scans · 12 outbound
Illustrative Example
Real-time operational visibility for an event or operator
Directors and operators need player flow, pace, and sponsor engagement in a single view rather than reconstructed after the fact.
Illustrative example of the operational view — figures shown are representative, not reported results.
The course becomes measurable.
The pilot took place at The Plantation at Leesburg, on its Otter Creek and Cranes Roost courses. The physical work associated with the pilot included course plaques and signage, QR-enabled physical touchpoints, magnets, a tumbler sample, and a flag.
Before: the existing Otter Creek Hole 1 monument, photographed on site.
Fabrication planning: measuring the same monument to design a plaque insert that would fit the real, existing stone rather than an assumed size.
Designing for a real course meant designing against real constraints: viewing distance, placement, material, and how a design decision made on a screen actually holds up on an engraved stone monument in direct sunlight.
Being able to think about the interface, the physical artifact, fabrication, branding, placement, QR behavior, and the mobile destination as parts of one experience — rather than a software project handed to a separate sign vendor — was the advantage.
Concept visualization of the sponsor-plaque template — direction, not a final as-built photo.
Designing the software without designing the surface would have solved only half the problem.
Every product boundary, workflow, and interaction pattern had to be defined from the concept forward: product concept, user roles, information architecture, workflows, product boundaries, interaction patterns, responsive experiences, the analytics model, and the connection between physical and digital.
Product Concept
Define what the connected course platform actually needed to be.
User Roles
Establish who was using the system and what each role actually needed.
Information Architecture
Structure the product areas: courses, holes, sponsors, staff, golfers, analytics.
Workflows
Map the sequences each role moves through, on a screen and on the course.
Interaction Patterns
Design the responsive, role-specific interactions across the platform.
Implementation
Move from design into working, deployable software.
Validation & Iteration
Test against real course conditions and refine.
I Defined
AI Accelerated
I Reviewed
AI increased implementation capacity. It did not replace product judgment.
Physical Visibility
vs.
Course Aesthetics
A QR surface that no one notices is wasted. A course covered in signage stops feeling like a golf course.
Resolution
Make digital entry points discoverable without turning the course into advertising clutter.
Sponsor Value
vs.
Golfer Experience
Sponsors need engagement they can measure. Golfers did not come to the course to read ads between holes.
Resolution
Create measurable sponsor opportunities without allowing sponsorship to dominate the golfer interaction.
Administrative Power
vs.
Usability
A course admin needs real control over holes, sponsors, and staff. That control cannot come at the cost of a workable daily workflow.
Resolution
Give course operators enough control while keeping everyday workflows understandable.
Feature Breadth
vs.
Product Coherence
It would have been easy to keep adding disconnected golf-software features. That is not what made this product distinct.
Resolution
Prioritize the connected course experience rather than adding disconnected golf-software features.
AI Speed
vs.
Product Quality
AI-assisted development could produce implementation quickly. Speed alone does not make a feature correct, accessible, or coherent.
Resolution
Use AI to accelerate implementation while maintaining human review over architecture, UX, accessibility, and acceptance.
Digital Possibility
vs.
Physical Reality
A design that works on a development screen does not automatically work on a stone monument in direct sunlight.
Resolution
Evaluate the product in the environment where golfers actually encounter it, not only on a development screen.
HPS Golf
Super Admin
Club
Course Admin
Golfer
That tenant hierarchy is only part of the picture. The fuller system connects golfer interaction, physical surfaces, operations, and intelligence into one model — including the parts of that model still on the roadmap.
Interaction Layer
Golfer Interaction
Event participants and golfers engaging with the course, sponsor surfaces, and digital touchpoints across the round.
Physical · Sponsor
Sponsor Surfaces
Cart plaques, hole plaques, and tee markers: physical sponsor presence installed before play begins and connected to the platform data model.
Physical · Digital Bridge
QR Systems
QR codes on physical surfaces that route to digital experiences, collect scan analytics, and connect physical installation to operational data in real time.
Physical · Event
Signage & Materials
On-course signage, scorecards, and event materials: fabrication outputs generated from the same configuration data as digital deployment.
Operations · Event Management
Tournament Operations
Tee sheet management, player registration, pace-of-play monitoring, format configuration, and live event status for directors and operators.
Operations · Sponsor
Sponsor Systems
Hole assignments, sponsor configuration, campaign management, QR routing, and the fabrication data that drives physical production.
Operations · Facility
Clubhouse & Staff
Scoped operational visibility for staff: event timeline, player flow, on-course status, and service coordination context.
Intelligence · Output
Analytics & Reporting
Event performance reporting, sponsor engagement summaries, and post-event analytics delivered to operators and sponsor contacts.
Intelligence · Live
Operational Visibility
Real-time dashboards for operators: player flow, engagement activity, sponsor presence status, and live event metrics.
Intelligence · Roadmap
Engagement & POS Expansion
Scan analytics, golfer engagement patterns, and POS integration connecting transaction data to sponsor attribution and clubhouse reporting.
Business Outcomes
Operational Insights
Physical surfaces are operational infrastructure, not decoration
Sponsor plaques and QR surfaces are tracked engagement infrastructure. They connect physical installation to digital routing and analytics collection, before the first golfer tees off.
QR interaction changes what operators can see
A scan on a sponsor surface is a data point (location, time, device, routing) that did not exist before the QR layer. Operational visibility emerges from connected surfaces, not from additional monitoring hardware.
Sponsor systems become measurable through physical presence
When a sponsor's hole assignment connects to QR routing connects to scan analytics, sponsorship stops being an impressions estimate and becomes engagement data. Post-event reporting is a record, not a summary.
Operational intelligence is an emergent property of connected systems
No single module produces the intelligence layer. It emerges from tournament data, sponsor configuration, physical engagement, and clubhouse visibility, connected through a shared data model.
Shipped & Piloted
Next / Roadmap
The value of the project was not simply the amount that could be built. It was keeping the software, physical surfaces, course operations, sponsorship model, and golfer experience coherent as one product.
The best physical + digital products do not ask where the interface ends. They design the entire experience as one system.
HPS Golf changed the product-design question from “what should this screen do” to “what should happen here — on this course, at this moment, for this person.”
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Another 0→1 Happy Path Studios product built with AI-assisted development, this one an editorial, commerce, and subscription ecosystem rather than a physical/digital course platform.