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Jul 11

iPhone Golf Scorecard Application – Creating Useful Mobile Software

iPod Touch No Comments »

It is often said that the best products come about by someone deciding to scratch their own itch.

Our colleague Albert, who is an avid golfer, had grown very irritated with the various gadgets for helping golfers on the golf course. The affordable gadgets always had multiple shortcomings for him; they would just never work quite the way he thought they should.

At Tygus we love Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch – we think they make fantastic computing platforms, and we use them for a variety of things.

Albert decided he needed to create a sensible golf scorecard application for the iPhone/iPod, one that would “just work” and flow naturally according to his way of thinking and doing.

We thought it would be an interesting experience for us to take an iPhone application through the App Store process, so we gave Albert the green light with but a single instruction: that he was not permitted to look at any of the other iPhone golf score or golf tracker applications out there.

The main reason for this, was to maintain the purity of Albert’s vision. We wanted to avoid Albert’s subconscious being influenced by the screenshots and mechanics of other software. These might put pictures into his head which could “pollute” his own personal idea of what would satisfy him as a golfer.

Now, this doesn’t mean its unimportant to understand what else is available out there. We just thought it sensible for Albert to concentrate on his own vision, while other team members kept track of the competitive landscape.

We named the resulting app SensiGolf; because we think it is the simplest, most sensible golfing utility out there for the iPhone / iPod Touch.

We think our strategy with Albert worked: while many of the other applications look complicated and have confusing interfaces, SensiGolf turned out to be the closest to the traditional golf scorecard to which golfers are used. One can just look at SensiGolf and understand immediately what is going on.

SensiGolf also stays out of the golfer’s way. For example, while the golfer can set up player and course information in advance, there is no requirement to do so; the golfer can simply jump directly into a game and just start playing without fuss.

SensiGolf also has complete Undo capability, which surprisingly seems to be a unique feature.

We think it is hugely important for iPhone golfing utilities to be simple to use. It seems obvious that the golfer wants to keep focussing on the important part — playing golf! Compared with the other applications out there, we think Albert has done a stellar job. It seems our strategy of maintaining his purity of vision, has worked out really well.

Likewise, for simplicity, we are avoiding just willy-nilly throwing all sorts of features into SensiGolf. Instead, we are asking golfers to tell us what is important to them. Do you want to be able to share the results of your games with your friends? Do you want advanced statistics? Do you want individual golfers to be able to keep their own score and have SensiGolf automatically gather the score sets into one?

This is one of the things which makes the iPhone / iPod Touch world so gratifying: fellow golfers get to talk directly with developers like Albert. Where else do golfers have so much unfettered ability to shape the usefulness of products?

By encouraging golfers to talk directly with us, we get to learn exactly how to make SensiGolf fit the golfer’s need like a glove.

Of course, no application makes it into the App Store without Apple performing a strenuous review process on it. Many App Store developers have a lot to say about this process, and tend to feel that its quite painful. At Tygus, we believe that Apple has proven they know a thing or two about user experiences; so for us the App Store process is an opportunity to be vetted by and benefit from that expertise.

SensiGolf was directly accepted into the App Store after a two week review process. We are now looking forward to hearing feedback from golfers the world over, so that we can make SensiGolf the ultimate golfer’s buddy.

About Author
Charl C wants to make SensiGolf the ultimate golfing buddy for iPhone and iPhone Touch users. Charl’s company Tygus also creates advanced software and algorithms for a variety of industries.

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Jul 10

Let’s Golf! 2 – iPhone/iPod touch – Game trailer

iPod Touch 24 Comments »


Game trailer of upcoming Let’s Golf! 2 game. Coming soon on iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

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