Building Birdie Drills: An App for My Golf Coach

In a recent golf instruction session, my golf coach, Stacy Bean, mentioned in passing how she needed to send her students drill sheets after their sessions. I got curious and asked to learn more. She had always given me drills to practice, but I just tracked them on my own without much structure. Next thing I know, she shows me multiple Google Sheets with every student she works with and the different drills she’d assigned. Students log into individual sheets, complete their drills, and she then went into each sheet to see the students' drill data. I mentioned that there had to be a better way to assign drills and track progress.

After some research, I could only find student management platforms, video instruction tools, and golf practice apps. There didn’t appear to be any apps dedicated to serving coaches and their students that were oriented around the practice assigned after sessions. I thought it would be a fun project to hack together.

I had been playing around with Glide since I last used it several years ago, and this seemed like the perfect fit to build as a Glide app for an MVP. 

I put together some initial key requirements:

1. Assign Drills Easily: Instructors should be able to assign drills to students with a few clicks.

2. Track Progress: Students should log their progress in a structured manner that’s easy for both them and the instructor to view.

3. Centralize Data: All drill data should be stored in one place, accessible by both students and instructors without the need to navigate to multiple destinations

4. Provide Analytics: Simple analytics to help instructors see patterns in student performance and progress over time.

With these requirements in mind, I wrote a simple PRD (Product Requirements Document) and some rough Figma mockups.

Once I had everything outlined, I dove into building the app. The process was both challenging and rewarding. I iterated on the design and functionality, constantly testing and refining to ensure it met the needs of both instructors and students.

Instructors can invite students, create drills, assign them to one or many students, monitor progress, and analyze performance all in one place, saving them valuable time and effort. Students benefit from a clear, structured way to track their drills and see their progress over time, which ultimately enhances their learning experience.

I'm excited to continue working on this and am looking for golf instructors who would be interested in beta testing it with their students. Your feedback will be invaluable in refining the app and ensuring it meets the needs of golf instructors and students.

If you know any golf instructors who would be interested in testing, please reach out or send them my info! I would greatly appreciate it.

Appendix

Birdie Drills PRD

Goals

Business Goals

• Increase user engagement by facilitating a personalized coaching experience.

• Drive new coach and student sign-ups through a seamless and intuitive app experience.

• Establish a platform for scalable growth into additional sports coaching verticals.

User Goals

• Coaches: Easily create, manage, and assign drills; monitor student progress.

• Students: Access assigned drills, log performance, and track progress visually over time.

Non-Goals

• Integrating with other sports outside of golf in this development phase (possible this is something to explore in the future).

User Stories

As a Coach

• I want to create drills with specific details so that I can tailor training to my students' needs.

  • Drill Details (All Optional):

    • Title

    • Area to Practice (Short Text)

    • Club (multi-select) 

    • Drill Description (Text Field)

    • Duration (Time)

    • Goal (Text Field)

    • Focus (Short Text)

    • Score (Depends on the drill. Allow the coach to set it either as a number or a text field)

    • Instructor comments

• I want to see all my created drills in a list that I can sort by title or by created date

• I want to assign a drill in my created library to one or many students

• I want to only see my students.

• I want to view a list of the drills a my students are assigned

• I want to see student progress in drills assigned to monitor their improvements and areas needing focus. 

• I want to send an invitation to join the app to a student

As a Student

• I need to see all the drills assigned to me ordered by date due, including details and goals, to follow my training program.

• I want to log my performance data for each drill to track my improvement over time.

  • Fields to log:

    • Score

    • Date Completed

    • Student Comments

• I want to see my progress in drills completed over time specific to each drill

• I can accept an invitation to join the app from my coach

User Experience

Login

• User opens the app: Sees a dual-section screen for login and signup.

• See option to login as coach or student

• Login: After entering credentials, redirect to the respective dashboard.

Signup Screen

• User opens the app: See option to select sign up as coach or student

• Signup: Upon selection, student signs up with email, and password 

• Post-registration, redirect to user-specific dashboard.

Coach Dashboard

• Overview displays with actions available

  • Create Drill, 

  • View Students 

  • View all Drills

  • Assign Drill

• Student Overview

  • Number of students

  • Number of Drills assigned

  • Number of drills completed

• Drills and students are listed with management options (edit, delete, assign).

Create Drill Screen

• Inputs for drill specifications

  • Drill Details (All Optional):

    • Title 

    • Area to Practice (Short Text)

    • Club (multi-select) 

    • Drill Description (Text Field)

    • Duration (Time)

    • Goal (Text Field)

    • Focus (Short Text)

    • Score (Depends on the drill. Allow the coach to set it either as a number or a text field)

    • Instructor comments

• Saving stores the drill in the coach's library for assignment.

Assign Drill Screen

• Inputs for drill assignment

  • Pre-populate all drill specifications

    • Allow Coach to choose date due

• Single or multi student assignment

  • Coach can assign to one or many students 

• Saving assigns the student requested the drill

• Saving sends a notification email to the student that the drill was assigned

Student Management Screen

• Coach views and manages student profiles 

• Can can sort students by name or created date 

• Coach can assign a drill to that student, which brings up a pop up to choose the drill to assign

Student Dashboard

• Lists assigned drills to click on

• Student can click an assigned drill and begin logging performance

  • Fields to log:

    • Score

    • Date Completed

    • Student Comments

• Students can view their progress over time through summaries and visual data of previously completed drills

Performance Reports Screen

• Filters allow customization of reports showing drill-specific progress or overall trends.

Settings and Support Screens

• Users manage personal info, notification preferences, and access support resources.

• User can reset password

• User can contact support email 

Technical Considerations

• Data Privacy: Ensuring user data are securely handled.

• Scalability: Architecting the backend to support an expanding user base and additional features.

• Integration: Provision for future sports enhancements without significant overhaul.

Future Considerations

• Payment: Initially the application will be free but I expect to charge a per member per month subscription fee that can be paid monthly or for an annual plan

• Private vs. Public Drills: Allow coaches to make a drill public to any student.

• Self-Sign up: Allow students to sign up without any coach and access the public drills available

• Affiliate sales linking: Creation of a separate tab providing affiliate links to sell training equipment etc 

• Integration into google calendar in order to be able to prep the coach before lessons