An Early Look at Birdie Board’s Foundations
In this short video, you’ll see an early version of Birdie Board…long before it became the polished app golfers use today. At this stage of the project, my main focus was twofold: authentication and layout.
Building Simple, Secure Authentication
From the start, I wanted signing into Birdie Board to feel effortless. Authentication is one of those things users rarely think about, unless it’s compromised. My goal was to make it as easy as possible while minimizing risk by leveraging the native login systems built into each platform.
In this early build, Birdie Board used the device’s built-in authentication. On Apple devices, it connected directly with Sign in with Apple. On Android, it used Google Sign-In.
This approach not only simplified the process but also let users take advantage of secure features like Face ID or Touch ID. Later versions expanded this flexibility even further, for example, allowing Google logins on Apple devices…but in this video, you’re seeing that first iteration in action.
You might notice a green box covering part of the screen during the login sequence. That’s just a simple edit added to hide my personal login details. Behind that box is the normal Apple sign-in flow working exactly as it should.
The Earliest Version of the Home Page
Once authentication completes, the video transitions to what was then called the Match Previews Page…essentially the early version of the Birdie Board home screen. At that time, there wasn’t even a menu yet. The goal was simply to get navigation working.
The layout displayed two key sections:
Active Matches – Ongoing matches currently being tracked.
You’ll see labels like “Active” or “Round 2.” When a round number appears, it indicates a multi-round match; just “Active” means it’s a single-round match.
Complete Matches – Past matches, giving players a historical view of their previous rounds.
Even in this primitive state, the design started to hint at Birdie Board’s eventual structure…simple, organized, and focused on what matters most to golfers: their matches.
Early Navigation & Match Pages
Tapping on a match card in this early version takes you to a very bare-bones match page. There wasn’t any score data or interactive content yet, just placeholder text, but that was by design. The goal at this phase was to prove out navigation and tab behavior, ensuring that tapping a match reliably opened the right view and that each tab switched cleanly between sections.
Looking back, it’s a small but meaningful milestone. These early builds represent the foundation of Birdie Board’s user experience…smooth sign-in, clear navigation, and a clean layout to grow from.
