The First Version of Scoring
This post is part of the Birdie Board history series, where I’m walking through some of the earliest versions of the app and the thought process behind each feature. It’s been fun looking back at where things started…before the polish, before the refined UI…and remembering how much of the core experience was already there.
In this video, I’m showing the very first version of scoring in Birdie Board. My main goal was simple: make entering a golf score as quick and frictionless as possible. I didn’t want people to have to open a keyboard or type anything during a round. Golf is already slow enough, the app shouldn’t be.
The scoring selector was my solution. It starts with the most common inputs, 3, 4, 5, and 6, front and center for quick taps. A “More” button expands the options to cover 1 through 12 for those less common scores. As players enter scores, the total automatically updates at the bottom, giving everyone a running tally of where they stand.
I also wanted Birdie Board to work regardless of whether someone can put in their own score or not, so from the very beginning, I built in the ability for hosts or scorers to enter scores for other players. If you’re the one keeping score, you can record results for everyone in the match from a single screen. Once all players have a score for every hole, the match automatically marks itself as complete.
The second part of the demo shows how scoring worked in matches with multiple rounds…something I knew would be common for golf trips or weekend tournaments. The input stayed the same, but I added a round selector dropdown to let users switch between rounds. It’s not shown in the video, but this dropdown always defaults to the current round so you can pick up right where you left off.
The final piece in the demo highlights what it looks like when you’re not a host or scorer. In that case, you can only update your own score. You can still view other players’ scores, but the update controls aren’t available. That permission system gave hosts control over how collaborative scoring should be.
In today’s version of Birdie Board, that logic is still there, but by default, everyone is a scorer. I found that most groups prefer the flexibility to help each other enter scores, especially when playing in teams or casual rounds. Hosts can still turn that off if they want a more controlled setup.
Looking back, this early version captured a lot of what Birdie Board still values: fast input, flexibility for different group dynamics, and clear visibility of everyone’s progress. It’s not perfect, but it was the first real step toward making golf scoring feel natural and intuitive.
