Research for Design: The Mess Map

My group's initial idea came from the first idea on the Zoom call, which interestingly enough was around reimagining golf courses as community spaces. While it was still very much a rough idea and concept, and a subject matter that none of us have much experience with- it nonetheless intrigued us, and we began to instantly develop questions and curiosities around what we could do.

We decided to follow that spark of inspiration into our initial mess map, where we discovered, explored, and learned about the many facets of golf. And through refining our mess map and combining our new knowledge with our individual expertise, we landed on our project: An AR

infused experience that plays a role in maintaining golf courses year round.

As a Long Island local, golf have always been in my periphery. Though I never played, mostly everyone I knew did. It was heavily associated with country club culture, Vineyard Vines, and all the wealthy Long Island summer stereotypes. I preferred soccer and playing JRPGs with my siblings

Going into this messy map, that was really all I was working with regarding my relationship to and knowledge of golf, so I started there. I looked at two aspects of golf: Golf Games, and Golf Culture.

Golf is a sport, but it is also a fun video game to play with friend on Twitch, a beach game, or a winter sport in Pakistan. It can be played with cards, darts, or frisbees. There are so many ways to engage and innovate on idea of golf, and what does that mean for the culture of golf?

When you add this "Golf as a game" aspect into the mix, there is an interesting High/Low. There is that country club culture- especially prominent in NY- where there is a dress code, a large membership fee, and a social and status symbol around the green- and then we have those who have never touched a golf course that are live-streaming Mario Golf on Twitch and swinging around Nintendo Switch controllers as clubs.

With so many different access points and perspectives on golf, there a lot of potential to explore a new way to innovate on it through a more inclusive lens. I think that what we each have discovered in our research is going to synergize in a really creative way as we build out final experience.