ClubCorp owns and manages more than 200 private clubs, country clubs, business clubs, and the like in the U.S. While I worked there as the leader of the newly-formed digital engagement and experience group, my team and I restarted a dormant project that was known as the “Club Hub.”

Challenge

The “Club Hub” project had stalled because it lacked a clearly-defined purpose and set of user-centered requirements. It was something different to every person. Everyone agreed that it was to be an in-club information kiosk, but some wanted it to be solely member-information focused while others wanted it to be a sales-enablement tool for memberships and special-event bookings. Furthermore, there was no central technology architecture upon which to base the solution or a plan for the means to deploy a solution. 

Solution

Since we had recently launched a new corporate-wide website content management system for all the clubs, that platform gave us a centralized data and distribution platform upon which to base the kiosk solution. The kiosk system was to be web based—the user interface would be a web browser and the backend was the website’s dynamic content system. With that solid technical foundation, a common set of user personas, and well-defined use cases, the Digital Information Kiosk, as it was renamed, delivered on all of its expectations. It was a membership information portal and a sales enablement tool. Additionally, the kiosk system served as a club-system-wide promotion communication network.

Members could view locations of all the other clubs in the system

The in-club information kiosk allowed members to access more information about events scheduled at their club, learn more about their membership benefits, and book tee times. It gave club-based special-event and member sales agents an engaging sales tool.

The kiosk form factor was a Wi-Fi-enabled 46-inch touchscreen computer. Each was located in a club's entry lobby and/or at a congregation point.

The Benefits Finder allowed members to explore all their membership benefits.

Take-aways / Results / Notes

• Use-case exploration and research give us an important additional requirement that had not been part of the original concept—a network to communicate promotions to all the clubs near instantly.
• Usability testing during development led us to discover that users exhibited a “reach reluctance” when interacting with the large-format touchscreens—users were uncomfortable reaching too far outside of their body frame in a public setting. This discovery led us to gather most of the onscreen controls into a confined area near the bottom of the interface.
• Besides crafting the public-facing user experience, we needed to build a user experience for administrators of the kiosks so a integrated easy-to-use control center was designed and delivered.
• Utilized Google Map API with extensive location caching and map color and marker customizations.
• Deployment was via a bootable Linux OS flash drive.